Starting a Non-Profit Organisation

Savvy_Sue

See, I said she knew her stuff!

JustMatt

I want some advice about NFO too.

There is a 'set up' I will call it, online, that says its non profit, it has 7000 members whom pay to use its services, and its growing, yet within its memos and articles it says its a Charity and adheres to the charities act, having checked with the Charity Commission they say this 'set up' are not a registered charity and should not be using the word charity and should not have put in the memorandums and articles when they registered as a limited by guarantee with companies house.

Charity Commission say that this 'set up' are soliciting as a 'charity' and are breaking the law? As they have an income of £15,000 a year and currently made a claim that they had £46,000.

It all seems very suspect and I would appreciate some help on this and how to make the correct people of this aware, would someone please PM me as Im not always online!

Cheers

Savvy_Sue

I will PM you to say that AFAIK you need to report this to the Charity Commission. This page may give you a starting point.

musicmag

Hi i have set up a limited company which will provide activities to people in the community including people with learning disabilities. I have been advised to change it to a non profit organisation as to secure some funding . How easy is this to do and where do i start i have a learning disability myself can any one help. I havent started trading yet.

soba

We're a group of parents at school who have got together with a member of staff to organise school discos and Christmas raffles, that kind of thing. There's a little bit of money in the kitty now which we'd like to bank. Do the previous posts on this subject apply to us? All money raised will be used by the school for the schoolchildren.

Savvy_Sue

soba wrote: »

We're a group of parents at school who have got together with a member of staff to organise school discos and Christmas raffles, that kind of thing. There's a little bit of money in the kitty now which we'd like to bank. Do the previous posts on this subject apply to us? All money raised will be used by the school for the schoolchildren.

to a certain extent, yes, you'd need some kind of structure (chair / treasurer / secretary) to open a bank account.

has the school not had a PTA raising funds before?

soba

Savvy_Sue wrote: »

has the school not had a PTA raising funds before?

I believe they did, but many, many years ago.

Savvy_Sue

soba wrote: »

I believe they did, but many, many years ago.

would be worth checking with the secretary if there was an account then and what happened. it may have gone through the school's account, which has pros and cons!

mickeymiller

Taking the first steps of forming a non-profit can always be a trying process... kudos for giving it a go!

One of the first things can really help getting started is finding ways to get organized early on. Coming up with the tools to manage your members, plan your events and get the word out about everything you do can be tricky.

I'd say the best way to get a jump on this: set up a group home page on a fundraising website. Many of them are free to use and can offer new groups amazing tools to organize, find new volunteers and raise awareness for a cause (regardless of whether you actually want to fundraise). Some require that you have non-profit status to form a group, but plenty others will give student groups, church groups and other groups without non-profit status some awesome ways to help get your group off the ground.

For example, one good site to help new groups is GroupSpaces. They offer plenty of tools to help get groups off the ground, including some event management functions that let you create events, as well as managing your members. And if you're interested in fundraising for your group eventually, they can link to your account and charge 2.5% of donations received (while some other sites charge as much as 5%).

Another good option would be Empowered.org. It is a bit newer than GroupSpaces and their platform is geared more towards social action, but are open to all small groups, regardless of non-profit status. Also, they offer plenty of solid tools to help new groups, and give groups the ability to create specific volunteer activities and events for each group (which GroupSpaces doesn't do). And if you ever were interested in fundraising, they offer specific fundraising campaigns (and charge 1.5% of donations) - nice if you ever go down that road.

There are some other sites worth looking into - MeetUp is another one that helps groups, but doesn't offer as many tools as the other two I mentioned. Anyways, I really think that setting a home would really help jump start the group-starting process.

Hope that helps! Good luck with your group going forward.

Savvy_Sue

mickey, for charities, there are possibly better fundraising options, but if these offer online fundraising systems for organisations which either aren't charities or are working towards registration that would be very helpful to some. But do they offer UK fundraising? Groupspaces in particular seemed geared to the USA.