Raising Money for a Sick Child

Jae71uk wrote:

One of my oldest friends son has been diagnosed with cancer. I would like to raise some money for them as they have a lot of expenses now ie petrol costs to hospital, buying food living away from home etc.

I thought of stuff like a raffle, quiz night, boot sale and the like.

Do I have to register somewhere as a charity or can I just go ahead and organise it?

I know there is already some people doing a sponsored walk but as i now stay over 250 miles away i would like to do something for them here.

would the people organising the walk have had to applied for charity status and if so would my efforts fall under their umbrella?

I don't think there are completely straightforward answers to this: except that no you don't HAVE to register as a charity to raise money to give to someone in this situation. There are benefits for charities when they raise money, but registering as a charity is by no means simple and you probably want to get going ... in particular I think a charity has to benefit more than just an individual.

The people who have organised the sponsored walk do not have to have charity status either, but it might be worth talking to them anyway, to see if they are working with an already established charity. Even if they're not, you might benefit from working with them too, for example if they've opened a special bank account to keep track of what they're raising.

What I would suggest, whether you're working alone or in tandem as it were, is that you keep meticulous records of what you raise, when and how you pass it on, and what expenses you deduct - as you quite reasonably may. For example, if you organise an event you will have to advertise it - printing posters costs money, and advertising in the local paper is in my experience very expensive! In all probability no-one will ever express the least interest in that kind of thing, but if ever anyone says "But I thought you raised £x00 at that event but you only passed on £y00", you will have documented where the difference between x and y went. For the same reason always know before an event roughly what your expenses were, so that if you want to to announce at the end how much you have raised you can take off the costs first!

The other thing I don't know is what effect these gifts have on the tax / benefits situation of the family receiving such generosity. It's not the kind of thing you are likely to think of first when a child is seriously ill, of course, but especially if the parents are claiming benefits I suspect there could be problems if lots of money is given to the family - even though there are extra expenses being incurred.

All the best with this.