New Charity Help

HagIreland

Hi All,

Myself and a few friends are in the process of setting up a charity to help homeless people in Ireland. We will setup the charity at first as unincorporated association. We hope to finance the charity through various fundraising events throughout the year, however our main income will come from the sale of scratch cards through a network of sellers. We are aware to do this we will need licence from the district court, and that there will be court and solicitors fees payable.

My question to all here is, we need to do initial fundraising to get the cash to pay the court and solictors fees and scratch card printing etc. We have come up with the ideas of going from door to door selling sponsorship lines and fridge magnets in the hope that we would raise enough finance to get us started. Do we need any licence or permit to go door to door seeking sponsorship or selling fridge magnets? I am not seeking legal advice here, just general advice from anyone that may be able to help. I would like to thank all of you who read this, and thanks in advance for any and all advice, good, bad or indifferent.

Regards.
Sarah

HagIreland

Can anybody help ? Please.

Alan Shore

Hi there

First of all why are you setting up another charity. There are A number of high profile charities in the area already Simon, Focus, Depaul. Why not work with one of them to fundraise for them?

While your intentions may be great it is difficult to get charity status and if you stop and think about your proposal - an unincorporated association, so people can't go to the CRO and check who the people behind it are and check the accounts and you want them to support your cause.

It's all about perception so the optics of it - a co ltd by guarantee is better as it solves both issues and has an auditor.

You need a permit to do house to house collections
http://www.ictr.ie/files/Garda%20Permits%20Good%20Practice_web.pdf

If selling fridge magnets door to door the issue of optics is very important. The people at the door will ask.

Pataman

you really need charitable status first. Company limited by guarantee is the only method revenue will accept.
If a collector came to my door, they should have ID which would have their chy number on it.