We are in the process of forming a new limited company, that is, a company limited by guarantee, and then registering that company as a charity with the Charity Commission.

I shall not bore you with all the details but at the moment the process has been held up by a request from the Charity Commission that the new charity will definitely have annual income exceeding £1000 per year.

What they are looking for is firm letters of pledge totalling at least £1000. This matter has already circulated among st the administrators and moderators of this forum ... and without getting a response from all such persons ... well it is holiday season after all .... roughly one-half of that £1000 has already been pledged.

So the purpose of this posting is to request further pledges. You can either do so publically in reply to this or by sending me a PM. All contributions gratefully accepted.

Pledges need not necessarily be for a one-off sum .... monthly contributions by say standing order also gratefully accepted. After all, £1000 / 12 is less than £84 per month ... are you will and able to undertake to pay a monthly sum to help towards the required amount?

Anyone responding, either publically or privately will get a PM from me giving details about where a formal pledge letter needs to be sent, and what that letter needs to say.

TIA

John,
When you say 'we' do you mean the Thai-UK mods? Or you and your wife?!
I guess I might be pretty dense but I can't see what the charity is.
I'm missing something here.
Cheers,
Marcus

Marcus,
The "we" means the Thai-UK forum , alot of members expressed an interest in doing something for charity. Some monies have already been raised by various things on the forum and some members suggested starting a T-UK charity.

The beneificiaries of this charity will be decided upon by the members of this forum.

Marcus,there are currently seven topics within the "Thailand-UK Charity Work" part of the forum. Have a look at them all and it will give you and others a flavour of how things have evolved.

A number of members,as you will see,expressed a charitable intention. The moderators,with John doing the leg work as usual,considered it essential to create some kind of structure to this. This has largely been completed,save the evidence of anticipated income,hence John's post.

The structure of the charity will allow a wide range of causes to benefit and at the relevant stage,the members of this forum will be asked for their imput.

If anyone is able to commit to a pledge,please post or PM John (sorry John,I've put you in the frame again!). We are not looking for any actual money yet,just the committment.

Thanks Mark and Steve,

Sorry I missed all the relevant posts, and sorry about being too lazy to look through the old forum threads - only now does it dawn on me!

I've now got our tickets and will be landing in good old Blighty at the start of October. Give us a month or two to get a bank account and a job and you can can sign me up.

Though at first I'm afraid it'll have to be for a very tiny, truly miserly contribution!

All the best,

Marcus

Dear All.

To date we have had very little response to our request for pledges, and as such we are still some way from being able to show the Charities Commission that the new charity will definitely have annual income exceeding £1000 per year.

As way of illustration as to what we need to complete this hurdle .... I have personally pledged that I will donate a monthly sum of 10 pounds to the charity once it is established.

My pledge will result in 120 pounds per annum for the charity.

What we need at this stage to make this idea work and establish a Thailand-UK charity is a further 4 forum members to match my pledge of 10 pounds per month OR even 8 members who are willing to pledge just 5 pounds per month once the charity is set up.

No money is needed at this time just a commitment that you will donate once the charity is set up.

The pledge is just a quick letter the needs to be forwarded to John, something along the lines of -

I am pleased to confirm that I, ******** pledge the amount of £** per month to the above-named proposed charity, I confirm that I will be commencing my donation following the incorporation of the company and its registration as a charity.

I can confirm that the pledge as outlined above will be payable for at least 12 months.

So come on folks - there are over 1600 of you out there, many of you have received lots of free visa information and saved maybe 100's of pounds in the process, just by using this forum.

Cheap shot I know, but come on folks it's payback time ... your forum needs you

Lets get this charity commission hurdle out of the way.

Just 4 forum members who are willing to donate £10 per month OR 8 who are willing to donate a fiver.

If you can help the please PM John or Myself and we can progress from there.

Thanks for your time.
Lee

I'll be one of eight .... if seven others don't pledge, I'll be one of four.

I'm not going to give you 'power of attorney' Lee .... but some one has to say something ... if just 20 regular posters promised a fiver each you could crack this easily.

It isn't even a case of digging deep ..... sign me up..... I'll do the MS Word doc in the morning.

Let's see ... how many are there .... and this doesn't include the mods and is totally from memory.

