[sudo-discuss] Notes from Meeting With Potential Sudo Lawyer

[Patrik D'haeseleer]

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 at 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 at 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 at 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/
>>
>> _______________________________________________
>> sudo-discuss mailing list
>> sudo-discuss at lists.sudoroom.org
>> https://lists.sudoroom.org/listinfo/sudo-discuss
>>
>>
> _______________________________________________
> sudo-discuss mailing list
> sudo-discuss at lists.sudoroom.org
> https://lists.sudoroom.org/listinfo/sudo-discuss
>
>
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://sudoroom.org/pipermail/sudo-discuss/attachments/20141218/b693fcdd/attachment.html>