In an attempt to keep hiring charges down and to make use of the hall during the day when it is under occupied the hall management committee decides to run a cafe open every day of the week:
- The hall is forbidden from doing this as it lies outside their primary purpose which is to provide a building for the use by the community and for the community
- The hall may do this as it provides a 'drop-in' activity for village residents as well as helping to maintain the building for other community purposes
- The trustees should seek expert advice on exactly how this is set up and run as it could have implications for the trustees both in terms of additional responsibilities and in terms of breaching their trust deed.
The key words here are 'open everyday of the week'. There is nothing against a hall running a 'drop-in' event once a month on a casual basis changing nominal prices for cups of instant coffee and a piece of home made cake. The difficulties creep in when fund raising becomes trading. This is something larger charities have to consider when they open a shop - fund raising becomes trading to raise funds (often nowadays known as social enterprise). The charities that do this tend to form a separate Community Interest Company to run the shops, the profit from the company transferring to the charity. This protects, amongst other things, from the shop business ceasing to be viable and dragging the charity into debt.
Charities normally have no provision in their governing document for trading and that will almost be certainly true of village halls. Running a cafe every weekday would be deemed trading if a profit was being made. It would also have implications with the Food Standards Agency. Village halls and trading are a thorny area as you could argue that hiring out the hall is, in fact, trading!
In simple terms options 1 and 2 are at opposite ends of the spectrum. Depending on what is being proposed either may in fact be acceptable which is why option 3, to seek advice, is the correct answer. .