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Clearing out my snowboard gear before the winter starts and, as always, I come across a board with a tough back-story. It was left with me by a client who, at the time, was in remission from cancer. He was planning on making another trip later in the year and left his board with me rather than take it back and forward. In between, his cancer came back and he was never able to make another trip.
The board isn't worth anything (it's very old) and I don't have any way to get in touch with his family or anything like that so for a while I've been planning on doing something for charity with it as it seems wrong to just throw it away.
Ideally what I'd like to do is just run a loose fundraising page on justgiving or similar, with the money split between a cancer charity and Protect Our Winters. Once it makes a reasonable amount of money, I'll give the board plus a day of my coaching or guiding time to someone who donated. Every time I look into setting this up though, it seems to be a minefield of gambling laws, etc. I'd prefer to keep it very loose (donate as much or as little as you like, end the fundraiser once I'm happy with the amount of money, the "prize" is more of a thank you rather than "Tickets are £10, prize draw will be held on this date, there will be one winner who will get this").
Can anyone advise on an easy way to do this?
Just set it up with the promise that you will give the money to charity. Update the page each week to show how much will be raised. At the end send the money to the charity and show the donations you made on the page.
It relies on you being honest and people trusting you but avoids a whole heap of legal problems.
The charity/charities should be able to make this easy for you, with access to tools (and their licence). Charities have access to tools like rally up: http://rallyup.com That's the 'proper way' Or go down WCA's route, but if you ask the orgs you are supporting if that's ok they'll find it hard to turn a blind eye.
[i]Or go down WCA’s route, but if you ask the orgs you are supporting if that’s ok they’ll find it hard to turn a blind eye.[/i]
I agree with this but if you simply turn up with a chunk of money and ask for a receipt there should be no issue.
Yes - sorry I wasn't clear. If you go down the informal route, you are best presenting as a done deal at the end to the orgs. They are bound to fundraise within some pretty tight guidelines.
When I first ran the Big Bike Bash I did it informally as I thought it was going to be a on-off extravaganza. Once it became clear that is was an annual event we actually set up a charity to run it, handle the money and do the legal stuff. This was a good idea as it has now raised over 1/4 million quid so far!
Well done, WCA and OP!
I just came up with the idea and ran it for the first 5-6 years before I handed it over to be run slightly more professionally. I stayed as a host / performing monkey up until the 10 year celebrations but was happy to let others take over. I didn't even take a seat on the charity which I was offered.