Subject: Can the founder of a charity also be the CEO
Hi
I am in the early stages of setting up a website that will be for the benefit of people looking for work or choosing a career path. It will be an enormous website that will encourage hundreds of thousands of inter-active contributions to allow the visitor to make a more informed choice of the type of employment that they would be happy in.
It will be simple to use and it will be clear to any visitor of any working age the benefits or otherwise of any particular job. Visitors will also be allowed to form relationships via the website and find employment opportunities as a result.
This is a project I have wanted to do for many years ( I have been in recruitment for nearly 30 years and have been the creator of a commercial job board www.britishjobs.net)
The objective of this website is to winkle out job opportunities all over the Uk and to stop people spending a life time in the wrong job, simply because they didn't know how to go about reaching that goal.
The problem:
This will be a full time job for me to set up and run . Believe me, these huge database websites are very demanding.
The website, once it is up and running , will generate income from third party advertisers and thiis income should be quite a considerable amount. Because of the social benefit nature of this, I wish the profits to be plowed back into the website or to be used as charitable contributions for work related charities.
So the big question is, am I allowed to take a commercial salary from the income of the website as I would be the one setting up the project and the charitable status of it.?
I seem to have a mental block here as I don't want to be seen as setting this up for my own gains but can't afford to run it unless it pays me a salary.
I want to be quite open about this - can anyone give me any qualified advice?
Graham Miles
If it's a financially viable business, why not run it as a business?
There are charities that trade and become incorporated companies, but why not set out as a business with a philanthropic vision?
Hi bestjob, the answer is 'yes' in principle but you would need the approval of the Charity Commission. We have an online training course on Setting up a charity on the website; it's delivered by someone who set up a charity herself but is also the CEO of the charity. The course has a discussion forum attached to it as well where the trainer Lucy Calson is available for questions. I'm sure she'd be able to advise from her own experience. Good luck!
