Legal and/or other advice for setting up a fund

amsical

Hi,

Me and a friend have a condition and have always been involved with the charity which supports it.

As we have grown up with it we know a lot of people with it and therefore know their needs and wants when it comes to making their lives easier.

Our charity is great but it concentrates a lot on research and what we're hearing from others is that it would like money being spent on the here and now, i.e equipment, weekend breaks etc.

Now this has been requested by fundraisers too. They often want to see someone directly benefit from their hard earned cash.

Over the years this has been difficult to get across to the charity so we've had a brainwave. We thought we'd set up a fund. One separate fund is already set up by a family for a specific kind of research. It's got another name but the money still goes to the main charity, however the charity are only allowed to spend money raised from it on that which is specified.

We want to do the same but with what I mentioned above. I have done this before, but it was years ago so I just wanted to see if there's any advice or legal issues I should know about.

Last time we set up a bank account. Then everything went to the charity in regular intervals. The fundraising we did was under a fund name but we always made it clear to donors where the money was going. It was just that it was being raised by the three of us.

So this would be a similar venture. As this isn't setting up a charity I know that things won't be too complicated but has anybody done this and found anything legalities or rules they had to go by?

Many thanks in advance!!

Savvy_Sue

Bother, typed a long reply and lost it! Although I did then think of something quite important to add ...

Quick summary: I'd suggest talking to the charity and seeing if there's a user forum / getting involved at high level possibility.

On one level it's as simple as sending in 'restricted funds', saying "To be used for X": if it can't be used for X it should be returned, although they may ask you to allow it to be used for Y.

However there are questions like how you decide who benefits from what's likely to be a restricted amount of money: who gets the weekend away, who gets equipment, what equipment do they get - who decides this, how are requests made etc? Needs to be fair and transparent, IMO.

My important addendum: Also it may depend on the charity's legal setup: I can't remember the jargonous terms, but every charity has a governing document, and should only do what it says in that document. Example, the charity I work for is set up to work with women, so if we decide we want to work with men then we need to change our governing document. If yours is set up to do research and there's nothing along the lines of 'anything else which would benefit sufferers from this condition' then it's tricky.