Becoming a Charity

This page was created in September 2019 as a place to consolidate discussions and ideas re becoming a charity.

• How the process works to transition from a “Private company limited by guarantee without share capital” into a charity?

We can go to Sandy at ACVO to give more info about this, IIRC we can keep the company and also register under SCR, the Scottish Carity Register, or wind up the Hacklab Ltd and intitute under Oscar, the former means we need to ledge accounts at companies house and OSCR, the latter only OSCR

• As a charity what articles can we use? Are there any issues with our current articles which would stop us from being accepted under OSCR?

• Possibility to receive gift aid on subscriptions (recurring donations for membership)
• Improved situation re funding and grants (Possible)
• Quote “As a charity you will become attractive to some landlords from a property rates mitigation perspective” property agent, via AG email
• …

• Increased admin work overhead? (Sandy seemed to say that this was not a large change)
• Possibility of Audit, Increased risk if complaints against the charity?

• ACVO: ACVO is the Third Sector Interface for Aberdeen City, Kaja Czuchnicka & Sandy Mathers http://acvo.org.uk
• Link to OSCR info on becoming a charity https://www.oscr.org.uk/becoming-a-charity/thinking-about-becoming-a-charity/
• …

• 57N on companies house: https://beta.companieshouse.gov.uk/company/SC470230
• funding_applications
• funding_bodies
• …