Hello and welcome!
I'm not super well-versed in this, but I think the main advantage to getting 501(c)(3) status is in being able to declare any donations as tax-deductible. That's an added incentive for people to make BIG donations if they can claim it on their taxes. There may also be certain grants only 501(c)(3) organizations are eligible for.
Good luck!
Thanks for the help!
Anyone know how long/ hard it is to get 501 status? Do I need to come up with my own charity and file it with the IRS? How do I do that? Is there a special lawyer, accountant or representative that does that for me?
Is it better/ quicker to try and find an existing charity that can be a fiscal sponsor?
Geeez this is turning out to be a lot harder than I thought.......I guess that is why people do not usually do it.
This is what I know from my experience... we were a school project so the school was a 501C so for applying for certain grants I used the school 501C3 #- which was a feat by itself to get access to the number. It turned out the city treasure would be the last person approving my grants and he adding the # on before he mailed the grant. However our back account was a DBA- Doing Business as Carroll School playground committee. We had 2 people that were our treasure. I think it was adviced to us to have 2 people just in case 1 person got ill or wasn't avl when a deposit or withdrawal needed to be made/done.
We thought about becoming a 501C3 oursleves however I looked into it and it would cost well over $1000- unless an accountant/lawyer would have donated service to do it for free and I heard it takes awhile to be approved....maybe years. You could partner with another non profit to use theirs number- I helped with another project and they used the Friends of the Rec Dept 501C3 as an partnership with the playground project.
Good Luck
Sorry I'm late here. Just getting a charity checking account from a bank sounds a little too easy... and it sounds like Thomas Carroll School has found that becoming a 501C3 is pretty hard (and expensive).
On the project I was involved with, we partnered with an existing nonprofit. They collected the money, did the accounting, answered to the IRS and then paid the playground build bills. There were some issues with things getting paid on time, but it worked out pretty well for the most part.