You may or may not be aware but if you read the Foundation pages you will see that my ultimate goal is to raise £2 million in order to open a centre for children suffering at the hands of their abusers. I want to be able to reach out to as many children as possible and offer them a place of refuge and a sanctuary full of love and caring. Obviously I need to be able to raise money by there are so many frustrations of registering as a charitable organisation it is unbelievable.

You only have to look at the Charity Commissions website to see some of the frustrations of registering as a charitable organisation the most frustrating being that you need to have raised at least £100,000 in order to become a registered charity.

This is all well and good and I can understand why these limits are set but for someone like me how do I get people to accept and trust that any charitable donations are going to The Foundation of Survivors and not into my back pocket? It must be the same for any individual with hopes and goals for helping others be it child abuse sufferers, cancer patients or simply a memorial charity fund.

Other frustrations of registering as a charitable organisation include defining you charities purpose; although this is a little frustrating and time consuming I actually found it very cathartic writing The Foundation of Survivors purposes.

This is a list of the Charities Act 2006 descriptions of purposes:-

  • Prevention of relief or poverty
  • Education advancement
  • Religion advancement
  • Health or saving lives advancement
  • Citizenship or community development advancement
  • Arts, culture, heritage or science advancement
  • Amateur sport advancement
  • Human rights, conflict resolution or resolution or promotion of racial or religious harmony or equality and diversity advancement
  • Environmental protection or improvement advancement
  • Relief of anybody in need, by reason of age, youth, disability, ill health, financial hardship or other disadvantages.
  • Animal welfare advancement
  • The promotion of the efficiency of the Armed Forces of the Crown, Police, Fire and Rescue Services or Ambulance Services

If you take a look at the list and the purposes defined by the Foundation of Survivors you will see that we have covered quite a few of the above purposes but we are still quite away from reaching the initial target of raising £100,000.

Although there are frustrations of registering as a charitable organisation I wouldn’t change my plans for all the tea in China. Having suffered at the hands of multiple abusers I know what it is like to feel all alone in the world and despite whatever hurdles are put in my way I plan on reaching my goal.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, August 26th, 2008 at 1:49 pm and is filed under Joes Diary. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.