Visit the One Click Orgs website for full details of the project.

About the project

There are thousands of situations when people need to set up a legal structure. Forming a new club or society. Growing a small businesses beyond sole trader status. Organising a campaigning group. Here at CIRCUS foundation we think it’s far too complicated to create a legal structure so we’ve set up a project to make it simple: One Click Organisations.

We’re particularly interested in fixing this problem for social entrepreneurs. Just when a social project becomes successful and an entrepreneur starts getting offers of funding and support, they discover they need a legal structure before they can get any further. So they have to divert their time and attention to learn about different types of organisation, decide what kind of decision-making process is appropriate, get a constitution written and go through the formal process to create an organisation. This gets expensive if legal help is required. More importantly it can take an entire month of a social entrepreneur’s time which would be much better spent advancing their core mission.

One Click Organisations is creating a free website where social entrepreneurs and others can set up and manage legal structures. Just select a name, choose from a menu of options (eg how new members can join) and click “Go”. One Click Organisations will take care of the rest: maintaining a constitution, a register of members and officers plus an streamlined system for voting on group decisions. All software developed for the project will be released under an open source licence.

Legal structure headaches

If you’re a social entrepreneur who’s had headaches setting up a legal structure we’d love to hear from you. Send an email describing your experiences to charles [at] CIRCUS-foundation [dot] org. Here are some stories we’ve already received.

Andy Gibson (Founder of Mindapples, Co-Founder of School of Everything) writes:

I’ve reached exactly this point with Mindapples, which began as an idea, a name and a website but now needs to grow up. I know what I need a company to do, but I haven’t had time to research it and get it all set up because I’m too busy trying to keep all the plates spinning and build momentum on the project itself.

I’ve had a few people ask if I’m taking donations and I could probably get quite a long way initially on that basis, but that means creating the appropriate company structure and accounts etc. to handle people’s money. I presumably also need to understand how to maximse the impact of peoples donations by being smart about what’s taxable and how I account for it all. Then there’s the question of whether I can make money from the idea, such as through workshops or a book, and therefore questions of ownership, how I structure partnerships etc. And that’s before I’ve gone anywhere near questions of governance and accountability.

I don’t really want a company at all, I just need a lightweight vehicle to handle the money that doesn’t absorb my time or limit the possibilities of the idea.

Daniel Ben-Horin (CEO of TechSoup Global - San Francisco) writes:

I’m enthusiastically on board to support what you’re doing here. The problem you are addressing with the One Click Org. is worldwide. Obviously, it takes different forms in different countries, but it’s basically the same problem everywhere. We know this all too well because the core work of TechSoup Global is to work with an international network of NGO partners to enable the expansion of product philanthropy throughout the world.

We’re in 23 countries now and in each country we and our in-country partner (mainly the latter, with our counsel) have to establish a process for validating the legitimacy of NGOs, in order to satisfy the requirement of donors like Cisco, Microsoft, Symantec and Adobe that the organizations who are receiving their donated products are indeed performing a social benefit function. If you succeed in establishing the One Click Org. model in the UK, I guarantee that we will be avid to work with you to make it globally available so that good organizations around the globe can establish their bona fides more easily and thus become eligible for the resources they so desparately need.

Ruth Lingard (Founder of Fledglings) writes:

I had a lot of problems deciding what legal structure to adopt for my own organisation. Nothing seemed to fit. I thought the CIC might be appropriate but I needed to register the organisation before CIC was available. I was helped most by the local branch of the Co-operative movement in Cambridge now known as The Social Enterprise People. They had a questionnaire which they gave me and at the end I was left with only one option as a result of my answers – Company limited by guarantee. Subsequently I was given a 20minute free session with Lord Andrew Phillips, charity lawyer, who suggested that we should also be a charity with primary purpose trading. I think your idea is great and would certainly have helped when I was starting out on this journey.