Some of our objectives here at StressBustingExpert™ are set out clearly in our posts entitled "A Warm Sunny Welcome from StressBustingExpert™", "Accepting Stress as a Global “Pandemic”, not a Localised Problem” and "StressBustingExpert™ - Read Our 2023 Mission Statement”.
Given these evident objectives, you would have thought we would qualify for charitable status.
And the truth is we probably would.
That status would bring us various generous tax, rates and other advantages over and above being a non charitable organisation, open up access to a higher level of state funding support for our endeavours and enable us to seek charitable public contributions.
But for us, the conditions attached to charitable status are in our view simply too restrictive to serve the best interests of our readers.
One of the qualifications for charitable status, for example, is that an organisation only conducts limited political activities.
A charity must not, for example, give support or funding to a political party, nor to a candidate or politician.
A charity may give support to specific policies advocated by political parties, but only if it would help achieve its tightly defined and registered charitable purposes.
On that basis, we have elected to forfeit an application for charitable status.
Charities are regularly at the cutting edge of services not adequately being catered for by the State and they therefore hold an experienced, independent voice and role that deserve to be heard and exercised fully.
They ought not to be treated as an ‘extension’ of the State as this is not their essence.
They are organisations established by individuals who wish to make a difference where there is often a vacuum of care and so who ‘put their own money where their mouth is’, so to speak.
Thus, while some regulation and oversight of charitable status is of course necessary from a financial perspective to avoid abuses of position, we feel it is nevertheless imperative for them to retain uninterrupted independence to optimise the value and impact of their core objectives and priorities as they can and do crystallise, emerge and develop from time to time.
To continue to require otherwise will risk discouraging many others like us from setting up a charity for worthy causes they embrace on a voluntary basis.
The current policy may surely, as a result, be counter Intuitive and so potentially merit a review.
(Oops, there we go being Political on matters outside our ambit again, Sorry 🙈).
Big (apologetic!) Love, MikeyM&LouLoU™ 😊😘❤💙💚💛 xxxxx