Hi,

I'm a student at Cambridge, UK and am thinking of making a startup at some point in the future, however before then I'd like to work in consultancy. A startup would require considerable capital, however I aren't sure if I would definitely do it. If I did do a startup and it worked I'd give the vast majority of the earnings to charity. 

However, once I start my job I'd like to donate half my money, potentially into a donor advised fund, so I can invest it and work out exactly where to donate the money. However, I would like to then have the option of using the money in the donor advised fund to help finance a future startup, by issuing the donor advised fund shares or a loan. Is there any way of doing this, or would I have to start a charitable foundation? Or will there be a charity who could do it on behalf of me? Since I'm in the UK I imagine the only way of doing this would be in some kind of UK vehicle, though I wouldn't be adverse to using a US vehicle if it were the best option.

I appreciate that this will look very dodgy to any regulators, as it would seem like I'm taking charitable donations and using it for personal benefit in my own company. However, the idea would be solely to save on tax as its better to donate the money immediately to the donor advised fund than keep it just in case I happen to make a startup. Any profits from the startup would be donated and I'd take home probably only 20-40k (more if I had family) a year regardless of how well it does.

I'd love some advice on this from someone who knows about theses things.

Many thanks

Olly

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I'm pretty sure the answer is no, you can't, for exactly the same reasons as why it would look dodgy to any regulators.

Additionally, the potential reputational harm to EA from this sort of thing probably should be taken into account.

There are enough sufficiently wealthy EAs that you might well be able to get funding from them if you have a good startup plan, without any reputational risk (and if you can't then this would be a weak but maybe valuable signal that your plan is not as good as you think).

Hi, I'm still struggling to find answers for this, there must be someone out here who can help? Thanks