See, that's one of the points which I didn't know and I'd be interested in reading more about it. Is there guidance available on what constitutes significant business risk?
 

I've interned for two Swiss NGOs and in the second of them, I have been closely involved (well, as closely as you can be in an office with just 15 employees) in the preparation of the Annual Meeting 2009 of one of them, which will involve several hundreds of participants, including (European) heads of states and senior ministers / UN agencies heads. The budget for it runs into atmospheric heights (what with renting a well-known hotel and organising a lot of social events), but it has not been "outsourced" to a trading subsidiary.
 I know for a fact that Swiss law does not have a "charity may not take significant business risks" provisions, therefore I maintain that this is not a usual practice here.
But this is really not so important, after all we want to look at how things are done in the UK.

Michael