[Community_garden] Non-profit status and Tax IDs

Mon Mar 12 19:18:36 EDT 2007

Hi all,
Just to put the two methods offered by Adam into the perspective of a coalition effort, I offer the following excerpt from "Growing a Community Food System" (Garrett, Steven and Feenstra, Gail, 1999). Our list has three ways, with the first having separate coalition members take in money; with their various tax status. This would not help the individual garden seeking tax status, which I think is the context that Adam was responding to.........

"There are three usual scenarios for developing a leadership structure.
Each scenario starts with the development of a diverse coalition. In the first
scenario, the coalition will remain a coalition, such as Garden City Harvest
or the Park Village Farm projects mentioned earlier. 

The second and perhaps most common structure is that the coalition develops a non-profit organization before they start implementing projects, such as the Tahoma Food System and PlacerGROWN, the two models that follow this section. This structure requires 501(c)(3) incorporation with the Internal Revenue
Service, a Board of Directors, and yearly financial reporting. An executive
director usually leads non-profit organizations.

The third leadership structure is that the project remains under the
501(c)(3) status of another established organization, such as the Seattle
Youth Garden Works does with The Greater Church Council of Seattle. This
structure relies heavily on the continued benevolence of the parent organization.

Deciding what structure your project will use right from the start is
invaluable. This will allow you to plan for the costs and time involved if you
are forming a non-profit organization. Once an organizational structure
has been decided upon, key leadership development opportunities need to
be kept in mind as projects are created. Community participants can be
actively engaged and mentored in taking on new responsibilities.
Systems also need to be in place for personnel management. 

A clear understanding of roles and responsibilities needs to be developed and
understood by staff, volunteers, and the coalition or organizational leaders.
These should be put into writing and distributed to everyone involved in
carrying out the projects."

adam36055 at aol.com wrote:  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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_______________________________________________
The American Community Gardening Association listserve is only one of ACGA's services to community gardeners. To learn more about the ACGA and to find out how to join, please go to http://www.communitygarden.org

To post an e-mail to the list:  community_garden at list.communitygarden.org

To subscribe, unsubscribe or change your subscription:  http://list.communitygarden.org/mailman/listinfo/community_garden_list.communitygarden.org

Steven Garrett, PhC, MS, RD
Ph.D. Candidate, Social and Environmental Geography
University of Washington and
Nutrition Education Evaluation Specialist
Washington State University

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