Non-profits exist in our society to provide a service without enriching a set of investors. From your local community association to the large national organizations, non-profit status is authorized by the Internal Revenue Service. In effect, non-profit organizations do not pay income taxes on excess proceeds. However, only certain non-profits are allowed to receive tax-deductible gifts and these non-profits are referred to as public charities. This section is dedicated to helping non-profits achieve their real goal to the community and obtain financial success.
The initial articles focus on the definition of non-profits and charitable organizations. Then there is a series about how to properly start a non-profit from the initial idea to getting an IRS acknowledgement letter. Then there, is a series on how to organize the operational structure. Finally, I pen a series on proper administration and human resources management.
Throughout these articles are informative writings about fundraising; what works, what doesn’t.
They are written to educate the reader, this site isn’t designed like a half hour comedy with instantaneous solutions. The variables and conditions of operations are unique to every organization. Therefore, a good non-profit director must understand the holistic picture and focus on the most critical issues from day-to-day.
As always, any questions or requests for additional articles, please send me an e-mail to dave (use the usual ‘at’ symbol) businessecon.org and I’ll respond in a reasonable period of time. I love to write so my responses are active and I love to learn from you too. Thanks for reading and let me know if I have helped.
Dave
Value Investing Episode 1 – Introduction and Membership Program
This article is about the characteristics of a non-profit organization as compared to those of a profit driven operation. What are the differences? Actually there are NO DIFFERENCES between the two types of operations.
I have had many clients come to me to ask how they could start a non-profit organization. The main purpose of starting a nonprofit is to gain the contribution advantage the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) provides. Why do you need the IRS to authorize this? What is the difference between tax exempt and a charitable organization? How ...
Before you do anything towards starting a non-profit organization, you need to form a brain trust. This is a group of friends that will add their thoughts to your idea and provide you with a platform to begin the process. Their ideas, questions, suggestions, misgivings, and other thoughts expand your thinking beyond a simple idea ...
I have played in about eight of those fundraising golf tournaments and personally ran two more. I found them to be very low in the return on the investment. Furthermore, the risk associated with weather hampers the real bottom line. Overall, I don’t endorse this type of fundraising for your charity. Allow me to walk through ...
Now that your brain trust has evaluated the idea and has endorsed the concept, it is time to go onto step 2 of the process. You will need to create a founding board to start the non-profit organization. The members of the brain trust provided you with names of potential board members.
Raising money while having a good time as a charity can be a challenge. The primary goal of any charity event is to have a good time and remind the participants of the mission of the organization. The secondary goal is to raise money. Bowling brings both attributes to the organization.
Step three of starting a non-profit organization is gathering the potential board members for the first meeting. In step one; you formed a brain trust to validate the mission of the non-profit organization. In step two; you generated a list of potential board members by identifying sources and creating profiles. In this step, you have to get ...
Section 6033 of the Internal Revenue Code requires tax exempt organizations to file an annual report. Form 990 fulfills this requirement. Many citizens utilize the information from Form 990 to evaluate the non-profit organization they donate to annually. The 990 covers much of the information any citizen desires to know about the charity of their choice.
A public charity is another term for the coveted Internal Revenue Code Section 501(c)3 status. This designation allows all donations made to the charity to be tax deductible for taxpayers. To obtain this designation, the organization must have the proper provisions within the organizing documents.
