Setting up a new sports related fundraising charity

Yes, it's "family money" - and that's all I'm saying, 'cos it would be wrong for me to be promoting the charity I work for.

Under the circumstances you describe, I have to say that my first port of call would be to approach the "nearest international NGO" - i.e. one that is already working in the country/ies and in the specific areas (health? education? children?) that you are interested in and ask them if they would be prepared to extend their area of operations/partnerships to the organisations that you want to fundraise for. And what the "conditions" for this extension/expansion would be - i.e. the minimum amount you would have to fundraise to make it worth their while.

Please be aware that this is *strictly* personal opinion. Having never been in a position to do this, I can't vouch for the efficacy of this approach - others may be able to. Certainly, the charity I work for would (and has) worked in this way. (As we do not - and almost certainly never will - work in Asia, this is not self-promotion: sorry, we won't be able to help you in this instance.) I would suggest that small - medium charities (rather than huge ones like Oxfam) would probably be more likely to be flexible - but that's not gospel. If you raise a million quid, then pretty much any organisation will talk to you .

Off the top of my head (I'm sure that others will be able to add):

The advantages of this approach are that you would minimise overheads, and be able to take advantage of the other charity's track record, registration, networks and fundraising expertise. Most, if not all of the larger international aid charities have Justgiving membership - and I would suggest that this is the easiest way to take donations: fundraisers can have their "own page" under a charity's umbrella (www.justgiving.com)

Disadvantages, obviously, are lack of "control" - but you're doing it for them, not you, so does that matter? It may also happen that one of the NGOs in-country does not pass the due diligence tests (e.g. reporting on how money is used, monitoring) of the international aid organisation that you are partnering with - but cross that bridge if you come to it.

Sandre

This tutorial is going well. I like the idea of endowments, particularly to cover start-up costs. However, I suspect that the goal of 100% pass through will be too ambitious for us.

I guess your endowment came into place because of a strong personal link.

I should have also said that we have good links with a number of local NGOs in some central asian countries. It is difficult to raise funds for these NGOs because their work is not large and the places are not well known. The large agencies aren't active although there are some very poor regions in these countries and unemployment is high.

Our situation is akin to what you have described in your paragrah b).

Experience indicates that the people who involved in the sport will give if they have confidence that their money will be used effectively and deductions for overheads are low. We will be able to give that reassurance.

There won't be any specific linkage between the sport itself and the use of funds by the local NGOs for education, health etc.

Ah, you're looking at setting up a charitable trust or foundation. Now I understand. (If you say you're setting up a fundraising charity, there is a natural assumption that the charity is also delivering activity - purely because most fundraising charities do not just fundraise.)

There is no real "how to" for this. Trusts and foundations who also fundraise are usually at least started with a fairly hefty endowment from an individual or organisation. This enables them to build up a track record to facilitate expansion of their funds through requesting external donations.

Starting from "ground zero" - i.e. no cash and no celebrity is *incredibly* difficult. You need to "prove" why individuals and organisations should give to you, rather than direct to the organisations you are giving to. If you're thinking about collecting and selling on stuff (like the multitude of recycling initiatives out there) then you're *still* looking at a model that starts small and grows from there.

Children in Need can do it because they have a broadcasting company at their disposal.

Disasters Emergency Committee can do it because it is a consortium of established household name charities and has government backing.

Live Aid can do it because it was founded by a "big name" and is a huge celebrity bandwagon, ditto Comic Relief.

The organisation I work for can do it for two reasons, both of equal importance:
a) because a significant initial endowment enabled us to "start work" and prove that what we do is efficient and worthwhile. This endowment continues to pay for many projects itself and covers our administrative costs, which also means we can guarantee to our donors that 100% of their cash genuinely does go to projects

b) Because the international areas we work in are very rural - we have the network/contacts which our individual donors would not be able to make alone (language barriers etc) and which have not yet been reached by other, larger aid organisations. Otherwise there would be no reason for us to be a "middleman" - donors could give direct.

If you have a network of people who are interested in the sport, why would they not give direct to organisations already involved in working in that sport? Why not work with one of those organisations (or grow an existing informal group into an organisation) rather than starting something new?

Sandre

Again, I've not made myself clear. The charity will not have any operational role. It will only be a vehicle to raise funds from the community of people who have an interest in the particular sport.

We do have some good contacts. The practical problem is that we don't have any funding. So we need to see if we can share the vision.

Thanks for your help.

George

In answer to your last question, in a word, yes.

