[Community_garden] Non-profit status and Tax IDs

[adam36055 at aol.com]

 Two Ways to be Tax Decuctible: 
 
 1) You organize as a 501(c)(3) like the Clinton Community Garden in NYC, which has regular monthly steering committee meetings, an annual general meeting, a bank account, and acts like a grown up organization for it's third of an acre and 5.000 keyholders. This way you have your hands on the money, write the letters, and after a while, it ain't too hard. 
 
 2) Or you have Mom and Dad handle your money. The way a newish organization that I'm the VP of, the DeWitt Clinton Park Conservancy deals with tax deductibility is to have our cash contributions funneled through Friends of the Hudson River Park, which has a huge budget, and a pre-existing 501(c)(3). You just have to make sure that folks who are writing those checks to the larger organization write the name of your group clearly (Print is best) in the notes section of the check and you keep track of those contributions on your group's ledger to avoid mistakes AND to make sure that the thank you letter comes back to the nice contributors on your letterhead. 
 
 The venerable Liz Christy Garden on the Lower East Side has a similar arrangement with Green Guerillas. 
 
 Best wishes, 
 Adam Honigman
 Hell's Kitchen
 NYC
    
 -----Original Message-----
 From: remyj at uci.edu
 To: community_garden at list.communitygarden.org
 Sent: Mon, 12 Mar 2007 11:20 AM
 Subject: [Community_garden] Non-profit status and Tax IDs
 
  I'm the Treasurer for a small community garden that's been around for about
20 years.  Recently, we've been trying to solicit donations for various
items that we need, and we've discovered this to be very difficult because
we aren't officially registered as a non-profit organization and we don't
have a Tax ID #.
 
>From what I can tell, garnering non-profit status seems time-consuming and
expensive, so I'm just not sure this is an option for our little group.
 
Does anyone out there have experience with the non-profit process and can
you give advice on how difficult and expensive it is?  Or is there some
other way to go about receiving donations without needing a Tax ID#?
 
Thank you,
Jana Remy
Verano Community Garden Assoc.
Irvine, CA
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