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I have recently become hon.treasurer of long-established "membership" charity with around 400 members nationwide, operating as an unincorporated association under a constitution. We are engaged in presenting and publicising a liberal Christian theology, open to rather than resisting insights from modern biblical scholarship, science and psychology.

For many years we have been governed by electing a council (one-third of members retiring at each AGM) – 30 members plus various officers ex officio. The Council meets twice a year and there is a Standing Committee of at least five plus officers, elected annually by the Council and having another three meetings a year. When the concept of Charity Trustees came in some years ago we apparently sought advice from the Charity Commission and ended up making a small constitutional amendment by which the Standing Committee became the trustees.

It has recently been realised that our constitution as it stands is flawed because it does not clearly give the Trustees/Standing Committee the final word in decisions. We do want to keep our Council, to advise on broad policy and to stop the trustees becoming out of touch with a broader cross section of the membership. We also consider that if all the council members became charity trustees that would be far too many.

Does anyone know of a charity with a similar two-tier governance structure whose constitution we could look at for inspiration, please?