Neurosurgeon Mr Roddy O’Kane was joined by the charity’s Young Ambassador Jenny Cook at the unique event to launch the first ever national art trail, which will hit the streets of Scotland in 2019.

The Scotland-wide event will see 150 life-size Oor Wullie sculptures painted by professional artists and placed in Glasgow, Edinburgh, Aberdeen, Dundee and Inverness, with hundreds more mini-sculptures designed by schools and community groups adding to the spectacular trail.

Funds raised by Oor Wullie’s BIG Bucket Trail will support Glasgow Children’s Hospital Charity, Edinburgh Children’s Hospital Charity and the ARCHIE Foundation, and help children and families from across Scotland.

Speaking at the event Shona Cardle, Chief Executive, Glasgow Children’s Hospital Charity, thanked Headline Sponsor Arnold Clark, Discovery Sponsor Citylink, DCT Media, Wild in Art and the Evening Times for their support.

To find out more about how your business, school or community group can get involved with this very special project, please visit www.oorwullie.com

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Many people identify causes which they are personally involved in or believe are worth supporting. The support is often by way of raising money for the cause through sponsoring an event. However, for those who want to establish an organisation to make a greater difference in pursuit of a cause, the first question is – How do we go about it?

The first thought is to set up a Charity.

This requires several steps, the primary one being Public Benefit. An application has to be made to the Scottish Charity Regulator (OSCR) to demonstrate that the cause can be classified as meeting the criteria for a Registered Charity.

There are several types of charities – Trusts, Unincorporated Charities, SCIOs (Scottish Charitable Incorporated Organisations) Each format requires a constitution drawn up by a solicitor. SCIO which is a legal form unique to Scottish charities provides a high degree of legal protection against liability, unlike an unincorporated charity where trustees could be personally responsible for debts.

A SCIO is regulated by OSCR rather than by Companies House. A specific format of accounts for charities is required for OSCR.
The second thought is that the organisation could be set up as a Limited Company by Guarantee. This would be regulated by Companies House through the normal application for setting up a commercial company. Limited by Guarantee means that there no shareholders and the maximum liability for directors of the company would be £1.

The company would not be a charity and therefore not subject to the rules of the Charities Act and OSCR regulations. However, the company may not be able to apply for funding from trusts and other sources that specify charitable status.

Community Interest Companies

A third type of organisation called a CIC (Community Interest Company) may be suitable for the cause. It is a type of company introduced by the Government under the Companies Act 2004, designed for social enterprises that want to use their profits and assets for the public good.
CICs are more lightly regulated than charities but do not have the benefit of charitable status, A CIC cannot also be a charity but could be a subsidiary of a charity to generate profits for the good clause.

Unlike a charity, profits of a CIC are subject to Corporation Tax. However, it can issue shares and shareholders can receive dividends provided they do not exceed 20 per cent of the value of their shares in any one year. The CIC Regulator imposes an Asset Lock on the CIC restricting sale or transfer to a third party to ensure that assets and profits are used for the community benefit.

Not-For-Profit Social Enterprises

The fourth type of structure for not-for-profit social enterprises is to form a Society which issues Community Shares as an ideal way for communities to invest in enterprises serving a community purpose.

Societies need to have at least £10,000 in share capital and at least 20 members, to focus on genuinely community-owned ventures.

Shareholders have the right to withdraw their share capital, subject to the terms and conditions stated in the society’s rules and share offer document.

Regulation is carried out by the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) within society law and community shares cannot be sold or transferred or liquidated as a business in order to achieve a capital gain.

Conclusion

In conclusion, there are several different legal structures for your non-profit organisation in the UK – each with differing responsibilities in relation to the Chairities Act, stakeholders and the tax man. As a Chartered Accountant who has worked with not-for-profit organisations for over 20 years, I’d be more than happy to advise you on which structure will suit the needs of your organisation the best.

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For many years there was a general nervousness about running accounting and financial systems hosted on someone else’s server, and that’s made available over an Internet connection from anywhere on any device. Concerns were mainly about loss of data either deliberately hacked or accidentally lost due to the service provider crashing their servers without adequate backup.

Now most of these concerns are being overcome by the exponential growth in cloud applications including accounting. We are starting to see the impact of cloud computing in the accounting industry.

We have always maintained that clients should be able to view their financial data on a regular basis, an essential need to ensure that clients can take corrective action if their results are less than planned.

Traditionally, many companies relied on their accountants processing data and reporting results, sometimes not until the end of an accounting period. Our approach has been over the last 30 years to ensure that clients used appropriate software packages to run their own regular book-keeping and send reports to us for interpretation and advice.

This was done by sending files over the internet which meant that we and clients had to have compatible versions of the accounting software. Operating real-time updates over cloud computing now means that accountants are better able to review up-to-date results avoiding using redundant data files.

Being audit compliant

The key source of data which is required for audits by HMRC and Companies House are the bank transactions. Most Cloud accounting allows companies to link their bank accounts with their accounting records, thus avoiding the time-consuming tasks of traditional reconciliations.

The client can either input data into the system themselves or contract the accountant’s bookkeeper to enter from documents produced. Scanning documents is also being used as another way to save time by collecting e-format documents with ease and have them available for use, whenever and wherever required.

Access to the accounting system by the accountant is essential to support the client in setting up or amending the chart of accounts to produce a balance sheet which is the most difficult concept for unqualified operators. Being able to discuss entries over the phone rather than needing to make a visit improves the client/professional relationship.

Greater Productivity

As time is money, clients can be more productive in running their business than worrying about deadlines to process their transactions to meet VAT and Year End company and tax returns as processing will be in real-time.

For us Cloud Accounting gives us the opportunity to spend more time in assisting our clients in developing their business through planning, tax advice, consultancy and coaching.

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