Boundaries of “organisation”

Most of the population of the 2019 study readily fit the basic premise that an organisation is co-terminous with a legal entity.  By this I mean that your organisation is typically a company limited by guarantee but sometimes a co-operative, association or other form, and that your people, activities and resources are all contained within company, co-op or association.

However, a number of “organisations” in the Irish nonprofit sector comprise two or more legal entities – which are co-managed as a single organisation.   By “co-managed” we mean that there is significant overlap of board members or that the manager or CEO leads both/all legal entities.  In a few instances members of the staff team may work, or the financial resources may be deployed, across multiple legal entities.  This situation arises for a couple of reasons:

• Some government funders will only fund a company limited by guarantee so an association may set up a company but retain their original form as a parent or sister organisation.  Or some funders will require that a separate company is set up to deliver a specific programme.
• Charities sometimes set up limited companies as a trading subsidiary to undertake work that does not fall within the charitable remit or the Charity Regulator’s restrictions.
• Sometimes a nonprofit may choose to set up a separate legal entity to undertake new or diversified work.

In order to assure consistency and comparability across all the cases examined by this study, we are looking at the legal entity identified by Benefacts and as specified in each email to would-be respondents.  However, we aim to identify multi-entity organisations in the survey and may explore these further at a future stage of the research.  If you have any questions about the boundaries of your organisation, please contact Danielle Byrne at byrned49@tcd.ie.