Hi all,

I am planning to set up a charitable trust with the purpose of issuing small grants to local community organisations. The funds for the trust would be around £150,000, and my initial thinking is that organisations could make applications for grants of between £1,000 - £10,000, depending on their capacity and intentions for the funds. The trust would support organisations through the grant application process to ensure its accessibility. I would be a trustee and ideally also an employee for a day a week (which I understand is possible if allowed in the trust's governing documents), although this is not essential.  

My questions are:

1. Is this a silly idea for this amount of money? I.e. is the amount of work/ resource to set this up and keep it going likely to be disproportionate to the impact that can be made by this amount of cash, or by distributing it in this way over, for example, making donations? I am not shy of the work to do it, but am conscious I will be asking time of trustees and potentially needing to spend money on legal/ financial support. 

2. If the answer to the above is, 'no, it's a great idea', then what's the best way to get started? And am I likely to need professional legal and/or financial advice and support?

Thank you!

H