Governance framework

The Wellcome Trust has one trustee: The Wellcome Trust Limited, a company limited by guarantee registered in England (company number 2711000). The trustee is the charity trustee of the Wellcome Trust under charity law.

Ultimate responsibility for the activities of the trustee lies with a Board of Governors, distinguished figures from the worlds of science, medicine, law, business and public life. Governors are appointed initially for four years.

The Board of Governors holds six regular meetings a year (February, April, July, September, October and December) and an annual residential meeting (June) to discuss and formulate strategy, and to agree spending plans for forthcoming years.

Decision-making authority on research funding is delegated to a number of funding committees, which make decisions on most of the applications for financial support received by the Wellcome Trust. Large or strategically important awards are approved by the Board of Governors.

Day-to-day activities are managed by the Director of the Wellcome Trust and an Executive Board of senior managers drawn from the different divisions of the organisation. The Trust's headquarters are at 215 Euston Road, London, which houses more than 500 members of staff.

The governing document of the Wellcome Trust is our constitution. This represents an updated version of the will of Sir Henry Wellcome, through which the Trust was established in 1936. The constitution clarifies the areas in which the Trust can operate and the ways in which it can operate.

The Wellcome Trust has established two charitable companies responsible for activities at the Wellcome Trust Genome Campus at Hinxton, near Cambridge. These are Genome Research Limited (registered charity number 1021457, responsible for the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute) and Hinxton Hall Limited (registered charity number 1048066, responsible for the Wellcome Trust Conference Centre). Both charitable companies are wholly controlled by the Wellcome Trust.

The Trust has also established a wholly owned trading subsidiary, Wellcome Trust Trading Limited, to handle non-charitable trading at the Wellcome Trust Conference Centre.