Advice on setting up self employed- not for profit?

[ReclaimingMyInnerPeachy]

Having nothing to lose I ahve decided to try and see if I can get any self employed work in my field. It's autism support and when I mentioned it on here in the past as an aim someone said to look at not for profit status.

I won;t be looking for big money- i'd only price out those I really want to help and I want to see if I can offer a discount to a few groups: people with a diagnosis in FT education and famillies receiving free school meals are my target groups; I also want to be able to offer a variety of options eg telephone support so I can keep the costs to clients down.

the first few months will be about setting up a website / publicity etc until DS4 starts pre-school but I amd doing an MA in ASD, have 2 asd kids and have a background in family support (employed by homestart in a former life) so think I could be good. Once I am started up I will be OK as DH is self employed and will help with that side of things until I learn what I am doing but it's this not for profot or not I need advice with. The only money I aim to make is to cover my wage and if I travel for advocacy etc, petrol / journey costs.

TIA.

There are a number of different types of not-for-profit entity but they all involve cost and complication to set up and run.

I have come into contact with a number of consultants working in the ASD field, they are all self employed.

I would suggest you start off registering as self-employed: that way you will be able to offset your start-up costs against any income received.

If you find that potential sources of income are not available to you as a self-employed consultant (I can only see this being the case if you are applying for grants from certain charities), then you can weigh up the benefits of starting a not-for-profit entity - or perhaps working through an existing one.

Right htnak you, that kinda conforms my thought tbh. I;ve worked in the charity sector and know for sure that I do not want to go down the grants / fundraising route for myself (happy to help others IYSWIM)- too much of that with my own children!

Should be easy enough to give it a shot then.

Thanks again