Project Stacking and 501c3 Status

Tomorrow morning is my second meeting with the board of directors of Exist With Initiative, and I’m incredibly excited for every agenda item. This will be the first time that we vote on anything.

After speaking individually to each board member, we finally have officers ready to volunteer for Secretary and Treasurer positions. While my board members have diverse backgrounds and are rich in character, none of us are finance professionals.

I am still getting comfortable asking unpaid volunteers to do work, and since being a board member is a nontrivial responsibility to begin with, I was hesitant to ask members to assume officer positions. To apply for tax exemption – 501c3 status – the IRS requires a three-year budget forecast, a conflict-of-interest policy, bylaws, and at least three officers: President, Treasurer, and Secretary. Many people have experienced the “I’ll just do everything” role in a group project at least one time or another, but I learned that having a separation of responsibilities is considered more ethical – it decreases the potential for corruption.

One of my board members put me in contact with a person that forwarded me an invitation to a coffee-and-conversation meeting for nonprofits with the local Chamber of Commerce. I was hoping the person who forwarded the invitation would either be looking for an officer role on a board or would know somebody that seemed like a perfect fit. While the meeting with the Chamber was fruitful in perspective, networking, and support, I didn’t find a Treasurer. The person who invited me gave me some advice though which helped me move forward. I asked him what sorts of qualities or background he recommends I look for in a Treasurer. He didn’t say somebody with a finance background or with previous nonprofit experience. He confidently said, “somebody you trust”.

I texted one of my closest friends that listened to me shape this idea over the last year, is already on the board, has a management graduate degree, is incredibly hardworking and trustworthy, and that I worked with closely in the aerospace industry. He said he’d love to.

Another member of the board is happy to become Secretary, and the other is excited to help develop our programs and get into grant writing. The member who is becoming Treasurer pointed me to a book last year that talked a lot about “project stacking”. The concept is basically, “how many birds can I kill with one stone?” For example, as soon as we apply for tax exemption, I am going to start a writers-group through the nonprofit’s Passion Groups program. This acts as outreach, passive fundraising, a way to provide space/community for people to work on their passions, and a way to work on my own writing projects all while executing the nonprofit's programs.

This tangent is related to board and officer roles because we’re all project stacking our responsibilities. I’m gaining leadership and project management experience that can be applied in my aerospace career, and my board members are all taking responsibilities that excite them and can be applied outside of our organization as well – all while doing something good for the world.

This month we’ll submit our request for tax exemption (filing a 1023 form), and I’m going to go through a third party to increase the chances of acceptance on our first try. A perfect application could take six months to a year, and errors would make it longer. As soon as the application goes through, we’re implementing our programs. We won’t be able to fundraise or solicit donations until we register for solicitations in the state of Maryland (another step of course), and that won’t occur until we have 501c3 status. I’m calling it though; we’ll be tax-exempt this summer and fundraising this fall.