Yorkshire Quakers have published revised proposals for how the new charity should operate. This page gives background and links to the proposals.
The revised proposals can be downloaded here.
In response to requests, more supporting finance information is here.
Responses should be emailed to: consultation@yorkshirequakers.org.uk
A briefing and question answering session will be held on Tuesday 1 September, 7.00pm to 8.30pm. The Zoom link to join is:
We are pleased that Yorkshire Quakers is now registered with the Charity Commission as a Charitable Incorporated Organisation (CIO), number 1218846. This means that we can now move forward with more confidence in the process of merging the Area Meeting charities and Quakers in Yorkshire charity into Yorkshire Quakers.
At the start of this year, Area and Local Meetings responded to our first consultation on how Yorkshire Quakers might operate. We have been carefully studying these responses and have modified the proposals accordingly.
The first seven trustees appointed by Area Meetings have been meeting regularly and working out how to govern the new charity. Thank you to Area Meetings for providing their contribution to the Set-Up Funds. Thank you also for completing Due Diligence Questionnaires which provide valuable information on property and other assets.
The Implementation Group and its working groups on governance, finance, employment, property and safeguarding have spent much time preparing practical proposals.
The proposals represent a significantly different way of running ourselves. Historically we did everything ourselves without much paid support. This was fine when the regulatory burden was low and there were plenty of members with time to enthusiastically volunteer. But this is not longer viable and if we are to enable Quakerism to grow we need to relieve members of much of the burden of running the charitable and regulatory side of our activities. We are encouraged in our hope for revival by some signs of growth, particularly among the Yorkshire-wide youth activities.
In this period of change to new structures with paid staff doing some of the administration, there is inevitably much uncertainty. Consequently the proposals given here are indicative and the budgets represent the best financial estimates at this stage.
The proposals are in three sections (click to go to the detailed proposals):
The revised finance and employment proposals give more background and set out how we have responded to the first consultation. The biggest change from the original proposals is that we now propose that local meeting with meeting houses continue to be in charge of managing their premises. This does mean less sharing of experiences but was the clear desire of many meetings.
The safeguarding proposals aim to achieve a balance between the need to care for each other and the need to safeguard young people and adults who are potentially at risk. They have been developed in consultation with Area Meeting Safeguarding Coordinators and should take much of the administrative burden away from volunteers.
The property proposals are at this stage very tentative so here we provide an introduction to the key issues and only a broad outline of potential staffing. More details will be contained in agreed Memoranda of Understanding with Local Meetings setting out who is responsible for all aspects of the use and maintenance of premises and burial grounds.
We recognise that it is up to each meeting to work out a strategy for providing responses to these proposals. We aim to move forward at a timescale that fits all parties to these proposals. It will help our consideration to have responses by the end of October 2026. It may be that a special meeting is appropriate, but that is for each meeting to decide.
Discerned responses to these revised proposals from Local and Area Meetings should be emailed to: consultation@yorkshirequakers.org.uk
We hope for a commitment to merge by the end of October 2026 and then it will be up to the Area Meeting Trustees to agree merger timescales. We will be recommending a firm of solicitors to assist with the legal side of merging.
All comments on the proposals are welcome and will help to give more confidence that we can find a way of working together. The aim is to do things collaboratively with Friends in local meetings.