First Trustees' Meeting Guide: Run an Effective UK Charity Board Meeting (2026)

A trustees' meeting is not a formatting exercise. It is a governance record. The same agenda that runs the meeting feeds the minutes that document the six duties every UK charity trustee is bound to uphold: act within your charity's powers; further the charity's purposes; act in the charity's best interests; manage the charity's resources responsibly; act with reasonable care and skill; and ensure the charity is accountable (Charity Commission CC3, The essential trustee). Build the meeting around the duties it has to evidence, and a small, volunteer-run board can run the same disciplined cadence as a 50-person hospital charity's board. Just shorter.

This guide is a universal 8-step flow that works for both new and established small charities, plus a dedicated section for your very first trustees' meeting (governing document adoption, officer elections, financial year, bank accounts, Gift Aid registration, conflict of interest). All four templates referenced below are free Zeffy resources you can copy and reuse.

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In this article:

• What makes a trustees' meeting effective?

• Before the meeting: agenda and preparation

• Free board meeting agenda template and workbook

• Step 1: Confirm quorum and call to order

• Step 2: Approve previous meeting minutes

• Step 3: Adopt a meeting procedure that fits your board

• Step 4: Present reports and updates

• Step 5: Address old and new business

• Step 6: Encourage participation and discussion

• Step 7: Document decisions and assign action items

• Step 8: Adjourn and follow up

• Running your first trustees' meeting

• Virtual vs. in-person trustees' meetings

• How often should your board meet?

• Zeffy is the financial layer your trustees oversee

• Frequently asked questions

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What makes a trustees' meeting effective?

An effective trustees' meeting is not measured by how closely it followed a parliamentary procedure manual or how polished the slides looked. It is measured by what the meeting documents. Every motion, vote, and decision your trustees record is evidence that they are meeting their six legal duties under charity law: act within your charity's powers; further the charity's purposes; act in the charity's best interests; manage the charity's resources responsibly; act with reasonable care and skill; and ensure the charity is accountable (CC3).

The boards that struggle are not the ones missing parliamentary procedure. They are the ones sending the packet the night before, skipping quorum on the record, and treating minutes like a transcript instead of a decision log. Three habits do most of the work: packet out seven days early, quorum confirmed out loud, and minutes written as a decision log with named owners and deadlines.

For a small charity: you do not need a board portal, a parliamentarian, or a consultant. You need the four habits in this guide and the four free templates linked below. Done.

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Before the meeting: agenda and preparation

A trustees' meeting agenda is not a formatting exercise. It is the spine of the meeting and the skeleton of the minutes. If the agenda is clear, time-boxed, and sent seven days in advance, the meeting runs itself. If it is not, the meeting drifts and the minutes lie.

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What's included in a trustees' meeting agenda

A defensible trustees' meeting agenda has eight components, in this order:

• 1. Call to order and quorum confirmation: time, date, who is present, quorum stated on the record.

• 2. Approval of prior meeting minutes: motion, second, vote.

• 3. Reports: chair, treasurer, committees. Distributed in advance.

• 4. Old business: follow-ups, items tabled at the last meeting.

• 5. New business: anything requiring discussion or a vote.

• 6. Consent agenda (optional): bundled routine items approved in a single vote.

• 7. Action items and decisions: recap of who owns what, by when.

• 8. Adjournment: formal close, time recorded.

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How to create a trustees' meeting agenda (step by step)

• 1. Pull last meeting's action items. Anything still open becomes a candidate for old business.

• 2. Ask the chief executive and committee chairs for new items two weeks out. The board chair and chief executive build the draft together.

• 3. Time-box every item. If a discussion needs 20 minutes, put 20 minutes next to it. If it needs 5, put 5. No item is open-ended.

• 4. Move routine approvals to a consent agenda (see below).

• 5. Distribute the packet seven days before the meeting. Agenda, prior minutes, financial report, chief executive report, anything that requires a vote. Trustees cannot prepare on materials they receive the night before.

• 6. Confirm quorum will be present. Chase RSVPs. If quorum is at risk, reschedule rather than meet and discover you cannot act.

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Annotated agenda template

Below is a copy-ready agenda for a one-hour trustees' meeting. Each row shows the item, its purpose (which duty it evidences), the time allocation, and the meeting lead.

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What is a consent agenda (and should you use one)?

A consent agenda is a bundle of routine items the board approves in a single vote, with no discussion. Typical contents: prior meeting minutes, committee reports that contain no decisions, routine financial acknowledgments, and standing reports the trustees have already read.

