Rules for sales with profits given to charity in WA?

April 15, 2015 5:17 PM

My son, a senior in high school, would like to have a class t-shirt made for any of the students who would like to pre-order a shirt. We though it would be appropriate to give any profits from the shirt sales to a particular charity. Living in Seattle, WA, and only selling shirt pre-sales in person to other students, what do we need to know to keep our claim of “profits go to charity” above-board? (…or where should we be looking/asking for these sort of rules?)

Since we are likely selling only 20-25 shirts, and will probably end up giving <$200 to the charity (The Michael J. Fox Foundation for Parkinson's Research, if that matters), is this even an issue? I want to make sure we're Doing The Right Thing here, but I also don't want to unnecessarily overcomplicate things.

I realize ahead of time that this borders on asking for legal advice and YA(P)NAL, and even if so, YANML — I am so advised. I'm just not sure where I should be looking for an answer, so any pointing in the right direction is appreciated.

posted by mboszko to Work & Money (4 answers total)

IANAL, but as long as you aren't lying, I don't think there's anything you have to do when you say that. If you want to be super-careful, sell the shirts though something with some accountability (plenty of on-campus things at my college just use venmo when they say money is going to something specific. I don't know, it may be against the TOS but they charge no fees.) and make keep the donation and shirt-purchasing receipts.

Really, though, I don't think anyone is going to challenge you on it.
posted by R a c h e l at 5:37 PM on April 15, 2015

Best answer: Believe it or not, states often regulate this junk. It's typically on the state's AG site. Perusing the WA AG site, it doesn't look like there's any regulatory stuff to do, but do look yourself.
posted by jpe at 7:02 PM on April 15, 2015

Best answer: It's not in your question, but you might also check with the school re: selling the shirts (or anything else) on school property --- making a sales pitch for a non-official project like this, closing a sale, accepting payments, even delivering a paid-for shirt, might all be prohibited activities.
posted by easily confused at 5:14 AM on April 16, 2015

Response by poster: Thanks, folks! All good advice.
posted by mboszko at 1:23 PM on April 16, 2015