Help us become an official Non-Profit – First Attack
CRASH Space has been operating with the soul of a non-profit. We’ve kept costs as low as possible for classes that don’t get taught much of anywhere else, or, when they are, cost an arm and a leg. We run a skin of our teeth budget for the space. I’d say 90% of what’s in there is donated or on loan from people who are excited about sharing their passion and expertise with the world. Everything we do is brought about by the hard work of volunteers. However, it won’t be official until we complete the process to obtain 501(c)3 status.
Becoming a non-profit will open up new funding sources to help CRASH Space further it’s mission. We’d like to continue to teach people interesting, useful stuff they wouldn’t otherwise have learned as cheaply as possible. We’re hoping to be able to subsidize a “scholarship” fund, perhaps even help fund some opensource community projects, etc.
To complete the process, we need cash for the application fees and a lawyer with California 501(c)3 (and CRASH Space) experience. He is going to file for our change in status as well as totally reinvent our corporate structure as a membership based corporation. We are hoping to raise $5,000 (US) to cover his fees, taxes, transaction costs and hopefully to put any residual into the scholarship fund.
We hate to ask, but we all want CRASH Space to not only live long and prosper but really make an impact here in LA and in as part of the bigger hackerspace movement. The membership has piles of ideas and crazy antics on-hand for raising this much need funding, but the most efficient way to solve the problem is through donations, so please help us start the process by giving here:
To borrow a trick from public radio, if you participate in the pre-fund-drive-fund-drive, we’ll have to do less interrupting of our usually awesome blog for things like this.
Thank you so much, from all of us!
Created from pictures taken by the Crash Cam
thanks for kicking this off, carlyn. asking nicely is the first step.
The second step involves ROBOTS and LASERS!
If you want non-profit status today, contact me and we can give it to you so you can start collecting funds immediately towards your ultimate AWESOME!
TX/RX Labs in Houston just finished our 501(c)3 and a suggestion might be to look into if Cali has a free attorney service for non-profits like we have here in texas. Just a thought as we were able to get it done for only the filing fee with the help of one of the most respected law firms here in town who worked for us for free.
I think TXRX Labs used one of the local college’s legal clubs to get their 501(c)3.
I’ll try to get more details tonight.
This is from a guy on the TX/RX mailing list:
—————-
It is incredibly inexpensive to form a nonprofit. If you are willing to
do the filling work yourself, it is next to nothing.
The IRS has some excellent documentation. Here is one I’ve used in the
past: http://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-pdf/p4220.pdf
Cheers,
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I got some more info at TX/RX’s weekly open house last night.
They reached out to: Texas Accountants and Lawyers for the Arts
A quick google search came up with a similarly named organization in CA
http://www.calawyersforthearts.org/
http://www.vlany.org/legalservices/vladirectory.php#ca
Thanks everyone.
We’ve been hashing out the paperwork for a long time, so we are going with the guy who knows us well already and can get it done in a week once we have the money.
And thanks James!!! The School Factory is great, and New Blankets has given us the same offer – but since we’re reforming as a membership coorp as well, we’re gonna try to go through with this.