bmull Newbie
Joined: 07 Apr 2011
Online Status: Offline Posts: 1
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Posted: 07 Apr 2011 at 12:03 | IP Logged
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I’m working with four other local educators to put together a yearly, free
professional development event for teachers. A local university is going to
donate the space and allow us to host 250 educators for a one-day
conference.
The event will be free for teachers. We are looking to get a couple of
sponsors that will handle the cost of supplies (nametags, snacks, other
odds and ends) as well as some that might donate items for door prizes.
There is absolutely no intent to make any money off of this event.
This is actually a nationwide effort being done in other states, though
each one is independent of the other. Being non-profit, I’m investigating
how to handle this. I want to outline for you what I’ve been hearing.
1. We do not necessarily need to get 501 (c) 3 status. This would be
good for us as it looks like quite a process. We don’t have a board or
charter or anything like that. We’re just five volunteers who want to pull
this together.
2. We should get an EIN as a non profit and then setup a bank account
to hold the money donated from sponsors. I found the online form where
we would apply for that EIN.
3. From what I’ve been told, as long as we keep a small sum of money
less (than about $500) in this account, we won’t need to file as we won’t
be collecting interest. I don’t anticipate us having more than this in the
account. It’s just for supplies and all.
4. If a company donates items for door prizes or if they donate the
supplies for the event, we don’t need to do anything with that, but we
can't give them letters that will allow them to make the contributions tax deductible (again, don't think that's a big deal for this).
Does this all sound correct to you? We want to pull this off, but at the
same time, we don’t want to get involved in filing or doing anything that
would affect our own status.
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