Use one when your meetings routinely run long because too much time goes to items no one disputes. Do not use one when your board is brand new and still building the habit of reading the packet, or when an item buried inside it actually needs discussion. Any trustee can pull an item off the consent agenda by saying so before the vote. That item then moves to old or new business.

For a small charity: a consent agenda saves real time once you have a regular cadence and a packet that goes out seven days early. Skip it in your first six months.

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Who sets the agenda for trustees' meetings?

The board chair owns the agenda, usually built with the chief executive two weeks before the meeting. Committee chairs feed in items they need on the board's plate. Any trustee can request an item be added by emailing the chair before the packet goes out.

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Trustees' meeting compliance: what your agenda must support

Your agenda does not have to be elaborate. It does have to produce minutes that stand up to a Charity Commission (or OSCR / CCNI) inspection, support your annual return, and evidence the trustees' six duties. Four things your minutes must prove:

• Quorum was present when each vote was taken.

• Each motion was recorded with the name of the mover, the name of the seconder, a summary of the discussion, and the vote tally.

• Conflicts of interest were disclosed and managed where they applied.

• The trustees acted within the charity's governing document and its stated charitable purposes.

If your agenda has the eight components above and your minutes mirror them, your governance record is defensible.

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Free board meeting agenda template and workbook

Two free assets make this reusable: a print-and-follow PDF agenda template (single page, ready to fill in) and a Google Sheet workbook with three tabs (Agenda, Minutes / Decision Log, Action-Item Tracker) you copy once and reuse meeting-over-meeting.

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Step 1: Confirm quorum and call to order

Quorum is the minimum number of trustees who must be present for the board to take official action. It is set by your governing document (constitution, articles of association, or CIO constitution), with the Charities Act 2011 (E&W), the Charities and Trustee Investment (Scotland) Act 2005 (Scotland), or the Charities Act (Northern Ireland) 2008 (Northern Ireland) as the statutory backdrop depending on where you are registered. A typical small-board threshold is a majority of trustees, but your governing document governs.

The board chair calls the meeting to order, records the time, takes attendance, and states out loud: "We have quorum." That single sentence is what makes every motion that follows official. The secretary records it in the minutes. If quorum is not present, the board cannot take binding action. Reschedule.

For a small charity: the most common compliance gap on a small board is not a procedural failure. It is forgetting to state quorum on the record. Build it into the agenda's first three minutes and you are covered.

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Step 2: Approve previous meeting minutes

Minutes are a decision log, not a transcript. They record what the board decided, not what each trustee said. At the top of every meeting after the first, the board approves the prior meeting's minutes: a trustee moves to approve, another seconds, and the board votes. Corrections are noted and incorporated before approval; the secretary updates the official copy.

This step does not apply to a first meeting (there are no prior minutes). For every meeting after, skipping it leaves the prior meeting's record unratified, which weakens its standing as evidence.

For a small charity: two minutes well spent. Send draft minutes within 48 hours of the meeting so trustees can review them while the meeting is fresh, not the night before the next one. Grab the free minutes template (Google Doc) to standardise the format.

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Step 3: Adopt a meeting procedure that fits your board

Most UK charity governing documents already set out how motions and votes work. Where they do not, or where the board wants a lighter framework than a model constitution provides, a simple motion-second-discussion-vote flow is both practical and defensible. Robert's Rules of Order is a US parliamentary tradition that some UK boards borrow by reference, but it is not legally required and is rarely specified in UK governing documents. For a board of seven or fewer trustees, the lightweight flow below is more than sufficient.

Our view, for small boards: full Robert's Rules creates procedure overhead (debate procedure, calls to order, points of information) on top of decisions a small group could resolve in a five-minute conversation. The risk is not disorder. It is that procedure becomes the meeting and the substance gets squeezed out.

A lighter alternative that is still defensible: motion, second, brief discussion, vote. Specifically:

• 1. A trustee makes a motion in plain language ("I move that we approve the 2026 fundraising budget as presented").

• 2. Another trustee seconds ("Second").

• 3. The chair opens discussion with a time box ("We have 10 minutes").

• 4. The chair calls the vote when discussion winds down or time runs out.

• 5. The secretary records the mover, the seconder, the vote tally, and the outcome.

That is enough to produce defensible minutes. If your board grows past seven or your meetings become contentious, adopt a more formal procedure and record that change in your governing document.

