CHERT – Application Submitted!

On 28 July, on behalf of the CHE Transition Team, I submitted our application to the Charity Commission to register the CHE Research Trust – CHERT – as a Charitable Incorporated Organisation (CIO). The Transition Team had developed the wording of our application (number 5181452) over several meetings and it was then refined by CHERT’s prospective Trustees at their first Board Meeting. It had to follow the format laid down by the Commission’s website, and therefore ended up rather long, but fundamentally it’s an expansion of the Objects Clause in our draft Constitution:

The objects of the CIO are, for the public benefit:

  1. to promote education about the history of the struggle for LGBT+ rights, including but not limited to the origins and history of the Campaign for Homosexual Equality;
  2. to promote equality and diversity by encouraging a deeper understanding of the causes and progress of changes in public acceptance of LGBT+ rights; and
  3. to contribute to the safe preservation of LGBT+ archives.

 

The Constitution provides for a Board of up to 11 Trustees, but we are starting off with six:

  • Peter Burman
  • Ross Burgess
  • Mark Delacour
  • Simon Ives
  • Glenys Parry
  • Rainer Schulze

 

Peter, Mark and myself are all current CHE Executive members. Simon first joined CHE aged 16 and has led reviews of universities in the UK and abroad. Rainer, originally from Germany, is a professional historian with a special interest in making LGBT+ history accessible to the younger generation, Glenys is a psychologist and researcher, and took part in the 1971 Burnley meeting, later becoming Chair of CHE for a time.

In due course the Board would plan to recruit additional Trustees, to bring in people with varied skills and experience, and better reflecting the diversity of the LGBT+ community.

We’re now anxiously waiting to hear from the Charity Commission whether our application has been successful (they tell us they’re experiencing a very heavy workload owing to Covid, so this may take some time). But assuming we hear that all is well we will start making plans for the final CHE Conference, with the aim of winding up CHE in its current form and transferring funds to CHERT. All being well, you can expect to hear more from us in a month or so.

We’ve now given CHERT its own website (www.chert.org.uk) and its own logo – what do you think of it?

 

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