On Mon, Jan 31, 2011 at 4:47 PM, <[email protected]> wrote: > On Mon, 31 Jan 2011, Tom Perrine wrote: > >> Maybe having the "core" LOPSA organization be activist is a square >> peg/round hole problem. I know that advocacy was one of the sticking >> points that was discussed often during our long struggle for >> tax-exempt status. > > for those of us who are unaware of the discussions, can you fill us in onwhy > this was a sticking point?
This was related to some of the restrictions on a 501(3)c and other tax exempt statuses: To be tax-exempt under section 501(c)(3) of the Internal Revenue Code, an organization must be organized and operated exclusively for exempt purposes set forth in section 501(c)(3), and none of its earnings may inure to any private shareholder or individual. In addition, it may not be an action organization, i.e., it may not attempt to influence legislation as a substantial part of its activities and it may not participate in any campaign activity for or against political candidates. Since none of us were IRS specialists, there was initially some concern about how much advocacy we would be able to do under that charter. There are a set of tax exempt options, see irs.gov for the list. Since we were in the "evaluation period" (forever) with the IRS, we wanted to make sure that we weren't (at that time) doing anything to negatively impact our application. Campaigns and candidates are easy: don't. But what is "a substantial part" of our activities. If we want to lobby, we had better (IMHO) have a lot of other stuff going on, and a track record of other stuff, before we do very much in that area. Does this help? It was a very tumultuous time, and the IRS lost our application at least twice?, so there was a lot going on during the launch. --tep
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