Engaging Commercial Entities to Raise Funds for a Charity 
Charities often enter into binding written agreements with commercial organisations under which the organisation undertakes legally enforceable obligations designed to produce funds for the charity. Such arrangements fall into one of the following categories: commercial participation, professional fundraising, and commercial sponsorship.
In essence, a commercial participator promotes and advertises its products or services, and as part of that activity it states that it is giving to the charity either a stated proportion of its profits from the products or services or a fixed sum per item/unit of service sold by it. In return the charity licences the commercial participator to use the charity’s name and logo, and, as a result the charity receives the payments from the commercial participator as charity fundraising income together with free marketing. For example, a stationery retailer might advertise its Christmas cards for sale using the charity's name and logo, stating that a percentage of the profits on sales will be donated to the charity. Such arrangements are regulated by charity law, and the legislation specifies not only that there be a written agreement in place between the charity and the commercial participator but also particular matters that must be covered in the agreement.
The commercial participation templates Commercial Participator Agreement (product promotion – three parties), Commercial Participator Agreement (non-product promotion – three parties), Commercial Participator Agreement (product promotion – two parties) and Commercial Participator Agreement (non-product promotion – two parties) all include suitable provisions to cover those matters.
The business of professional fundraisers is to provide a service comprising the soliciting of donations, recruitment of donors or the running of fundraising programmes for a charity, in return for fees paid by the charity. The donors might be individuals or organisations. The fundraiser’s activities might cover a variety of activities, for example: soliciting cash donations on the street (bucket collections), or obtaining sign-ups by individuals for direct debit donations, or writing to corporate donors or grant-making trusts. Such arrangements are regulated in a similar way to commercial participation arrangements and a formal written agreement between the charity and the professional fundraiser. These are covered by the Professional Fundraiser Agreement (Individual Donors) and the Professional Fundraiser Agreement (Organisations) templates.
Commercial sponsorship involves payment to a charity of a sponsorship fee by a commercial entity and in return it receives publicity given to it by the charity. There should be a binding agreement between them governing all important aspects of the arrangement including specific details about the publicity to be given. The arrangement will typically relate to a particular event being run by the charity. The publicity to be given to the sponsor’s business will usually be included as part of the charity’s publicity for the event, and the charity will also provide publicity (and sometimes other facilities) for the sponsor at the event itself. This is covered in the Charity Event Commercial Sponsorship Agreement template.