[TriLUG] Upcoming vote on TriLUG non-profit status

[Jeremy Portzer]

On 1/02/2011 8:06 AM, Jos Purvis wrote:
>
> As one of the unfortunate souls involved in the early process of
> incorporating as a non-profit, the trilug.org page does a good job of
> summarizing the original purpose for incorporating as a 501(c)
> non-profit: the receipt of donations of money and hardware from local
> businesses and citizens who might not otherwise donate without the tax
> advantage. Receiving those donations from companies in particular is
> often dependent on being a 501(c), because it demonstrates to their
> corporate auditors that the resources in question were donated to a
> legitimate group.
>
> The trilug.org page certainly seems to have a strong opinion in favor
> of dissolving the 501(c) status, and it sounds like the arguments are
> rational. It would be very wise for the steering committee to check
> quickly to make sure the group will not lose access to any current
> privileges as a result of de-incorporating. Be sure to check things
> like meeting space, server hosting, server hardware, bandwidth, and
> activity funding, verifying with any company that donates or offers
> those to the group on any basis that de-incorporating will not make a
> difference to the group's ability to receive those resources. Should
> the group opt to retain 501(c) status, it might be a good idea to
> discuss the idea of creating a more permanent position to track that
> status: in many groups, the Treasurer's position is occupied more or
> less permanently by someone who keeps up with the work
> year-in/year-out in order to provide more continuous coverage.
> Alternately, the group might consider the possibility of not electing
> the entire steering committee every year, to provide more continuity
> (I haven't kept up--apologies if this is already done).
>

Thank you Jos,

As one of the people in a long line of Trilug treasurers / SC members 
who was delinquent in keeping up the organizational duties (updating the 
articles of incorporation, updating the corporate registration with the 
state, filing for non-profit status with the feds, etc), I saw this 
announcement and immediately had the same concerns as you.  Clearly, 
meeting space and the server hosting/bandwidth are the privileges that 
TriLUG is still using today even without "corporate sponsorship" and to 
lose these would be a major problem for the organization.  Back when I 
was on the SC, it was never clear to me exactly what the relationship 
between TriLug and Inflow/Sungard/Sungard AS was.  I never saw any sort 
of contract or MUA that explained what services we were granted, why, 
and how long it lasted.  Hopefully that was formalized since then, but 
if so, you should make sure that this contract does not describe TriLUG 
as a corporation and/or reference its purported non-profit status. (I am 
not sure at what point TriLUG actually HAD non-profit status, but that's 
another discussion.*)   If there is a contract between Sungard and 
TriLUG as a corporation, you I'd have to assume it would cease if the 
corporation is dissolved.

(* When I was on the SC, we were never in possession of any documents 
stating that the TriLUG corporation actually had been granted 501(c)(3) 
status, and hence we removed all references to that from the web site. 
Incorporating with the intent of operating with this status doesn't mean 
you actually have it!  I don't see any references to non-profit status 
now either.  This didn't make a difference in terms of actual tax filing 
requirements, since our income was low enough to be exempt from 
corporate taxes anyway, but we didn't want to mislead potential 
corporate donors.)

I do wish the organization well and am sad I can no longer be a part of 
it.  I hope to visit sometime this spring and visit old friends however!

Cheers,
Jeremy Portzer
jeremyp at pobox.com
(TriLUG Steering Committee member/treasurer/co-chair, 2003-2006)