18 Dec
2014
18 Dec
'14
3:52 p.m.
The Omni is using Food Not Bombs as their 501(c)3 "fiscal sponsor". All the
funds from their current IndieGogo campaign are being channeled through
FNB, for example. FNB is providing this service for free. Most
organizations do charge something, because they take on additional
paperwork effort, and some legal liability on your behalf.
Another option we've discussed in the past for Sudo is School Factory
<https://schoolfactory.org/>, a non-profit whose sole purpose is to help
other hackerspaces off the ground. They are more expensive - if I remember
correctly, they charge 10% of all donations (*not* including membership
fees!) - but in exchange you get a lot of handholding in terms of learning
how to do all the paperwork etc, and even classes on leadership, community
building etc.
When we talked to School Factory for Counter Culture Labs, they strongly
advised against doing a voting-membership style organization though,
because of the additional legal complications compared to having a simple
board-run organization.
For CCL, we decided to do the 1023 (501(c)3 application form) ourselves. It
takes a bit of effort, but it's not too bad once you know what is expected.
Kinda like writing Bylaws, really. We managed to dig up 1023 forms from a
number of different organization, including response letters from the IRS
pointing out mistakes in their applications and asking for more info.
Patrik
On Thu, Dec 18, 2014 at 3:29 PM, Phil Wolff <pwolff(a)gmail.com> wrote:
Is there a friendly 501c3 org that would let us operate under their tax
exempt status until we're incorporated and IRS-blessed? Six months to a
year?
I've seen this done properly elsewhere when new projects were starting and
were part of an ecosystem of more established orgs. The umbrella org has
the CPA and bank account for collecting grant money and other donations.
The "client" organization paid a tiny fee to the parent for processing. The
new org would describe themselves as "New Org, a project of Old Org, a
501(c)3 not-for-profit."
Phil Wolff
pwolff(a)gmail.com
skype:evanwolf
+1-510-343-5664
http://about.me/evanwolf bio
<http://letmydatago.org/>http://twitter.com/evanwolf @
http://www.linkedin.com/in/philwolff cv
http://LetMyDataGo.org blog
http://www.facebook.com/philwolff face
On Wed, Dec 17, 2014 at 6:00 PM, Maximilian Klein <isalix(a)gmail.com>
wrote:
1) Do we even really need 501c3? 501c3 is a means
to an end. The benefit
is that large institutions wont donate or grant to us without it. The
downside is that it will cost several hundred dollars and is a PITA from a
effort point of view. Smaller institutions can donate to us and get their
donations tax exempted as long as they do, (and they can) argue that we are
in spirit a non-profit. So we should only get 501c3, if we think other
umbrellas aren't easier, and we see big donations coming in later.
1a) we need to determine the probability of getting such a donation from
a large instituion in the next year
2) Incorporating. It's not enough to just file papers because in a pinch
if we do not act and do all our board meeting officiating properly we could
be dismissed as a farce of a incorporation.
3) changing the articles of incorporation has to happen in sacramento and
is expensive and slow. it's easier to edit the by laws if possible.
4) we need to make records whenever the board of directors issues
dirctives, however small.
5) if we ever became so attached to the omni that it would break sudo
spiritually or financially to move out then we need to get a formal
contract with omni.
6) the IRS is allergic to nonprofits that use certain words like "tea
party" and surprisingly "open source" because they've been burned by
those
types before.
7) treasurer does not have heightened financially responsibility than
anyone else on the board.
Make a great day,
Max Klein ‽ http://notconfusing.com/
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