For a small charity: name the framework you actually follow in your governing document (the lightweight version above counts), then follow it consistently. The discipline matters more than the rulebook. NCVO publishes trustee governance guidance if you need a reference point.

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Step 4: Present reports and updates

Three reports anchor most trustees' meetings: the chief executive report, the treasurer's financial report, and committee reports. All three should be written, distributed with the packet seven days in advance, and time-boxed in the meeting. Meeting time is for questions and decisions, not for reading aloud.

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Chief executive report

One page or less. Operational highlights, programme updates, anything the board needs to know to do its job. Ten minutes in the meeting, mostly Q&A.

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Treasurer's report

Year-to-date budget vs actuals, cash position, any variances over 10%, and a one-line recommendation. The treasurer flags anything that requires a board decision. Trustees are meeting their duty to manage the charity's resources responsibly here, so they need to read the numbers, not hear them recited.

One question the treasurer's report should answer every quarter: how much of every £1 raised actually reaches the mission? Two checks that belong on the treasurer's agenda:

• Gift Aid claimed vs Gift Aid claimable. If your charity has eligible donations sitting unclaimed with HMRC, that is the fastest 25% uplift on the mission line. The treasurer should report both the amount claimed and the amount still claimable each quarter.

• Platform and processing fees. If your fundraising stack is absorbing 5 to 10% in platform fees and per-ticket charges, that shows up here as a smaller mission line. A fundraising platform with zero fees, and Gift Aid handled properly, keeps every eligible £1 plus its 25p uplift on the mission line. Zeffy's free fundraising platform charges no platform fee, no transaction fee, and no credit card fee.

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Committee reports

Each committee chair gives a two- to three-minute update: what the committee did, what it decided, and what (if anything) it needs the board to vote on. Anything that does not need a board decision goes on the consent agenda.

For a small charity: if your reports take more than 30 minutes combined, your packet did not go out early enough. Fix the packet, not the meeting.

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Step 5: Address old and new business

Old business is anything carried over from a prior meeting: a tabled motion, an action item that needs a board decision, a follow-up to a previous discussion. Close these out first so they do not pile up.

New business is everything else that requires discussion or a vote. Order new business by what needs the most trustee attention, not by what is easiest. If a discussion runs long, the chair has three choices: extend the time box (and trim something else), table the item to the next meeting, or call the question and vote with the information at hand. Pick one. Do not let the meeting drift.

For a small charity: the most common failure here is treating every new item as needing a full vote. Most do not. Discussion items, informational items, and items already approved at the committee level can be acknowledged without a motion.

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Step 6: Encourage participation and discussion

A board with one or two dominant voices is not a board. It is a steering committee with witnesses. Four tactics that work without making anyone feel singled out:

• 1. Rotate who leads each agenda section. The treasurer does not always have to lead the financial discussion; the chair does not always have to lead old business. Rotation surfaces quieter trustees' expertise and breaks the pattern where the same two people drive every conversation.

• 2. Use round-robin for big decisions. Before any major vote, the chair goes around the table (or the Zoom grid) and asks each trustee for a single sentence: support, concern, or question. No one gets to pass. No one gets to monologue.

• 3. Time-box dominant voices, not by name. "Let's hear two more perspectives before we come back to that point" lets the chair redirect without naming anyone. It works because it is about the meeting, not the person.

• 4. Ask quieter trustees specific questions, not open ones. "Maria, you ran the membership campaign last autumn. What is your read on this budget line?" gets a real answer. "Anyone else?" gets silence.

For a small charity: the chair's job in discussion is not to have the right answer. It is to make sure every trustee's view is on the table before the vote. That is how trustees meet their duty to act in the charity's best interests, with reasonable care and skill.

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Step 7: Document decisions and assign action items

Minutes are a legal record of the meeting, not a transcript. Five things must be in them for every motion:

• The exact wording of the motion

• The name of the trustee who made it

• The name of the trustee who seconded it

• A summary of the discussion (one or two sentences)

• The vote tally (for, against, abstentions, recusals)

For every action item: a named owner, a clear deliverable, and a deadline. "The board will work on the autumn appeal" is not an action item. "Maria will deliver a draft Christmas raffle budget by 1 November" is.

Use the free minutes template as your starting point. The Google Sheet workbook linked earlier has a built-in Decision Log and Action-Item Tracker tab so motions, owners, and deadlines all live in one searchable place.

For a small charity: minutes that read like a decision log are easier to write, easier to read, and more defensible at an annual return inspection than minutes that read like a play script. Brevity wins.

