When we first started organising Thriving Sustainably, we naively assumed we would just finance the event from donations on the day, and at the end simply donate all proceeds to Low Carbon West Oxford and Resurgence Magazine.
Considering that with many presenters you would usually have to fork out a substantial entry fee to hear them speak, and that most of them are giving their contributions for free, generating a surplus did not seem like rocket science. We were planning to simply put up on a poster at the beginning of the day detailing all expenses and income received, so that everybody would know how much money would need to come together via donations at the event.
However, as the day has grown through all the positive responses and presenters’ willingness to contribute, so the expenses have grown bigger. Therefore, we now ARE applying for sponsorship and are doing some fundraising. For this we now do need charitable status, as sponsors and funders expect to see official papers to make sure that everything is above board. We have been looking for a simple way of doing this, rather than going through the procedure of founding a charity for a one-day event and applying for charitable status (which we probably would not manage within the timeframe now, anyway).
I can’t seem to find an easy way of achieving this (and I’d rather put my energy into organising the event, rather than these formalities) - so if there was some charity that would take the whole event under its wing, receive donations on our behalf and funnel the money towards venue, printing and some other expenses and then give the rest to Low Carbon West Oxford and Resurgence Magazine, that would be ideal.
As a compromise for online donations, we have found the following solution: when Michael’s mother died, after being involved in a variety of charities in her later years, she left some money for charitable purposes, and this was used to found the Margrit-Soth-Stiftung - a small charity officially recognised in Germany for some years now. Michael’s father has been running it, mostly on a local basis in Germany, supporting small environmental projects. Although this is a German charity, it seems the simplest avenue to use this existing charity as a vehicle for receiving PayPal donations. PayPal does a check on all organisations claiming to be charitable and require official papers. Donations will be received in GBP and no money will pass to Germany, as all proceeds will be donated within the UK to Low Carbon West Oxford and Resurgence Magazine. However, the ‘Donate’ button will take you to the German PayPal site and the money will be received on behalf of the Margrit-Soth-Stiftung.
In order to make things transparent, the finances of the day will be published on this website. Copies of official papers can be seen here: here (German Certificate for Charitable Status: Margrit-Soth-Stiftung) and here: here (German Tax Exemption Declaration), in case anybody has any doubts or questions.
Sorry about the convolutions ….
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