discuss: Should LDP apply for non-profit status (was Re: VolunteerMatch ...)
Subject:
Re: [discuss] Should LDP apply for non-profit status (was Re: VolunteerMatch ...)
From:
Rick Moen ####@####.####
Date:
17 Apr 2007 22:55:27 -0000
Message-Id: <20070417225523.GF21603@linuxmafia.com>
Quoting David Lawyer ####@####.####
> I've read it and you're right that it doesn't classify us as charitable
> by giving away stuff but by public benefit.
Please read _all_ of the requirements.
> OK, I did post stuff when I hadn't completely investigated. Sorry.
> Right now it seems that we likely qualify for tax exemption as either
> charitable and/or educational except that for charitable it says you
> must be incorporated (like you posted).
Seriously, please do carefully read Publication 557
(http://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-pdf/p557.pdf), and other IRS resources such as
http://www.irs.gov/charities/charitable/article/0,,id=96099,00.html .
501(c)(3) charitable status _includes_ educational groups (along with
conventional charitable, religious, scientific, literary, testing for
public safety, fostering national or international amateur sports
competition, and the preventing cruelty to children or animals groups.
(I'm a little worried that you might fall directly into many of the
exact pitfalls I warned against in the User Group HOWTO.)
> The problem is that I read this from a legislative committee report
> and this report failed to cite anything. You're right of course that
> to clarify this I should cite the statute or caselaw and expand on
> what the law does. There are apparently both exemptions of member
> liability from tort and contracts which implies that an unincorporated
> organization can enter into contracts.
Why do so many computerists go around maintaining that unincorporated
associations cannot enter into contracts? Have they never encountered a
local Boy Scout troop? Scoutmasters and other volunteers who comprise
such troops (and the parents of the scouts) enter into contracts all the
time, in the same ways that anyone else does. That is, they enter into
contracts through their participants doing so.
Please read this thread, where I try to straighten out Silicon Valley
Linux User Group's tendency to fall into those same sets of pitfalls,
having been lead into it by a local ham radio group that keeps promoting
misconceptions on such matters:
http://lists.svlug.org/archives/volunteers/2007q1/000120.html
Anyway, as it happens, I've researched both Federal and California
(e.g., Civil code section 1714.2) legislative liability shields of
volunteers. None I've found is really worth a damn in the usual
circumstances that concern computerists, once you study the particulars.
(The oft-cited Federal one is dissected in the referenced thread.)
