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Adopting your Constitution

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Once your group has a draft constitution, it a good idea to show it to your local Third Sector Interface organisation for comment. If your group is going to be registering for charitable status, you can also send your draft constitution to the Office of the Scottish Charity Register (OSCR) to make sure that it complies with current charity legislation, before submitting your application and before formalising your constitution.

Once everyone is happy with the constitution it needs to be formally adopted. Depending on your group’s membership structure, this can be done by:-

• holding a general meeting where the members of the organisation (not just the committee) can vote to adopt the constitution
• the committee can vote to adopt the constitution at a normal committee meeting
• any other method or requirement of regulatory bodies such as OSCR or Companies House

Once adopted the constitution should be signed and dated by the chairperson and a witness with a record of the committee members, the location, date and time of the meeting.  The formal adoption of the constitution should also be recorded in the minutes of the meeting.

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