Me, Tobias, IanB, IanB-UK, Danny, Grahame, Dan, Nick, Peter (could probably make up the number on his own ), Mark W, Flip, A.J, 123456, Sy, Mr Parker, Mike who married all of Surin, Ian1208, Mr Phillips, Phillip, Ron, Marcus, RichardB, Tudor, TJ, Lucky, Prenders, Mr Ying, Cliffy, Steve (all of them), Pairin, James, Happy, Austen, Mick J ...... etc etc

C'mon people ...... do something worthwhile

(my apologies to anyone I missed out)

we've pledged between £30 - £50 a year
a low sum but thats all we could give at the moment.

thad how could you miss me out if your list

Count me in!

But, like I said, I won't even have a bank account until mid October -- does that present a problem right now?

And I can only promise a fiver a month - I don't even have a job at the moment!

Do we have to print off and sign the pledge, or is just a PM okay?

Cheers,

Marcus

(Just had an idea.....could I just send a cheque? That would be easier!)

Hi,

We're more than happy to contribute. As per Marcus's post, how and where do we send the letter?

thanks

J

Thanks Thad, James, Marcus and A&A.

Much appreciated.

Were half way there (I think)
Many Thanks.
Lee

OK Lee put me down for a tenner a month too. I'd already pledged £50 but I'll up my amount to £120 a year. As you said a small price to pay for all the help I've received from this forum.

Cheers Danny - thats the spirit.

I'll have a chat with John as were nearly there I think.

Any more takers please?
Can you pledge a fiver a month to this new charity?

Thanks.
Lee

When i went to the lakes my family were made to feel more than welcome.What i did'nt know was that they got a fund going ( sloosh fund ) i think.With the remainder they have been comming up with ideas like.....disposable cameras for the kids,a tent so if any member turns up off spec they have some where to stay if they wish.
So the forum does far more than just give free advice on vias's,so you can put me down for a fiver a month.
Even Thad let me have a beer all to myself he had put down on one of his posts that he was going to share a chang with me.I thought i was going to have to keep a tight hold of mine,must of caught him on a good day

Greg

I had already contacted John by PM so I am already contributing.

Any other takers?

quote:

---

Originally posted by Pairin:
[qb] Even Thad let me have a beer all to myself he had put down on one of his posts that he was going to share a chang with me.I thought i was going to have to keep a tight hold of mine,must of caught him on a good day [/qb]

---

Nah, Greg - he'd taken yours out of my box

Alrighty, we are in. PM on its way.
ian1208 and family.

Put me down for a fiver a month too.

Jbds.

I'm in for a fiver a month......can you please tell me where to find the seven topics referred to in the moderators post? Will send the PM now.

quote:

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Originally posted by pgcon:
[qb] can you please tell me where to find the seven topics referred to in the moderators post? [/qb]

---

Hi Pgcon.

Thanks for your pledge, much appreciated.

The posts refered to would have been these.

Regards.
Lee

quote:

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Originally posted by Thaddeus:
[qb] Let's see ... how many are there .... and this doesn't include the mods and is totally from memory.
........ Nick......... [/qb]

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Just like to point out that I PM'd John on this on the 21st, Thad

Indeed Nick .... as have a number of other members. No one is forced to post openly about their charitable giving, if they don't want to.

We are nicely above the £1000 mark now ... thanks to everyone who has pledged ... a letter will go off to the Charity Commission tomorrow, hopefully satisfying their need for evidence they need before they will agree that the company can be formed with the word "Charitable" in its title.

Nick

I expected that a couple of forum members already would have sent PM's to John .... I rattled off that list earlier as just a list of names, I wasn't making any attempt to segregate the people who hadn't from the ones that had .... I just lobbed all the names that sprang to mind at the wall (I missed a couple out, A&A, Jim Jum etc purely by happenstance)


John

Excellent ...... any idea how long it will take for some sort of reply from the Commission?

I have today posted a letter to the Charity Commission hopefully satisfactorily clarifying the points raised by them. In particular they wanted confirmation that the income from the charity will exceed £1000 pa .... and thanks to the wonderful quantity of pledge letters received from members of this forum, clarifying that aspect is no problem at all.

How long will it take for the Charity Commission to respond? I am guessing say two or three weeks, but even when they do respond, hopefully positively, it is still then a question of proceeding to form the company, and then registering that company with the Charity Commission. Accordingly it is likely to be October or later before this forum has a registered charity.

And just to confirm, all those pledges worded in a particular way ... deliberately .... no money at all payable unless and until Thailand-UK Charitable Trust exists as a company and that company is registered as a Charity with the Charity Commission. Please don't start sending the cheques just yet!

Any progress will be reported in this section of the forum.