Setting up a charity

[blueandgreen]

Hello

I am a regular poster but changed my name for this...

Has anyone got experience of setting up a charity ? I'm not sure (besides the charity commission website) where to go to have a chat of how to set one up and what I need to look out for, how to best create it etc

Thanks

Blue and Green

Anyone ?

what do you want to do? You can either be a company (limited liability) or a trust - more simple, cheaper but trustees are liable for debts etc.

You set up a trust/company and then get the incorporation pack from the charity commission. You should also check on there that the name you want is still free. The form is quite demanding, and the charity commission is slow, but you can phone them up and they will answer queries. They may refuse to register you as a charity if they think you're not doing charitable things, or if other charities are doing the same thing in your area.

It is fairly straightforward to do this yourself, (charity commision has all the docs), but a firm of solicitors will be able to do this for you, for a few hundred I should think.

There are lots of rules about what you can/can't do, but the Charity commission website has alot of docuentms which are very helpful.

hth, but if you need further info cat me.

The Charity Commmission, while trying not to be too directive about this, are encouraging people to consider existing charities that may be covering similar work, rather than setting up another charity.

What sort of work are you looking to do?

Depends what you want to do - you can still raise money, get a bank account for cheques etc without becoming a registered charity. My Real Nappy Network is an 'unicorporated charitable association' which means we had to write a constitution to get the bank account set up and if we wanted to apply for a grant. A registered charity has an awful lot of bureaucracy and things like reserve accounts to worry about.

Here's the Charity Commission's documents

I set up our school PTA as a Charity. The minimum requirement is 2 Trustees, but 5 is recommended.

Thank you everyone... sorry I was not on my computer yesterday. The name I want is free, I already have a LTD company but I want to be able to set up conferences on my topic to increase awareness and research/education in this field (sorry I can't say what it is at the moment but I am happy to tell anyone privately).
If you have a LTD company and the you make a charity with it... what happens to the dividends? The LTD company at the moment is making a bit of money (I am paid a small salary) but what the LTD company does is in the same field but it would not do the events and conferences.
Does that help?

isn't there something called a social enterprise too

here

This is tricky!

Right I have another question if I may.
I have found out lots more since my last posts so thanks to everyone.
I think I want to set up an educational charity. I have loads of ideas how to fund raise but am more curious how you spend that money when you are an "educational" charity.
Has anyone got that particular experience?