Non-Profit Corporation Essentials
Am I required to have directors' meetings for my non-profit corporation?
Yeah you're required to have meetings actually for pretty much most corporations, and under most state laws they want at least have an annual meeting where you elect the officers of the corporation. Now in non-profit corporations, you also have some extras depending on your state. In other words, in many states they want to make sure that some of the directors are not in the day to day running of the business, whereas for most for-profit corporations you can have, like, three directors be the three founders who work every day at the business. And the reason for this is pretty obvious. They want to make sure that no three people are kind of colluding to hide the profits or to pocket them or to embezzle money. And they want to make sure that since this is either a charity or some sort of, you know, some sort of a corporation for the betterment of humanity that it's actually going to that. So meetings are very essential, having individuals who are independent is also very essential. I think that having people who are connected, whether it's politically or socially in the area is always great. For instance, if you were going to start up a non-profit and it was going to be to help train inner city youth in music, let's say in woodwinds, you might want to go to the local philharmonic and find the person who's directing it, and ask them to sit on the board. Because they are a person who understands music, and they are a person who's interested in music and they would lend some credibility to your organization. The organization really is formed to help the children with their music.
Do I have to file a tax return for my non-profit corporation?
Yes. Every corporation has to file a tax return whether it's for profit or non-profit. What a non-profit does is it files kind of an informational, is what it's called, a tax return. So it doesn't show profit; so it doesn't pay taxes and is tax-exempt obviously but you still have to show the IRS that you're keeping the proper methods of accounting and how the money's coming in and how it's going out. They definitely are going to want to know that.
What is "founder's syndrome"?
The nonprofit area, founder's syndrome is commonly referred to when a founder follows their own vision more than their business statement and what their nonprofit objective is. So, often, and I hope this isn't normally the case, with founder's syndrome the real reason isn't necessarily for the improvement of society, but for some good PR, or because you like to hit page 6 of the paper. If that's the case, a lot of states require that the board be made up of people that aren't in the day to day running, and the board will be at least 3 people, so that one founder can't control the vision of the company and make it their own with founder's syndrome. Even for states that don't require 3 directors, I like to say when it comes to directors you hire at least three, and really the more the better as long as they are the types of pillars of society that are really going to help your cause.
Is my non-profit corporation eligible for discounts on postage?
Generally it is, I would definitely think you would want to check on the post office about that. If you go to the post office's website, which is www.usps.com, so that's United States Postal Service.com, you can find out on that. I believe that you'll probably have to fill out some paper work, and they'll probably want to take a look at your taxes and status, or at least the numbers you get from it, and you'd be moving on from there, and you'd be able to get discounts on postage, bulk rates and stuff.
