Register your PTA as charity?

[smellie6]

Hello,
I was asked by our chair to look into registering our PTA as a charity. Has anyone done this or is your PTA registered as a charity? If so my question is do you have to be registered as a charity? Does it bring any benefits to PTA or is more hassle? Thank you.

We looked into it for ours last year but never quite got round to it. If you make over £5000 a year you have to register as a charity. Luckily, last year we were just under, but I think we will have to this year.

You can apply if you make less than £5k but may not get approved.

Are you members of PTA UK? There's lots of information on there and members are guaranteed to be accepted even if they are under the threshold. Also lots of useful information on Charity Commission site

Basically if you registered all of the elected committee members would be the trustees of the charity with a legal responsibility to ensure that it was being properly and legally run. Benefits are that it would open up a lot of funding streams that you can only access if you have a charity number (matched funding, certain grants etc)

If you earn more than £5K a year then you legally have to register.

You need to set proper accounts and these have to be submitted. But you don't have to so this retrospectively!

The commission will give you lots of help so don't worry too much.

We did it last year and it was a good move.

You just need two trustees at least but pref more as the chair and treasurer are usually trustees. We've opted for six trustees and these are mainly full time working parents who feel they haven't the time to contribute in other ways.

Not all of the elected committee are trustees. In our case only three are.

I think registering as a charity may help you in getting donations from business and council etc.
The accounts you have to provide don't need to be very detailed if your turnover is small (and yuou should be doing accounts anyay!)

Also if you are a registered charity you can qualify for gift aid.