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Step 8: Adjourn and follow up

The chair formally adjourns the meeting and the secretary records the time. The meeting is over, but the governance work is not.

Within 48 hours:

• Distribute draft minutes to all trustees. Reviewing while the meeting is fresh produces cleaner final minutes.

• Send the action-item list with owners and deadlines. Every owner should know exactly what they are delivering and by when.

• File signed documents (signed minutes from the prior meeting, conflict-of-interest disclosures, any executed agreements) in a secure shared location.

• Confirm the date of the next meeting and add it to every trustee's calendar.

Between meetings, the chair (or the secretary on the chair's behalf) tracks action items. Anything that slips becomes old business at the next meeting. Fundraising-related action items in particular often slip because no one owns them across meetings. If your board is approving fundraising campaigns, you can track board-approved fundraising in one place so results, donor counts, and pounds raised are ready to surface at the next treasurer's report.

For a small charity: the 48-hour follow-up is the single highest-leverage habit on this list. It turns a meeting into a record and a record into accountability.

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Running your first trustees' meeting

Your first trustees' meeting carries the eight steps above plus a handful of one-time decisions you will only make once. It is where your governing document becomes binding, your officers become real, and your charity becomes operational. Give it two hours, not one.

Before the meeting, you should already have your charity registration number (if applicable) and HMRC Charities Reference Number in hand or in progress, a draft of your governing document ready to review, and the governing document template (Google Doc) if you are starting from scratch. New to the broader process? Start with our guide to how to start a charity.

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Which UK legal form is your charity?

Before you adopt your governing document, confirm which legal form your charity has chosen. Each form has its own governing document and its own trade-offs (Charity Commission: Set up a charity):

• Unincorporated association: the simplest form; governed by a constitution; no separate legal personality, so trustees can be personally liable for contracts. Works well for small community groups with modest budgets.

• Charitable company limited by guarantee: a company registered at Companies House and with the Charity Commission; trustees are also directors under the Companies Act 2006 but lead with their trustee identity in charity law; limited liability; more administrative burden (two sets of filings).

• Charitable Incorporated Organisation (CIO): the modern UK-specific form; registered only with the Charity Commission (E&W) or OSCR (Scotland); limited liability; one set of filings; designed for small-to-mid charities.

Note for unincorporated associations and CICs (Community Interest Companies): these organisations cannot claim Gift Aid or charity-rate fees until they are registered as charities. This is a real constraint the first trustees' meeting should acknowledge honestly.

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Governing document review and adoption

The heart of the first meeting. Have copies for every trustee, walk through each major section, document questions and proposed changes, and adopt the final version by motion and vote. Do not rush this. Three areas need real discussion:

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Trustee board structure

• How many trustees you will have, and why (the Charity Commission expects at least three unrelated trustees for E&W registration)

• Term lengths and term limits

• The process for adding or removing trustees

• Whether you will seat ex-officio trustees

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Officer positions

• The responsibilities of each officer (chair, vice chair, secretary, treasurer)

• The election or appointment process

• Succession planning if an officer steps down mid-term

• Note: in a charitable company, trustees are also company directors under the Companies Act 2006; in a CIO, they are charity trustees only

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Meeting requirements

• Regular meeting frequency (monthly, quarterly, or otherwise)

• Procedures for calling a special meeting

• Notice requirements (how far in advance, what counts as notice)

• Whether virtual meetings are permitted and under what conditions

Once the board adopts the governing document by motion, second, and vote, the secretary records the adopted version as official. From here forward, the governing document governs.

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Financial foundation

• Designate your financial year. Most small charities choose the calendar year for simplicity. A grant-heavy organisation might align with a major funder's cycle.

• Open a bank account with a charity-friendly bank. Many high-street banks make charity account opening slow. CAF Bank, Unity Trust, Metro, and the Co-operative Bank are the common small-charity choices. An unincorporated association may also find that volunteer trustees face identity-verification friction before a bank account can be opened.

• Set cheque signatory authority. Typically two signatories for amounts above a threshold (often £1,000 or £5,000). Record the threshold and the authorised signatories in the minutes.

• Approve initial budget parameters. A start-up budget does not need line-item precision. It needs the trustees' agreement on what the charity will and will not spend money on in year one.

