Using a charity to run folding?

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rwh202
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Using a charity to run folding?

Post by rwh202 »

Has anyone here already considered (or indeed created) a United Kingdom charity for the purpose of volunteering computing resources to F@h or other medical research projects? After a brief read of the UK Charity Commission’s website it seems possible that such a charity would meet their requirements for ‘purpose’ and ‘public benefit’.

There could be several large financial benefits if folding was being run as a charitable endeavour. For each £1000 donated to a charity, they could claim back £250 gift aid from HMRC and a further £1000 as charity matching from eligible employers and then purchase computer equipment zero VAT rated to give an equivalent of £2700 spending power on hardware (or £2250 on energy since I don’t think there is a VAT saving over what consumers already pay).

Does anyone see an obvious flaw in this arrangement? If not, I’m tempted to give it a go on an individual scale, but I could also see potential for a larger scale ‘colocation’ type service that others could donate to.
ChristianVirtual
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Re: Using a charity to run folding?

Post by ChristianVirtual »

a nice idea, but is there any indication that a charity must benefit a domestic receiver ? With F@H being a project from US based Stanford University I would not be sure that the UK would support that. Hope for you I'm wrong ;-)
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rwh202
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Re: Using a charity to run folding?

Post by rwh202 »

ChristianVirtual wrote:a nice idea, but is there any indication that a charity must benefit a domestic receiver ?
A UK registered charity can work internationally provided that the benefit is legal under UK law and there are plenty of examples such as disaster funds, providing medical assistance to other countries, mosquito nets etc. that are currently operating. Also, diseases like Alzheimer's and cancers don't seem to respect geographic boundaries so I don't think that should be a blocker...

Right now, I'm tempted to give it a go - the worst they can do is say no!
fangfufu
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Re: Using a charity to run folding?

Post by fangfufu »

I live in York (in England), if there is anything I could do to help, please let me know.
Folding with 4 cores on Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-8700K

I first started folding back in the Google Compute days!
benji
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Re: Using a charity to run folding?

Post by benji »

Same offer here, I live in Somerset UK, willing to offer a hand if need be!
rwh202
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Re: Using a charity to run folding?

Post by rwh202 »

Thanks for the offers.
My free time is being stretched by overrunning renovations and decorating at the moment. Once that's done I'll kick off the paperwork and see where it goes...
Anton Thynell
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Re: Using a charity to run folding?

Post by Anton Thynell »

Interesting! I look foward to see this evolve.
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