A blog written by Stuart Imrie, Lead for Governance.

Good governance focusses on oversight and strategy, and maintains focus on supporting and assuring the organisation’s strategic goals. Every charity must adopt a governing document. In the Scouts’ federation of charities, the governing document is referred to as a constitution.

A governing document explains what the charity is set up to do, and how it operates, it sets out the rules to be followed in the governance of the charity. All Trustees must understand their constitution, and make sure it is kept up to date.

The principal governing document of The Scout Association is the Royal Charter. For each Group, District and Region in Scotland, a constitution is established in accordance with the Royal Charter, The Scout Association’s Policy, Organisation and Rules (POR) and Scouts Scotland’s Scottish Variations. A Model Constitution for a Group, District or Region is appended as Annex A, B and C respectively to Scottish Variations from Policy, Organisation and Rules.

These Model Constitutions align with Policy, Organisation and Rules and relevant Scottish Variations and can be found on the Scouts Scotland website.

Although every charity can agree its own constitution, it is strongly recommended that Groups, Districts or Regions in Scotland adopt the Model Constitutions developed by Scouts Scotland. In the interests of openness, the Scout Council should re-adopt their constitution at each Annual General Meeting and record this in its Minutes.

If a Group, District or Region in Scotland adopts the Model Constitution as it is, it should record in its Minutes that the Model Constitution in Scottish Variation from Policy, Organisation and Rules is fully adopted as its constitution. If there are any local amendments, they should record that Scottish Variation from Policy, Organisation and Rules is the basis of its constitution and set out the specifics of the local amendments along with clear reasoning for them. Any variations to the Model Constitution must be consistent with the rest of Policy, Organisation and Rules, and must not cause the Group, District or Region to operate in a manner that breaches POR.  Any local amendments must be approved by the relevant Scout Council at their Annual General Meeting.

There are currently in excess of 470 Scouting charities in Scotland registered with the Office of the Scottish Charity Regulator (OSCR).  As part of our agreed working practices with OSCR, Scouts Scotland has an agreement to notify OSCR of changes to the Model Constitutions on behalf of all Scouting charities.  Therefore, if you are a registered charity, adopting the Model Constitution for the first time, or are readopting an amended Model Constitution in the future, you do not need to contact OSCR to notify them of the change. Scout Scotland have already done this on your behalf.