Fundraising Advice, How To Allocate Raised Funds

AlliP

Hello,

I am looking for some advice if possible. Technical guidance on this issue appears to be lacking on the internet in general. Here is the situation:

A group of parents are fundraising for a group of kids to take part in an event away from home. The event has been paid for in two parts, the first part was the payment of the travel costs which the parents all paid for individually in advance in order to secure the travel at a reasonable price. The second part of the event was the accommodation package for the kids at the event location which did not have to be paid until a few months later. Say, for arguments sake, the travel costs were £100, the accommodation £500. That means £600 in total.

After paying for the travel costs, the parents embarked on some fundraising and managed to raise £550. £500 of that money was used to pay for the accommodation bill leaving £50 spare.

My question now is this...is it legally permissible to use that £50 to reimburse the parents directly for part of the cost of the travel that they paid initially before the fundraising was started?

I hope you can help,

AlliP

Thank you so much for your response, Eggha.

At our fundraising event we had made it very clear that the fundraising was for the whole trip i.e. travel plus accommodation costs for the kids. On reading my original text it does imply that the fundraising was done in two sections. This is not the case. The fundraising was done in one block, it just so happened that, due to tight timescales, the travel costs of the trip had to be paid upfront by the parents before we could organise our fundraiser.

We were very fortunate with our fundraising and managed to raise slightly more than the amount that remained to be paid for the trip. This leaves us in the position that we could reimburse parents for part of the cost of the travel they paid initially.

It seems like a bit of a grey area. Each parent has payment confirmation documentation for the amount they paid for the travel so there is an auditable trail there. I just want to get clarification that this is a permissable way to do it.

Savvy_Sue

another question to ponder is whether there might be other unforeseen costs on the trip which this might cover?

paddyrg

I would hold onto the cash for now, there will be unforeseen costs - let's say one child has an accident and someone needs to drive to hospital to check up on them, and so misses meals and has to buy stuff from a vending machine... They shouldn't suffer that cost for their goodwill. Afterwards, I'd personally look at distributing the balance either to a local animal rescue charity, city farm, or even the school PTA fund which may have a long term good effect.