How do I get charity funding and fundraise lawfully?
Charity funding in the order a charity meets it: map your income, find and apply for grants, then manage each grant awarded. After that come the rules on online donations, events, raffles, collections, professional fundraisers, trading and the Fundraising Regulator. Written for trustees, treasurers and fundraisers in England and Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland, with the differences set out.
28 steps, in the order you meet them.
Fundraising is among the most regulated things a charity does and one of the least regulated-feeling. Street collections need a licence. A society lottery needs registration, though a raffle run at your own event does not. Working with a professional fundraiser needs a written agreement containing specific terms, and without one the fundraiser has no right to be paid at all.
The grant-writing steps are about the application itself: what an assessor is actually scoring, what full cost recovery means in practice, and why most rejections are settled before anyone reaches your case for support.
Look up
Glossary
- Grant
- Charities SORP
- Board of trustees
- Outcomes
- Restricted funds
- Governing document
- Impact
- Contract
- Outputs
- Public benefit
- Designated funds
- Legacy
- Safeguarding
- Beneficiaries
- Charitable purpose
Tools
- Do I need a collection permit? — Tool: planned
- Full cost recovery calculator — Tool: planned
- Funder finder
- Grant finder
- Grant or contract checker — Tool: planned
- Income concentration calculator — Tool: planned
- Is my raffle lawful? — Tool: planned
Templates
- Application tracker — Template: planned
- Case for support — Template: planned
- Criteria map — Template: planned
- Event compliance checklist — Template: planned
- Full cost recovery — Template: planned
- Funder profile pack — Template: planned
- Funder shortlist — Template: planned
- Grant agreement review checklist — Template: planned
- Income map — Template: planned
- Lottery compliance check — Template: planned
- Monitoring evaluation plan — Template: planned
- Need statement — Template: planned
- Outputs and outcomes — Template: planned
- Professional fundraiser agreement checklist — Template: planned
- Project budget — Template: planned
Do
- Step 1 · How do I check if my charity's income is too dependent on one source?
- Step 2 · What mix of income should a charity aim for?
- Step 3 · How do I include overheads and core costs in a funding application?
- Step 4 · What is a case for support and what goes in it? · legal risk: regulatory-sanction
- Step 5 · What information do funders always ask for?
- Step 6 · How do I find grant funders for my charity?
- Step 7 · Can an unregistered community group apply for grant funding?
- Step 8 · How do I work out what a funder is really asking for?
- Step 9 · How do I write the need section of a funding application?
- Step 10 · What is the difference between outputs and outcomes in a funding bid?
- Step 11 · How do I build a budget for a grant application?
- Step 12 · What do funders want in a monitoring and evaluation plan?
- Step 13 · What documents do funders ask for with an application?
- Step 14 · How do I cut a funding application down to the word limit?
- Step 15 · How long do funders take to decide, and what should I do while I wait?
- Step 16 · Should I ask a funder why my application was rejected?
- Step 17 · What should I check before signing a grant agreement? · legal risk: regulatory-sanction
- Step 18 · How do I keep track of a restricted grant? · legal risk: personal-liability
- Step 19 · What do funders require in a grant report?
- Step 20 · What happens if we cannot spend a grant or need to change the project? · legal risk: regulatory-sanction
- Step 21 · What do we need in place to take donations online and by direct debit? · legal risk: regulatory-sanction
- Step 22 · What do we need to check before running a charity fundraising event? · legal risk: regulatory-sanction
- Step 23 · Do we need a licence to run a raffle at our fundraising event? · legal risk: criminal
- Step 24 · Do we need a licence to collect money in the street or door to door? · legal risk: criminal
- Step 25 · What must be in place before someone fundraises for us commercially? · legal risk: criminal
- Step 26 · When does a charity need to set up a trading company? · legal risk: personal-liability
- Step 27 · Does my charity have to register with the Fundraising Regulator?
- Step 28 · Can a charity refuse or return a donation? · legal risk: regulatory-sanction
Common questions
Start from each funder's own website rather than a directory, because several of the biggest UK funders have closed or renamed their best-known programmes. Fix your nation first: the National Lottery Community Fund's large-grant programme has a different name in each one. Find funders that genuinely fit sets out the method.
Write a case for support once, then cut it down for each funder: read the funder's criteria, evidence the need locally, state outcomes with measures, build the budget from the full cost and edit to the word limit. The sequence starts at Write your case for support.
No. Registration with the Fundraising Regulator is voluntary at every size, but its Code of Fundraising Practice covers your fundraising either way, and in England and Wales an audited charity must say in its annual report whether it has signed up. Register with the Fundraising Regulator and adopt the Code explains.
Not for a raffle held as part of your event in Great Britain, provided every ticket is sold at the event while it is on and the other legal conditions are met. Selling tickets in advance takes it outside the exemption. Northern Ireland's law is stricter. Run a lottery or raffle lawfully, in expert review, sets out the conditions.