Preparing for closure

The way you wind up an organisation will depend on your structure, and whether you are solvent or insolvent. There are also some things to prepare before you start the process.

Information needed to start a legal process

Check your constitution and governing documents

You will need to check your own constitution to make sure you have the power to be able to close your organisation down. The process for how to do this should be outlined in the constitution as well.

If you are a membership organisation your members will have to formally vote to approve the decision to close down. If you don’t have the power to close your organisation down you will have to change your constitution to allow you to do this.

If you are a charity and don’t have the power to change your constitution you may need to apply to OSCR to re-organise. All of this will take time so check your constitution early.

Assets and liabilities

You will need to gather information about everything that the organisation owns:

Assets – make a list of everything the organisation owns, from property and vehicles right down to stationary items (not every single pen, you can group items together!).
If you are charity, OSCR ask for a list of assets and liabilities as part of your application to wind up. OSCR has a template assets and liabilities form to help you with this.

Liabilities – all debts such as outstanding bills, loans, or mortgages, funding or donations received that you may have to return, contracts that you may need to pay a penalty to get out of, things that you must do e.g. staff redundancy costs, pensions liabilities, tax payments.