• Register with HMRC for Gift Aid. This is a separate registration from your Charity Commission, OSCR, or CCNI registration. It produces a Charities Reference Number and unlocks 25p per £1 on eligible donations from UK taxpayers (HMRC Gift Aid guidance), plus GASDS (25% top-up on small cash and contactless donations of £30 or less, up to £8,000 per year). This is the highest-leverage financial decision a new trustee board makes.

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Trustee and officer elections

• Hold officer elections. Even if you appointed a temporary chair and secretary to run this meeting, the governing-document-defined officer slate is elected here.

• Define signing authority for legal and financial documents (often the chair plus one other trustee).

• Establish initial committees if your governing document calls for them (commonly finance, governance, fundraising).

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Conflict of interest

Every trustee signs a conflict-of-interest disclosure at the first meeting and at the start of every financial year after. Use the free conflict of interest template (Google Doc). Signed disclosures are filed alongside the meeting minutes.

The Charity Commission's conflicts of interest guidance (CC29) sets out the expectation that trustees identify, declare, and manage conflicts (including conflicts of loyalty), and that the trustee board maintains a standing register of interests reviewed annually. The conflict-of-interest policy itself is usually a section of the governing document.

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First-meeting outputs

• Adopted governing document, signed by the secretary

• Signed minutes summarising every decision (use the free minutes template)

• Signed conflict-of-interest disclosures from every trustee

• Elected officer slate, recorded in the minutes

• Designated financial year and authorised signatories, recorded in the minutes

For a small charity: the first meeting is the longest meeting your board will ever have. Plan for two hours, send the packet ten days out instead of seven, and do not try to schedule a working session right after. Decisions made here govern everything that follows.

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Virtual vs. in-person trustees' meetings

Virtual trustees' meetings are convenient, well-tested, and widely used across UK charities. Whether they are permissible depends on your governing document. Many older governing documents were written before video meetings became standard and may not explicitly permit them. If yours does not, trustees can pass a resolution to update it, or seek Charity Commission guidance.

The Charity Commission's Charities and Meetings guidance (CC48) covers how meetings may be held, what counts as a trustee being 'present,' and the general approach to virtual and hybrid meetings. Check CC48 and your governing document before committing to a virtual-first cadence, and if you are unsure, seek advice from NCVO or a specialist charity solicitor.

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What works for virtual meetings

• Pick one platform and stay with it. Zoom, Google Meet, or Microsoft Teams all work. Switching platforms meeting-to-meeting kills attendance.

• Confirm quorum out loud. The chair names each trustee present and states quorum on the record. The secretary captures it in the minutes.

• Use the chat for motions and seconds. A trustee typing "I move to approve the 2026 budget" creates a written record alongside the audio.

• Record only if your governing document and UK GDPR allow it. Under UK GDPR (ICO), all participants must be informed and appropriate consent or legitimate interest must be established before recording. The minutes are the legal record either way.

• Vote by roll call for any contested motion. "Maria, your vote? Tom, your vote?" produces a tally the minutes can capture cleanly.

For a small charity: virtual works well for routine quarterly meetings. Keep one in-person meeting a year (often the annual meeting) for harder conversations, strategic planning, and the social cohesion a board needs to function.

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How often should your board meet?

Your governing document sets the frequency. The Charity Commission expects trustees to meet often enough to discharge their duties; most governing documents specify a minimum (often three or four times a year). CIOs and charitable companies also have statutory requirements around annual meetings. Within that framework, pick the cadence that matches the work your board actually has to do.

• Monthly: a brand-new board still building its operating rhythm, or a charity in the middle of a major campaign, capital project, or leadership transition.

• Quarterly: the right cadence for most established small charities. Enough touchpoints to exercise oversight, few enough to keep the meetings substantive.

• Annually plus special meetings: only for very small, very mature boards with strong committee structures doing most of the between-meeting work. Most small charities should not default to this.

The honest test: are your meetings substantive, or are they performances? If trustees are reading the packet for the first time in the meeting, you are meeting too often. If important decisions are being made by the chair and chief executive between meetings because the board does not convene in time, you are meeting too rarely.

For a small charity: default to quarterly with a strong committee structure in between. Step up to monthly only during a campaign or transition, then step back down.

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Zeffy is the financial layer your trustees oversee

The trustees' duty to manage resources responsibly is easier to discharge when the numbers tell a clean story. Zeffy is the only 100% free fundraising platform for charities: no platform fee, no transaction fee, no credit card fee. Ever. Over 100,000 charities use Zeffy and have raised over £2 billion to date, with the full donation reaching the mission instead of being absorbed by processing fees at every step.

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Frequently asked questions

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