My Charity Commission Account - guidance for charity contacts
How to set up and use your new 'Charity Commission Account' and manage other users’ access and permissions.
Applies to England and Wales
Request an account
Contact us so we can send you a link to set up your account.
You can call us on 0300 066 9197 (our lines are open Monday to Friday, 9:00am to 5:00pm).
You will need to give us an email address that only you use. If you change your email address after you’ve set up your account, you will need to request a new link and set up a new account.
Set up your account
Look out for an email with your setup link for ‘My Charity Commission Account’ (MCCA). While setting up your account, you will be asked to validate your date of birth and create your own password.
Validate your date of birth
We will ask you to confirm your date of birth so we can verify who are.
If the date of birth you enter is not accepted, this might be because it was not registered correctly.
You will need to call us on 0300 066 9197 (our lines are open Monday to Friday, 9:00am to 5:00pm) so we can amend it for you.
Create a password
Please make sure your password has at least:
- 10 characters
- 1 number
- 1 uppercase letter
Enable my administrator permissions
Whether you are a primary, super or user administrator, you need to confirm that you are authorised by your trustees to have this access before using certain services.
Steps to enable administrator permissions:
- Scroll down to ‘Administration’ on your charity homepage
- Click on ‘User Administration’
- Tick the box to confirm you have authority to be an administrator and click on ‘continue’
- Tick the box to accept your responsibility as a data controller for your charity and click on ‘continue’
- You will get a message saying we’ve notified all your charity’s trustees that you’ve enabled your administrator permissions.
Access and permissions
As a charity contact, with your administrator permissions enabled, you will be able to:
- access all online services for your charity (or charities) where you are the registered contact
- view and edit trustee information, except when a trustee has blocked access to their personal information through their account
- view and edit personal information on third party user accounts linked to your charity (so long as they are not also linked to other charities)
- invite trustees to set up their accounts
- invite third-party users to set up their accounts and manage their access to different services
- grant additional administrative permissions to other appropriate users within your charity.
Change contacts
If you are no longer the charity contact, you need to add the new contact to your charity in ‘Update Charity Details’ and update your role with your charity.
If you no longer work with the charity, you will keep your account but won’t be able to see the charity the next time you sign in. The charity and all your permissions to access services on its behalf will be removed from your account.
The new contact will become the primary administrator for your charity.
- if they don’t have an account, they can request a link
- if they already have an account, they will be given full access once they enable their administrator permissions
Invite trustees to set up an account
All individual trustees can have an account to access online services on behalf of their charity or charities. They will be granted full access to all services except they won’t be able to view or edit other trustees’ personal details.
If you have enabled your administrator permissions, you can invite your trustees to set up an account.
Steps to invite trustees
Existing trustees:
- Sign in to MCCA
- Go to your homepage for the charity
- Scroll down and select ‘User Administration’
- Select ‘Add trustees to the portal’
- You will see a list of your charity’s trustees – select all those you want to invite
- Click on ‘Invite’
- You will get a message confirming that your trustees have been invited. The selected trustees will each get an email with a link to set up their accounts.
Video - Invite your trustees to set up their accounts
Resending links to trustees
If a trustee hasn’t received their setup link or can’t find it, you can resend the link.
- Sign in to MCCA
- Go to your homepage for the charity
- Scroll down and click on ‘User Administration’
- Tick the ‘inactive users’ box (under the ‘search users’ bar)
- Click on the ‘search users’ magnifying glass (entering a name is optional)
- You will see a list of all users who haven’t yet set up an account
- Click on ‘resend invitation’ next to the name of the person who needs a link.
New trustees
When you add a new trustee through ‘Update charity details’, they will automatically receive a link to set up an account. All trustees can have an account to access online services on behalf of their charity or charities.
Trustees of multiple charities
If your trustee works with multiple charities, but they can’t see your charity listed on their account, you might need to amend their personal details so they are identical to those recorded for the charities that are listed. This includes ensuring they are using the same email address for all their charities.
Corporate trustees
A corporate entity can’t have a Charity Commission Account, this includes corporate trustees. However, any individuals acting on behalf of a charity with a corporate trustee can have an account and access to online services as required.
