1. Quakers in Scotland (QiS)
  2. QiS documents

QiS documents

A list of current and archived documents relating to QiS (Quakers in Scotland), the proposed single charity for Quakers in Scotland. A mix of web pages and files. This page will be updated as documents change, please check date of your version. Also relevant: QiS Home (about becoming Quakers in Scotland), and QiS News (latest updates).

  • MoU = Memorandum of Understanding, an agreement between two or more parties (e.g. a local meeting and QiS) about where we make decisions and report issues; for instance about property issues.
  • Policy = An agreed way of doing things to comply with safety, legal, or other requirements. Includes policies for such things as health and safety, safeguarding, making our properties available to others.

Current documents

  1. Governing Document (constitution; pdf for the single charity, to function both as General Meeting for Scotland, and as Area Meeting (for those Area Meetings that have agreed). Submitted to OSCR Feb 2025. Note that this is primarily concerned with the formal responsibilities of the organisation as a registered charity. It must describe our purposes and some processes in order to be eligible for registration, but does not need to describe details of how we organise or manage our Quaker activities at local or regional levels. 
  2. Draft General MoU (pdf) describing how responsibilities are shared between local meetings, QiS, and QiS trustees - who does what. Property and Financial arrangements are dealt with in more detail in separate documents.  
  3. Draft Property MoU (pdf) outlines how responsibility for our properties is organised and managed.
  4. Possible arrangements for Spiritual and Pastoral care (pdf) covering how Friends may be appointed to formal roles as Elders, Pastoral Care Friends, and how membership, marriages, funerals could be handled. It assumes that Intermediate Meetings (see below) will undertake some of this work.
  5. Possible committee structure and nominations process (to follow)
  6. Possible financial structure and organisation (pdf) - describes how things could work with greatly reduced number of bank accounts, and a single place for formal accounting.
  7. Summary of how Intermediate Meetings IMs might work (pdf) - they could take on many of the things that are currently done at Area Meetings, but this would be flexible and need not be constrained by our current geographical boundaries (North/ East/ South East/ West).
  8. What difference might it make to the number of roles (pdf) - a reduction in many key roles, but not in Elders or Pastoral Care Friends.
  9. Foundation and substantive trustee roles (advanced drafts). All MS Word documents:

Work still under way

  • Membership reporting for Quaker purposes - Our membership of Britain Yearly Meeting (BYM) as Quakers is held through our membership of an Area Meeting (AM). During the transition to QiS, we need to make proposals to Meeting for Sufferings about how QiS will assume the role of our current AMs in a staged manner, while remaining equivalent to General Meeting for all Quakers in Scotland. We have been reassured by discussions so far, but a formal application will need to be framed.
  • Management suggestions and costs.

Archived documents