researching a NPO

[Mephisto893]

I've been doing a little reading on non-profit organizations, and a few things have come up. some points that caught my eye.


At is most basic, the mission statement describes the overall purpose of the organization. It addresses the question "Why does the organization exist?"

When writing the mission statement, try include description of what you think will be the new nonprofit's
a) primary benefits and services to clients
b) groups of clients who will benefit from those services
c) values that will guide how your nonprofit will operate
d) how you'd like others to view your nonprofit


In some cases, you might find and work with another nonprofit organization that will act as your fiscal sponsor. A fiscal sponsor might be useful to you if your nonprofit:
1) Does not have sufficient resources to handle startup costs and fees
2) Does not have sufficient skills initially to manage your finances
3) Will address a community need and then no longer need to exist.

Here's the original article.

Discuss?

[AnyAnon]

Nothing to discuss really. We'd just need sushi take a look into this and give his OK, considering that he's the guy working on the gov. grant. But having a nice lil' NPO would most definitely increase our chances of getting a grant IMO.

[Guest]

Excellent work. This is exactly the kind of targeted research we need to be conducting to get this started. The next step is to figure out the details of the organization; such as operational capacity, service area, purpose, objectives, etc.

Once all this is figured out, then I'd recommend using LegalZoom to help file all the necessary legalities and paperwork involved; although this costs money so we have to figure out all of the aforementioned things first. But this is definitely a big step in the right direction!

Also, just as a heads up--I have very little knowledge on the legal aspects of setting up NPO's and the processes that go on related to managing them, I just deal with the funding opportunities that they offer. We might want to find someone who knows about it before actually pushing this through into action.

[Bman]

Seems a little backwards though.

http://www.irs.gov/charities/article/0,,id=96210,00.html
According the irs site: "For the Internal Revenue Service (the IRS) to recognize an organization's exemption, the organization must be organized as a trust, a corporation, or an association"

So first we need to actually organize as a trust/corp/association in the state/federally before we can proceed into filing as an NPO.

[long haired larry]

Who's gunna do that?

[Gravitas]

Incorporation isn't particularly difficult.

Here is the law:

http://legis.state.sd.us/statutes/DisplayStatute.aspx?Type=Statute&Statute=47-1A

Key sections:
Forms, fees, articles of incorporation.

[long haired larry]

are you sure were a business? or is that what all "legal bodies" are called?

EDIT: someone is going to need to do alot of explaining, getting anons to try at something and learn basic legal might be the hardest part of this whole thing. I also think it's best if most people more or less understand whats going on instead of the head legalfags sneering at them and saying "I know whats best".

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