Charity contacts can have full access as usual. Anyone else who needs access can be granted an account and access as a third-party user.
As there are no individual trustees, no one at the charity can be granted trustee access.
Grant access to third-party users
If you have enabled your administrator permissions, you can invite third-party users to set up an account, approve their requests for an account and grant them access to different services on behalf of your charity.
Steps to invite third-party users to set up an account
- Sign in to MCCA
- Go to your homepage for the charity
- Scroll down and select ‘User Administration’
- Select ‘Add a portal user’
- Enter the user’s email address, then ‘Save and continue’
- Add the user’s name then ‘Save and continue’
- Select the services they will have access to and whether they have ‘view’ or ‘edit’ permissions then ‘Save and continue’
- You will then see a preview of what you have entered for this user, if it is correct, ‘Confirm and send invitation’
- You will get a message confirming that the user has been added and sent an invitation.
If this user already has an account, you need to follow the same steps. They won’t receive another invitation, but will be added to your charity.
Once a third-party user has set up an account, only they can edit their details.
If the email address you entered is already linked to an account that doesn’t belong to the person you are adding, you need a different email address. You will need to ask the user you are adding to provide an email address that only they use.
Third-party users can also request an account through MCCA. You can approve or deny their request by following these steps.
Steps to approve or deny account requests from third-party users
- Sign in to MCCA
- Go to your homepage for the charity
- Check your messages – you can find the link to messages at the top of your charity homepage
- When you open your messages, you will see an ‘access request’ – click on the ‘link to list of requests’
- When the list opens, you can see who has requested an account – click on the ‘Details’ link next to the user’s name
- The ‘Account request details’ page will set out what services the user needs to access and might include ‘Further information’ to give you a reason why
- Scroll down to the bottom of the ‘Account request details’ page to approve or decline the request
- if you approve the request, select ‘yes’, then ‘Save and Continue’ – you will then get a message confirming that you successfully approved the new user and they’ve been sent an invitation
- if you want to decline the request, select ‘no’ and give your reason why, then ‘Save and Continue’ – you will then get a message confirming that you successfully declined the new user’s request and they’ve been sent an email advising them that their request was declined
Video – Grant access to third-party users
Grant third-party users access to additional services
If a third-party user needs access or a different level of access to an online service, you can grant this by following these steps.
Steps to granting access to online services
- Sign in to MCCA
- Go to your homepage for the charity
- Scroll down and select ‘user administration’
- Select ‘view details’ next to the name of the person being granted this access
- Under ‘user permissions’, go to ‘Additional permissions granted at this charity’ and select ‘change’
- This page allows you to amend their permissions or access to other services.
- Once you have updated permissions, select ‘save and continue’
- You will get a notification that user permissions have been updated and saved.
Grant administrator permissions to other users
We recommend that some users within a charity are granted additional administrator permissions. These users can be trustees or third-parties
This will enable the charity to continue to grant users access if the charity contact is absent or no longer involved with your charity.
The charity contact can nominate:
- one ‘super administrator’ – who will have the same access and permissions as the charity contact, except they can’t make another user a super administrator
- up to 5 ‘user administrators’ – who can enable other trustees and third-party users to set up accounts, give third-party users access to different services and edit their details (provided that third-party user is only linked to your charity)
Consider who is most appropriate for your own charity, taking your charity’s GDPR policy into account, the roles of the individuals concerned and their knowledge and understanding of your charity.
If you are granted administrator permissions, when you next sign-in, you will be asked to confirm that you are authorised by your trustees to have this access.
Steps to grant administrator permissions
- Sign in to MCCA
- Go to your homepage for the charity
- Scroll down and select ‘user administration’
- Select ‘view details’ next to the name of the person being granted this permission
- Under ‘user permissions’, go to ‘Additional permissions granted at this charity’ and select ‘change’
- This page allows you to either grant super administrator privileges or ‘edit’ permission to ‘manage users’.
- Once you have updated permissions, select ‘save and continue’
- You will get a notification that user permissions have been updated and saved.
Common issues
Find help with common issues (this link opens a new page) when signing into and using your account.