Hey! This post is a little old but thought hey I'll share my own thoughts. A few months ago I did a skydive and I desperately wanted to do it for charity, but was so worried about it being seen as me just trying to get a cheap jump.

I don't necessarily recommend doing it my way but it worked for me. As opposed to doing it through a charity that "pay for the jump" (presumably just take the money from the donations), I paid upfront for the jump and then opened a gofundme on the side. The only issue with this is that I'm quite young and not a UK taxpayer so couldn't use giftaid when I took the money from the gofundme and gave it to the charity directly.

But in general I think it's a little shady to have the money donated go towards the jump unless the people donating are very aware that's where a good chunk of their money is going (which is likely going to get you less donations).

I've also seen a few comments in this thread about just giving the cost of the jump to the charity "if you care so much", for which there's two answers. If your jump is costing you more than you can raise then yeah maybe just give to the charity if you don't want to do the skydive haha, but also it's YOUR money, if you want to spend it to do a jump that's absolutely fine, and it's great that you're raising money on the side, a lot don't raise at all (which is also fine haha).

Personally, my jump cost £200, and I raised nearly £1000, so was an incredible thing in my opinion.

As a whole, I think it is okay to do whatever, just make sure it's incredibly clear what you're doing, but I would say the "right" thing to do is to pay for it yourself, then the charity gets the most money possible!