In answer to the question before that "it depends". On your contacts, your initial funding, what you are doing - precisely: not just the field, but the actual activity - whether it's practical delivery, awareness raising/promotion/campaigning, etc, and finally, the kinds of people you are working with. Government agendas also have to be taken into account - young people are the "flavour of the month", funding for charities working with adults can be difficult unless there is some other label attached to them (e.g. homeless)

As I said in my first post on this thread, you have to be realistic about expansion plans. Most charities start locally and grow from there. Unless you have wads of cash and amazing contacts (those two, by the way, are the trade secrets), you are not going to be able to go international from Day 1. Just because you're founding a charity rather than a for-profit organisation does not, unfortunately, mean that "you deserve what you want" or that everyone will be nice to you and help you. Why *should* people give you wads of cash or their time? Especially given that time=money for many. A business approach (including the strategy/planning that you would associate with setting up a small business) is needed.

Re: eminent sports people on the board - yes, that would help. However, what I really meant was people keen on/passionate about the sport, not necessarily famous ones (who might be better as patrons than trustees - there's a recent thread on role of patrons somewhere on here, sorry, haven't got time to dig it out right now, I've got to get back to the day job!).

Sandre

My point is not so much 'How do I start a charity'. but rather 'How do we best start an effective international fund raising charity in a defined field'?

Inevitably people will tried to do this sort of thing and made mistakes and learnt from their experience. So, if people have been down this road, what are the trade secrets? Should one expect to pay £'000's in consultancy or, alternatively, hope that good people like yourself share their knowledge.

CC21 is the most relevant Charity Commission publication and DSC's Voluntary Sector Legal Handbook might also be useful.

Unfortunately, asking "How do I start a charity?" is, in some ways, like asking "How long is a piece of string?" owing to complex (and very recently changed) legislation and owing to the wide variety of charitable organisations.

Just as a starter, the new Charities Act (Royal Assent Nov 06) is over 200 pages long and incredibly "dense" in terms of information content. It includes provision for vast amounts of secondary legislation and Charity Commission Guidance (effectively the same as law) which will run into thousands of pages. No single book could possibly hope to cover all this for every possible format of charitable organisation.

Making the world a better place is hard work. Sorry.

Sandre

Thanks for your advice.

Guidestar indicates that there is another charity with a similar type of aim but not the same as we envisage. A google search does not give any results relating to this other charity.

We will hope that an angel comes to help us!

Perhaps we should also seek to find some eminent relevant sports professionals to become Patrons.

I realise that information is out there on various web sites, as chapters of fundraising books and spread across the Forum. However, I'm surprised that a 'Beginners Guide' bringing together the relevant information has not yet been published which would answer the basic questions which I asked.

Key items to consider:

First of all, whether someone else might have got there with the idea first - [url]www.guidestar.org.uk[/url] search facility is much friendlier than the Charity Commission's for all 180-odd thousand registered charities in the UK. If someone has (and maybe your colleague's contacts will know) - or even something similar - then it might be better to look at contributing to their work or some form of partnership and combine efforts rather than duplicating them.

Starting up a new charity is, in some ways, no different from starting up a new business. Ambitions for expansion need to be realistic - very few charities *or* businesses "make it" to national status, let alone worldwide. Without "angel investment", most charities and new businesses start on a part-time/unpaid/volunteer basis - in a charity's case, it may be difficult to obtain funding (make that 'certain' in the case of statutory funding) until it has some demonstrable track record of its value. There are (and always will be) more organisations looking for funds than funds are available.

Yes, all that is negative, but a few of your questions are very basic - I'm sure you may have answered many of them already from further research. I don't want to pour cold water on your/your colleague's enthusiasm, we all started somewhere - but I am sure you both want to maximise the effect of your work and your commitment to it.

Further sources of information - Charity Commission website [url]http://www.charity-commission.gov.uk/[/url] for how to start up a charity, who can be trustees, etc (no, they don't have to be sports people - although your charity will have much better credibility if at least some of them are!)

[url]http://www.volresource.org.uk/[/url] is sometimes more comprehensible than the CC and also sets out some of the issues involved with startup. Good library resource with links to other sites too, although with a slight 'statutory' focus.

Institute of Fundraising (obviously...) - [url]http://www.institute-of-fundraising.org.uk/[/url]

and for funding sources, Directory of Social Exchange guides and directories - [url]http://www.dsc.org.uk/acatalog/Fundraising.html[/url]

EDIT: Oh, and so obvious I always forget - trawl through some of the excellent advice on this forum :-) - much of it from more experienced fundraisers than I.