Help centre / Getting started / Let CharityControl read your governing document
Let CharityControl read your governing document
Upload your constitution or articles as a PDF, or fetch them from Companies House, and CharityControl reads them and suggests your charity's own rules: who decides what, plus facts like your quorum. You review each suggestion, and nothing changes until you apply it.
Your governing document (your constitution, articles or trust deed) is your charity's rulebook. Instead of you typing its rules in by hand, CharityControl can read it and suggest them for you. You stay in charge: every suggestion is shown with the article it came from, and nothing changes until you tick it and apply.
Read your document
- Open Admin & settings and find the About your charity card. The same flow also appears in the first-run wizard and on the Who decides what page.
- Select Upload & read my governing document.
- If your charity is a company, you may see Fetch your articles from Companies House. Select it, check the filing it found is the right one, then choose Fetch and read it. No upload needed.
- Otherwise, upload your document as a PDF, up to 10 MB. If you only have a Word file, export it to PDF first.
- Wait while it reads. This usually takes a minute or two.
- Review the suggestions. About your charity covers facts like your legal form and charitable objects. Who decides what lists decision rights, each with the article it comes from. Tick what's right and untick anything that isn't.
- Select Apply selected.
What happens next
The rules you applied appear under Who decides what, tailored to your charity rather than model articles, and you can edit them there any time. The document itself is kept safe in your Documents register. If your members later amend the constitution, come back and choose Replace with a newer version.
What if it couldn't read the document?
Sometimes a scan is too poor to read, and the page will tell you honestly. Your upload is still saved in Documents, and you can set your charity's details by hand in Settings instead. Nothing is applied from a failed read.