Compliance with UK Charities Act

Hello,

as some of you may know, we work with Benevity, which give some funds to us via the UK Online Giving Foundation.

Each year, we need to verify ourselves. So far, we had to send them just our nonprofit confirmation, but this year, they now also ask for (DeepL translated) this with a deadline of July 31.

“To remain eligible for donations, you must confirm that all funds will be used exclusively for charitable purposes under English law.”

“If your organization cannot confirm compliance with the legal definition of charitable purposes in England and Wales, you will no longer be eligible for disbursements through the Benevity platform.”

The UK Charities Act seems a long PDF file, and I wouldn’t lightly confirm our compliance.

Can anyone here help with assessing this?

We can always delist from Benevity, it would not be a major loss of income, but if we can stay there, I’d aim for that, of course.

Florian

Did they ask in German?

Yes, Benevity wrote to us in German:

Benevity zahlt Gelder über unseren Partner, die UK Online Giving Foundation (UKOGF) aus. Um weiterhin für Spenden in Frage zu kommen, müssen Sie bestätigen, dass alle Gelder ausschließlich für wohltätige Zwecke nach englischem Recht eingesetzt werden.

Bitte füllen Sie die jährliche Mittelverwendungserklärung bis zum 31. Juli aus. Wenn Sie diese Erklärung nicht abgeben, kann dies dazu führen, dass Sie von der Plattform entfernt werden und keine Spenden mehr erhalten können.

Dies ist zwingend erforderlich. Wenn Ihre Organisation die Einhaltung der lgesetzlichen Definition von gemeinnützigen Zwecken in England und Wales nicht bestätigen kann, sind Sie nicht mehr für Auszahlungen über die Benevity-Plattform berechtigt.

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The Charities act might be long, and even a bit convoluted, but the effective definition of “charitable purpose” appears in Part 1, Chapter 1, Section 3:

and we definitely fall under that. By decreasing order of match-of-purpose, this would be (1)(f): “promotion of arts, culture and science”, (1)(b) “the advancement of education”, (1)(h): “the advancement of human rights … or the promotion of … equality and diversity;”

If you want to play devil’s advocate, and you look at our goals as defined in the statutes, the third one is:

The foundation aims to promote … by supporting free software: … civic engagement for non-profit purposes

and that is rather vague and could be interpreted broadly. But in practice, it isn’t interpreted in a way that disagrees with the UK law.