Has anyone here set up or run a charity?

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Posting here for traffic.

Does anyone here have experience of setting up, or running a charity? What advice would you give someone (me) considering it? Are there things I should consider but are easy to overlook?

Initiallythis would be alongside my existing part time job. If it takes off then my intention would be to leave in order to run the charity full time. Initial activities would be UK based, but with a mid termview to operatingin some overseas regions as well.

I havemuch experience of running and growingsmall and medium enterprises but have not dipped my toe into this sector. The naive part of me assumes there are many parallels with running a business but I'm sure that view is very simplistic and there will be many important differences.

Why do you want to set up a charity? Have you considered working or volunteering for an existing charity?

There are 166,000 registered charities in the UK. Are you sure there isn’t already one in existence which does what you want to achieve? It’s really hard work setting up a charity, and the funding environment is about to become even tougher than it is already (I’m a trustee of a charity with an income of c£300k and staff and it’s still pretty precarious).

Agree with what other posters have said, there are very many charities in the UK with a huge cross over in what they all do, a lot of money is taken up with admin & expenses. I currently work for a very large, well known charity which is making serious plans to reduce its operations (& expenses) to concentrate on fewer projects where more impact can be made.

I can't imagine any 'good cause' which isn't already covered by an existing charity.

Separately to my job I do volunteer with a very local organisation - we have deliberately not set up as a Charity, it's not essential and we still provide a local service & have audited accounts etc.

Getting a charity registered is surprisingly hard - I did it for a charity when I was chair of trustee board. Fundraising is v hard unless you have another reliable source of income.

www.gov.uk/set-up-a-charity

www.gov.uk/government/publications/what-makes-a-charity-cc4/what-makes-a-charity-cc4

As a PP has said it is a highly regulated sector in UK. And if you want to operate internationally, you will have to adhere to local laws. Look first online at regulatory bodies depending where in UK you are.

Why do you want to set up a charity? What need will it be addressing? As others have said there are thousands of charities & non-profits in this country already, all requiring funding, staffing & volunteers.
How do you plan to raise funds? I've worked for a charity previously & it is hard. It's hard raising funds, it's hard maintaining a fundraising base, it's hard demonstrating outcomes.