Here’s an example of how things go in non-profit organizations.
In the summer of 1999 I read in Wooden Canoe that the WCHA was incorporated as 501-c-7, (social club) rather than a 501-c-3 organization (educational organization.) I work with non-profits and this puzzled me. So I wrote Jack Gregg, then a Board member, about it. There were advantages to being a 501-c-3 and I thought it would be good for the WCHA to become one.
Jack wrote back that he would look into and he did and then there then followed a long period in which he forwarded me bylaws, articles of incorporation, and we reviewed together the whole history of the incorporation of the WCHA. He brought all this to the Board’s attention, the Board appointed a sub-committee to look into and make a recommendation. It was studied. Together with my wife, who is a lawyer who works with nonprofits, I put together a plan for how the WCHA might go about becoming a 501-c-3.
All this took until the summer of 2002. Meantime, two presidents of the Board died (Dave Baker being one and Tom MacKenzie served briefly as interim President: forgive me but I forget the other name) and about February 2003, Bill Conrad took up the chore. I emailed him a bunch of stuff that I hoped would bring him up to speed on the 501-c-3 thing. At that summer’s Assembly at the membership meeting, applying for reclassification as a 501-c-3 was presented and, after some debate and discussion, approved. (Jack Gregg by this time was off the Board, I think.)
On July 15th, 2003 paperwork was filed by Bill with the IRS to change the classification to 501-c-3. Bill and the lawyers guessed the IRS might get around to approving this change by the end of the year. Lo and behold, about two weeks after Bill sent off the paperwork the IRS replied that of course we should have been originally recognized as a 501-c-3 in the first place and not as a social club and they were immediately and retroactively recognizing the WCHA as such! (And that must set some kind of record for action by the IRS.)
As I wrote Jack in February 2004, “I’m very pleased about how 501-c-3 thing worked out. Its amazing, though, how much time was spent to deliberate and make the change when finally it was self-evident that the original lawyers and IRS had just goofed up.”
All this is not a complaint, by the way. It just shows how slow things can go sometimes in a non-profit. I make it about four years from the idea to getting the job done.