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Start from scratchYou can use Patchwork to collectively organise and fund any gift, event or experience by inviting your friends and family to contribute. As long as it’s legal and doesn't breach our Terms and Conditions, you can patchwork away to your heart’s desire.
Patchwork don't hold your funds. Instead contributions from friends go directly to your PayPal account or your bank account via Stripe.
There are no limits to the amount you can collect with Patchwork. However, PayPal may restrict you to £1,700 if you don’t lift the limits that are automatically placed on your account. Please check these are lifted before publishing your patchwork. Stripe doesn’t have any limits on how much you can collect.
It’s free to create and share a patchwork. We deduct a 3% fee from cash contributions that you collect via our site. So 30p + VAT on a £10 gift. You will be charged VAT at the rate of your country of residence. For more information on money matters see our fees and how they work for you.
Then we don’t make any money. Simple.
Yes. If you want friends to contribute their time and skills you can create a patchwork full of patches asking people to Make or Do.
We don't make money from these patchworks. But they do make us smile.
Please note that the Make and Do functionality is just for the donation of time and skills from contributors and can't be used to create patchworks that instruct or link to external products or services that have a monetary value. Please see our T&Cs page for further guidance on how to use the fund/make/do patches.
Stripe allows friends to pay with a card straight into your Stripe account (which can then go directly into your bank account depending on how you’ve set up your Stripe account). Stripe charge 1.4% commission (or 2.9% if paying with a non European card) and 20p per transaction.
PayPal allows your friends to contribute directly into your PayPal account from their PayPal account. Or by checking out as a 'guest' with a debit or credit card. PayPal charge 2.9% commission and 30p per transaction.
If you want to make it as easy as possible for everyone to contribute it makes sense to connect both PayPal and Stripe to your patchwork. That way people can choose whether to pay with a credit/debit card or with their PayPal account.
This depends on which payment methods you have linked to your Patchwork. We would recommend that you add both a PayPal and a Stripe account. This will give your friends the choice of paying with their PayPal account or with a credit or debit card. Your friends don't need to have either a PayPal or a Stripe account to checkout. They can simply pay by credit or debit card in the usual way.
Yes, there are two ways you can do this. If it’s a surprise gift you’re organising, you can register with your own details and use your own PayPal account and/or Stripe account. Then explain to your friends that you are collecting funds on someone else’s behalf. Once your patchwork has beed funded, you can send a 'gift' version of the patchwork to your lucky friend and they'll be able to read the messages and see what you're treating them to.
However, if you want funds to go directly to your friend’s account, they will need to register their details first. You can then help them create their patchwork and share it with others on their behalf. In this instance, your friend will receive all cash gifts direct.
Absolutely, but Patchwork is not about equity fundraising from strangers. We recommend well established and respected crowdfunding platforms, like Seedrs, for people looking to raise serious funds, allocate shares and have all the legals tied up correctly.
We're here to do what we do best - to help friends, families, communities and networks to come together to celebrate and support each other by primarily gifting their cash, time and skills.
Our new business showers can help you raise some money (in the form of a cash gift) but also ask friends and family for any spare office furniture, a surplus printer or bake some cookies for your tea break.
Hooray. Yes, you can. Just set your currency when you create your patchwork. PayPal and Stripe will make any necessary currency conversions for you. (Please check Stripe and PayPal for their exchange rates and fees).
You can select any one of the following currencies to collect funds in to your patchwork: GBP, USD, EUR, CZK, DKK, HUF, PLN, SEK, AUD, CAD, HKD, JPY, MXN, NZD, NOK, PHP, SGD, CHF, TWD.
For patchworks collecting funds
You can have 2 live patchworks collecting funds at any one time and a total of 4 fundraising patchworks per year.
We have to limit it to that number by law to avoid any money laundering or other dodgy dealings.
For make and do patchworks
There is no limit to the amount of Make and Do patchworks you can create.
For draft patchworks
You can create as many draft patchworks as you like and save them in ‘My Account’ until you’re ready to publish them. Just remember, you can only have 4 patchworks collecting funds per year.
If you want to create your own patchwork from scratch, you can use your own images, those in our gallery or any copyright free images you can find online.
Yes absolutely. You can edit your patchwork, including all images, text and quantities anytime.
Patchworks collecting funds
Patchworks collecting funds have a limit of 6 months from when the first contribution is made. If you anticipate you will need longer than 6 months please contact us and we can arrange an extension.
Make and Do patchworks
Any patchworks that do not collect funds can be open for 12 months. After that, they will automatically close.
Your patchwork has a unique URL that you can send to friends and family. Just copy and paste the link to share it on social media, in an email or on printed invites.
Friends will be able to find your patchwork on our site but it won’t appear in a Google search and we won’t publicise or promote your patchwork without your permission.
There are no restrictions to the amount of people who can contribute. However, if you wish, you can limit contributions within your patchwork. For instance, if you only want one person to DJ at your wedding, you can set the limit to 1. Or if you want 5 people to make desserts, you can set the limit to 5. Equally, if you only want 4 massages on your holiday, you can set the limit to 4. But we won’t judge if you ask for a massage every day of your holiday.
Yes they can. The currency is set by you and you can receive funds from all over the world. If you are using PayPal you will need to check your own personal currency settings to ensure you can receive contributions in any currencies you are expecting.
We do monitor overseas transactions as part of our anti money laundering processes but genuine transactions will be allowed.
There are no restrictions on how much money you can collect using Patchwork but the maximum amount one person can spend on one transaction is £1300.
In the UK there are some allowances for gifting money. There’s a standard annual exemption of £3000 for the total value of all the gifts you can give in a year. However there’s an additional allowance for wedding gifts up to £1000 per person, or £2500 for a grandchild and £5000 for a great-grandchild.
However, we are definitely not tax experts and can not advise on your personal circumstances - we recommend that you consult your personal tax or accounting professional to check any restrictions in your country.
You can access, edit and manage all of your patchworks in ‘My Patchworks’. From here, it’s easy to invite people to view your patchwork, check out who has contributed what, read messages from friends and send thanks.
They can visit patchworkit.com and search for it with ‘Find a friend’s patchwork’.
You can call us on +44 7547 439 805, chat to us via our website, or email hello@patchworkit.com
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