Bank account for early day charitable initiative?

A question about : Bank account for early day charitable initiative?

Hey all,

I was just wondering if anyone had any ideas/suggestions on the best type of account to get for a small 'charity' or are they much of a muchness?

Brief background.

The organisation is fairly informal currently -a small committee organising things with activities that are focused around a 'equality & diversity' area in a particular professional field which is usually pretty terrible at all things D&I related. Our activity scope to date is organising talks/speakers on relevant workplace and non-workplace issues and providing & signposting to information & support resources.

Things have started pretty strong due to a combination nothing currently being in the space we're in, encouragement from trade bodies, strong engagement from corporates and grassroots etc etc and a little press attention.

We've done a fair bit already thanks to some home grown technical wizardry creating online resources and extracting freebies allowing us to organise events on a pretty much nil budget but we're getting to the stage where we need to start handling money. Not much within the next 12 months (Ј500-Ј1200max I expect) but we will need something in our name.

Within the next 6 months we will also need to formalise ourselves into an organisation I expect but we are not there yet (ie informal and unincorporated for now, we're also not calling ourselves a charity in any form currently -just talking about what we do and what we are doing is becoming visible).

Something that'd allow us to receive money and setup a couple of signatories and/or some controlled but efficient ability to pay for things would be great (web hosting, venue hire if ever we struggle to find free space and basic levels of refreshments at talks).

No 'fundraising' is planned but we have some corporate offers of financial support/backing being made that it would be useful to actually be in a position to accept and put to use!

Any suggestions?

Best answers:

• How about Co-Op ? From what I know, their DirectPlus is the best for this sort of stuff.
  https://www.co-operativebank.co.uk/bu...ity-directplus
  https://moneyfacts.co.uk/guides/busin...ccounts091211/
• Charities Aid Foundation
• If you're handling Cash money, then ask the High Street banks convenient to your location what they do by way of 'Clubs and Societies' accounts.
  If not a lot of cash is going to be involved, then CAF (as already suggested) may be a good one - just not sure if they take other than registered charities. Or Triodos, or Unity Trust.
• Thanks for the pointers all, I'll dig into them and see what looks suitable
  Cheers