[TriLUG] Upcoming vote on TriLUG non-profit status

[Aaron Joyner]

I thought I'd chime in on this with a bit more personal color.  I have
attempted to give money to TriLUG in the past, and been blocked by the
lack of the 501(c) status.  In particular, Google has a few charitable
giving and gift-matching programs which Googlers can leverage to
funnel funds to non-profits of our choosing.  The most salient of
which was the SPC (Self Powered Commuter) program.  When I lived in
CA, I biked to work most every day for several years, accumulating
lots of miles logged in the SPC program.  In short, for each day you
bike in, you can donate $$ to a non-profit.  In short, after amassing
on the order of four figures worth of money, I went to go figure out
how to donate it to TriLUG.  After much wrangling, because TriLUG
isn't incorporated with NC as a 501(c)3, I wasn't able to donate the
money to TriLUG.  It went to the EFF, so imho it wasn't a total loss,
but I'd have much rather padded the pizza fund with that money.  :)

I'm sure I'm not the only person who's tried to donate money through
similar corporate vehicles, but been unable to.  I realize it's a pain
to maintain the paperwork with the state, but in terms of viability of
the organization, I do think it's worth it.

Aaron S. Joyner

PS - I won't be able to make the next meeting, so I'll have to resign
myself to hopefully swaying some minds via the mailing list.


On Mon, Jan 31, 2011 at 7:49 PM, Jeremy Portzer <jeremyp at pobox.com> wrote:
> 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)
>
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