No Fee Bank Account for non profit group

EricMears

WillPS said:

EricMears said:

Our organisation has had a Lloyds 'treasurers account' for 20+ years which has always been fee-free.

Today,  I've received notification that the account is being re-branded as a new "Community Account" with a monthly 'Account Maintenance Fee'  of £4.25  (i.e. £51 / year).    That's rather more than our annual expenditure in most years !

I'd welcome any suggestions of other banks that still offer fee-free banking for non-profit organisations that aren't registered charities  (initial Google search hasn't helped !)

Apologies if this comes across as impertinent, but if your expenditure is so low then is it really worth bothering with the hoopla of a bank account for your organisation? If I needed to raise £50 from a group for something I'd probably just have a whip round, maybe utilising monzo.me or similar.

Not particularly "impertinent" but worth clarifying a bit.

Our organisation is an alumni group for a couple of grammar schools in Sussex that were closed down when the county went comprehensive.  We have around a thousand members and our own website.  In a 'normal' year our only expense is rent for the website which until recently was only £25/year although a proposed quadrupling of that has forced its relocation to another server which will cost around £50/year in future (but with extra facilities). If that was all we do then I agree,  any bank account would be unnecessary.

However, every 3 or 4 years we organise a reunion meeting which tends to attract 100+ members and the costs of that will be around £2500 so I need to collect (say) £25 from each participant then pay out some lump sums for venue hire, caterers, insurance etc.  That of course does require a lot of bank transactions so our founder set up the Lloyds 'treasurers account' around 25 years ago.  For the sake of 'transparency',  I'd much rather have a non-personal account with a co-signatory but it really doesn't seem justified to spend more on bank fees than the total of other transactions for most years.

I'm coming round to the idea that I should set up a personal 'savings account' associated with my own current account, move the present Lloyds balance into that and just keep the organisations accounts as a virtual spreadsheet.  I don't think any members are going to accuse me of attempting 'fraud' but I'd be a bit happier if that was impossible.

 

Savvy_Sue

WillPS said:

EricMears said:

Our organisation has had a Lloyds 'treasurers account' for 20+ years which has always been fee-free.

Today,  I've received notification that the account is being re-branded as a new "Community Account" with a monthly 'Account Maintenance Fee'  of £4.25  (i.e. £51 / year).    That's rather more than our annual expenditure in most years !

I'd welcome any suggestions of other banks that still offer fee-free banking for non-profit organisations that aren't registered charities  (initial Google search hasn't helped !)

Apologies if this comes across as impertinent, but if your expenditure is so low then is it really worth bothering with the hoopla of a bank account for your organisation? If I needed to raise £50 from a group for something I'd probably just have a whip round, maybe utilising monzo.me or similar.

In my case, we opened the account because takings from an annual event were being held in cash, in someone's home. Bills were paid in cash, expenses paid in cash. I got the heeby-jeebies...

penners324

Barclays or Metro best bet at the moment 

Arrem

We are another small Association that has also been affected by the Lloyds changes.
Coop Bank looks like a promising alternative. 
Metro Bank is another that has been suggested.  There are no branches anywhere near our location but others might find they have one locally.

Savvy_Sue

One question really is whether you NEED a branch you can get to. I've still not heard from Lloyds, but neither Barclays, Metro nor the Coop have a branch I can drive to and park at, so I'd be taking £1000 cash on the bus ...

But in my case, it would be once a year outing, so not a huge problem. And I MIGHT be able to use the Post Office for paying in.

Savvy_Sue

Still not heard from Lloyds, maybe because our account is SO new they're working their way up to us. Although DH has two of these Treasurer's accounts, and has had for some time, and he's not heard anything either. 

However, I found myself in town today so wandered into Metro and the Coop. Neither are great, but here's what I found, in case it helps someone else:

Metro: Yes, they do a free account, EXCEPT that if you're paying in cash there is a small % charge for that in some situations, AND if our application said that over 50% of our 'business' was cash-based then we wouldn't get the account. The business manager suggested that we should pay the cash into a personal account, and then transfer it online, which I'd rather avoid. I'm pretty sure we could reduce the amount of cash we pay in, but it would create more work for us (if we encouraged people to pay online we'd then have to check the statements to make sure they had paid when they said they had), and expense if we went for a card reader for 'on the day' payments (although we might be able to borrow a card reader, which DH has done for an event). 

Coop: There are two fee-free accounts, and I'd need to look online to work out which might suit us because they don't really deal with business banking in-branch. One of those accounts looks as if it would suit a more formally set up organisation than ours - charity, CIC etc. And I think with both but definitely with the other one, there would be a 1.5% charge for any cash in payments, and I think it was £1.50 per cheque - not that we get many of those! 

I know we're unusual in that we have one big event each year, which generates about £750 profit. We then surprise some local good causes, just keeping enough to kick start the next year's event. It's all very minimalistic!

Savvy_Sue

So DH has now had 'the letter' from Lloyds about one of his accounts. At least he doesn't have any cash going in or out, it's all online payments. 

EricMears

Apparently NatWest also offer a 'community account' and haven't (yet ?) announced any 'maintenance charges'.  However,  one can only be set up if at least one of the applicants is already a NatWest customer.

Savvy_Sue

EricMears said:

Apparently NatWest also offer a 'community account' and haven't (yet ?) announced any 'maintenance charges'.  However,  one can only be set up if at least one of the applicants is already a NatWest customer.

That's good to know. And I am a NatWest customer. No local branches of course, so I'll have to look online.

EricMears

Savvy_Sue said:

EricMears said:

Apparently NatWest also offer a 'community account' and haven't (yet ?) announced any 'maintenance charges'.  However,  one can only be set up if at least one of the applicants is already a NatWest customer.

That's good to know. And I am a NatWest customer. No local branches of course, so I'll have to look online.

Here's the url you'll need
   https://www.natwest.com/business/bank-accounts/community-bank-account.html