I have 2 daughters 13/10 who are passionate about dance. They are part of the local dance team (Palm Springs, CA). My friend (also dance mom) and I have decided to form a non profit to help fund some of the workshop, registration costs for our studio's dancers. We're hoping it will expand through the community and eventually offer scholarships, etc. Our basic funding will come from our nutcracker boutique sells, flowers, bake sells, etc. We have our state filing done and are not faced with the daunting task of filing for federal tax exempt status. We are totally overwhelmed with all the legal jargon and paperwork. Can't afford an attorney. Does anyone have any thoughts? tips on how to fill in the 1023 to ensure approval? Or tips on what not to say in the 1023? Thanks so much.

I have recently been involved in the formation of a non-profit, in this case a symphony orchestra.

This is NOT a trivial task. We avoided some costs only because we had some attorneys as playing members, still it was not free by any means.

First, nothing happens with the IRS until you are incorporated as a non-profit in the state in which you have the activity. That had to happen first. There are fees for that which obviously vary state to state.

I play in the orchestra for one ballet company for an annual Nutcracker and they had to carefully segregate the operation of the dance school, which feeds the company, from the ballet company (the people who run both on a day to day basis are essentially the same, but the non-profit ballet company HAD to have an independent board of directors in our state.

Then we had to make application the IRS and that was fairly expensive for the administrative fees to process the request.

It is very difficult to do this unless you have an attorney or a CPA who knows the ropes, but there are a lot of on-line guides as to how to do this. Another of our groups did this in the the District of Columbia and I think they were able to have a do-it-yourself, but I was not involved directly in that action.

We of course had to do this so that our contributors could make tax-deductable donations. It took about six months to put everything together and that was with three attorneys in our group and being in the Washington DC area, our group in incorporated in Maryland, they could walk the paperwork to the IRS which was right across the street from where one of our lawyers worked.

For incorporation, you generally can find information on your state's website, usually either under the Attorney General or the Secretary of State or the Taxation department depending upon the state. You should be able to Google this for each state.

The IRS has several publications on the web to discuss this from their point of view.

Jon

It would be amaing if we could see this as aviable means to su't want to dissapoint my dds but its getting out of hand to handle!rving the expense of dance.....don