The answer to that question is at the bottom of a long, spiky mineshaft. And it’s a no.

DUCK’s official existence is established by the DSU’s standing orders as a charitable body responsible for the fund-raising efforts of it’s members. So in that sense, DUCK is a flavour of the DSU, just like LGBTa or the International Students Association. DUCK’s statutes are declared by the standing orders, including what meetings it has, its minimum giving/raising ratio (85%) and the nature of the DUCK manager (recently upped to a 12-13 month position). This year a DUCK constitution was written by legend Guy Hutchinson, to make everything a little more legit.

The DUCK manager position is salaried, and this money comes out of the what DUCK raises. It’s only about £12,000 (and they don’t get accommodation or expenses). Obviously this isn’t ideal as it’s one of our greatest expenses and means we can’t give the cash directly to charities.

The DSU used to derive it’s charitable (tax-dodging) status by fitting into a category called ‘exempt charities,’ which in the case of student unions, leached their status from their parent universities (see link- if you’re really that goddarn bored). That is until now. In 1996 the government put a stick in everyone’s eye with a nice bit of legislation (Charities Act 2006 (c. 50) Part 2 Chapter 3, to be exact), which provided an amendment:

2. Paragraph (w) above does not include any students’ union

_{(Come on, it’s UK law, it’s not going to be exciting, racy, or grammatically ground-breaking).}

Where paragraph (w) was a nice list we used to be in.

So what does that actually mean?

It means that the DSU isn’t legally a charity unless it registers as one. Which it is now in the process of doing.

The new DSU constitution passed in February 2008 was one of the first steps in being ratified as a charity. Student trustees are elected in July and hopefully DSU should be blessed with a charity number some tim in the year 08-09.

It’s not clear what this means in the mean time for real life things like “does the DSU pay tax?” partly because the window for exempt charities to register in is pretty hazy. The latest documentation from the sunny bureaucrats at the Filing Cabinet Office is not too clear, but it seems like the legislation is gathering momentum with a tribunal being set up recently (18th March) and various bits and pieces being put into place. Other universities around the country are putting the process in place, and Durham should follow suit soon.

How is DUCK affected- both now and in the future?

At the moment DUCK is able to exist as a society in the exempt charities’ remit. Obviously charity law has to be followed and the manager can’t filch cash or whatever. As to what will happen when the DSU registers as a non-exempt charity; it’s pretty hazy- simply because anyone who can understand charity law has better things to do than read it (lets face it, there’s no money in it!). For the moment things will continue much the same, inconvenienced by statutes like having to print charity numbers on everything and having full anual audits, reports to the shiny charities commission etcetera.

When the DSU has registered DUCK’s accounts will be audited (well, acutally, handled entirely) by the DSU itself- which takes the pressure off a bit.

In short, you were better off with the short answer.