That is exactly the kind of strategy we will have to employ to be able to maximize what we can make off the ballroom. As many activities as possible need to be justifiable as charitable so that we can sometimes have a big non-charitable event that brings in a lot of money.

On 11/6/15 10:25 PM, Torrie Fischer wrote:
I'd always been told that a non profit can sell things and rent out things as 
long as its within the purpose as filed with a 501c3 application. The Omni's 
(abridged) legal purpose is to educate, do science, fight oppression, and 
operate property to facilitate that. If there's an A/V group that wants to put 
on badass professional shows while simultaneously /teaching/ people how to put 
on badass professional shows (like a vocational school, for example), thats 
legit, right?

If not, could the purpose be legally amended to accommodate a new goal 
somehow? "fostering oakland culture" or something just nebulous enough to pass 
the IRS.

I'm not a tax lawyer, don't know any, and have not been party to what sounds 
like a very thorough discussion group so I hope someone tells me why I'm a 
fool.

On Friday, November 06, 2015 10:09:16 PM yar wrote:

On Fri, Nov 6, 2015 at 9:00 PM, Torrie Fischer <tdfischer@hackerbots.net> 

wrote:

Is not making money an implicit attribute of being a Non Profit or
something?

Sort of. You can make money, but most of it has to be from charitable
donations. There's complicated math about exactly how much - at least
60%, but for large donations only the first $5k counts towards the
total, it's based on a 4-year average, etc etc etc. The more
non-charitable income you get, the more you have to worry about that
stuff, and there's incentive to structure as much income as you can as
"donations". The fundraising working group has been working for months
on this, and the plan is for many member collectives to become
fiscally sponsored by Omni, and all their members' payments to be
called donations instead of dues. Most events that we do in the
ballroom are educational, and collecting door money could fit into a
donations framework pretty easily.



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