Do you have to get legal to start a fundraiser?

Answer 1

First of all, congrats on getting your fundraising started! Raising support for a worthy cause can be super rewarding. But obviously, if you're not an official non-profit, it can be really tricky finding a good way to build support for your cause.

One route you might want to consider: setting up a homepage for your group on a fundraising website. Having a group homepage online makes organizing and fundraising infinitely easier ... And though the majority of fundraising sites require you have official non-profit status, many good ones only require that you are a group - and will give you plenty of the tools you need.

For example, one good site is Meet Up, who allow you to fundraise directly to your account, and register a group without having an official non-profit status - and they cover groups around the world, while giving you some tools to do event management. But the tools they offer are a little limited outside of fundraising.

Or you could always try to send up your own PayPal account to link to you directly to help you fundraise, but this is a little trickier and a bit inflexible.

Good luck getting started moving forward! Hope that helped.