[UK] Information about the think tank Doteveryone

[MJ Ray]

On Fri, 22 Sep 2017 11:22:08 +0000
Heiki Lõhmus <repentinus at fsfe.org> wrote:

> GO ON UK LIMITED is a charitable company. They were incorporated on 13
> July 2009 [0]. I believe that, at the time, a charitable company was
> the only structure in the English law that limited the liability of
> trustees for the debts of the charity.

Not quite but close enough.  There are also NGOs which don't qualify as
charities, which is most of the UK's civil society.  In general, we use
the same incorporation methods as the private sector, which has both
benefits (for example, it makes it difficult for government to target
NGOs in general without also hurting a lot of businesspeople who fund
certain political parties that, shall we say, might not be too unhappy
at hurting NGOs) and drawbacks (you have to look pretty carefully
sometimes to figure out whether a corporation is an NGO or not).  There
are a few forms which are intended for NGOs and charities, but they
have their own drawbacks, including usually higher registration and
operation fees.  Also, the current regulators seem pretty hands-off, so
it may be possible at the moment to be a CIC and do all sorts of
naughtiness as long as none of the owners take it to caught.

In short, look at the company not the type. Don't get hung up on whether
it says Ltd, CIC, CIO, LLP, Cyf or whatever after the name.

Hope that clarifies,
-- 

MJR http://mjr.towers.org.uk/
Member of http://www.software.coop/ (but this email is my personal view
only)