Charity fundraising for overseas

kels74

Hello,
I am currently paid by a small Uk charity to co-ordinate its activities and manage staff.
What I want to do is develop a project to support a specific school and hospital in West Africa.
Would it make more sense to do this as a project by the charity I work for, or set up a seperate charity to focus on West Africa.
Ideally, I would see the young people I work with in the UK, carrying out work in West Africa.
The constitution of the charity I work for would allow a project of this nature, but I'm not sure whether it's legal / moral to co-ordinate both.
If setting up a seperate charity to benefit Basse Hospital and Essau School, how do I get my funds to where they are needed, without GO's taking a slice. I am asking a lot of questions and apologies if I seem naive. I don't want to mess it up, as it can be life or death for some. Please Help.

Savvy_Sue

Welcome.

If this is within the charitable aims / articles / constitution of your current charity, then NOT setting up a separate charity has much to commend it - it's not a trivial thing to do, and in fact you won't be able to register with the Charity Commission until you have at least £5000 behind you. See our sticky.

So as far as I can see, IF it's allowable within your current setup, there would be no legal and moral objections to this.

However, I'd have thought your first step was to run it past your Trustees. Questions they might (should) ask would include:

It may be allowable, but is it sensible?

Is this something we should make a priority now?

How hard would it be to raise funding for this?

Would such funding be at the expense of our existing funding?

Would we need additional staff?

Would we need staff / trustee expertise we don't currently have? and how could we meet that need?

Is there a conflict of interest if kels manages both this new project and some of our existing work?

And so on. You need to be ready to answer their questions / meet their objections. At the end of the day, they're the ones responsible for the sound running of the charity.