The new foundation being set up by former Big Society Network chief executive Steve Moore has applied for charitable status.

The Charity Commission is currently assessing the application.

The charity is called the Great Charter Foundation and aims to “advance education in the subjects of democracy and citizenship including…the dissemination of information in the evolution of democracy since the signing of the Magna Carta”.

Information and resources will be made “freely available to all citizens of all ages, who previously have not been able to afford it”.

The charity will award Great Charter Prizes to celebrate and acknowledge those who “successfully leverage innovation, emerging technologies and social media platforms to connect citizens to the democratic processes and advance citizenship”.

The application states that no-one will benefit personally from the organisation’s purposes, and the “payment of staff will be an incidental benefit”.  The estimated annual income will be £100,000 and it will raise funds from “charitable foundations, grants, and private donations from benefactors”.

The government has set aside £1m to commemorate the 800th anniversary of the sealing of the Magna Carta next June. Steve Moore had invited the chair of the grants committee that will decide how to spend this money to become a trustee of the Great Charter Foundation, but in the end Sir Robert Worcester declined to join the charity’s board.

The Charity Commission has released the application form to Civil Society News but redacted some personal information under data protection rules.

Steve Moore’s name does not appear on the application form.

In a blog about his aims for the Foundation, he wrote: "Let’s convene and curate a new conversation about how we want to live together under the law, how we can constrain the powerful, protect the weak, promote liberty and tackle injustice."

The contact person for the Foundation is named in the application form as Amanda Carpenter, and the contact address is given as Somerset House in London, the same address that Big Society Network operated from and where Steve Moore is based.

Amanda Carpenter is the managing director of Achill Management, a consultancy which also works out of Somerset House.  According to its website, she co-founded the Big Society Co-operative, “an innovative industrial provident society dedicated to develop better cross sector working, and was instrumental in the BSC winning a £600,000 bid to transform infrastructure support services for the civil society in Kent”.

Achill's website also references the Great Charter Foundation: "Working with Steve Moore the founder we will be supporting his call to action for 'we the people to celebrate, educate and agitate'."

The trustees of the Great Charter Foundation are named as Paul Birch, who will be chair; Mark Hislop; Dan Jones; Kate Maltby; Thomas O’Leary and Sharan Tabari.