OUR EXPERIENCE
We serve nonprofits of all types and sizes, offering creative legal advice grounded in over 20 years of specialized experience in nonprofit law.
In addition to serving a wide variety of nonprofit organizations, our clients also include donors making significant or complex gifts, businesses forming foundations for cause-marketing campaigns, and nonprofit founders considering the best philanthropic vehicle to meet their needs.
RESOURCES
Free Guides for your Nonprofit Organization
How to Start a Nonprofit
State Registration
Nonprofit Legal Checklist
Taking minutes of nonprofit board meetings
How To Set the Compensation of Nonprofit Executives
How to Start a Nonprofit
Before you form a legal entity and apply for tax-exempt status, you need a strong, well-researched plan for your organization. Download our free guide to learn about the many elements needed to run a successful nonprofit organization, as well as how to avoid common pitfalls and mistakes.
State Registration
Most states require you to register your organization if you solicit donations from their residents. Many states also require registration if your organization collects substantial or ongoing donations from their residents, even if you aren’t specifically targeting donors in that state. Download our comprehensive list of each state’s requirements.
Nonprofit Legal Checklist
There are many legal issues specific to nonprofit organizations that can be easily prevented by taking certain steps early on in the life of the organization. For more established nonprofits, it’s a good idea to conduct a periodic review of your compliance documents, tax filings, and record keeping. We created this checklist to help you understand the items that a lawyer will assess when reviewing the overall legal health of your nonprofit organization.
Taking minutes of nonprofit board meetings
Meeting minutes are a necessary form of record-keeping for all nonprofit organizations, regardless of size. These records can be used as legal evidence by the courts, IRS, and other regulators, so it’s important to ensure minutes are properly completed and stored. But where do you start?
How To Set the Compensation of Nonprofit Executives
Executives from tax-exempt organizations can only be paid “reasonable compensation” for their services.
To avoid excise taxes, nonprofits should strongly consider increasing the time and attention they devote to investigating, deliberating, documenting, and reporting executive compensation.
CharityLawyer Blog offers plain language explanations of complex nonprofit law concepts, discussions of current events and links to valuable resources for nonprofits.
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FEATURED BLOG POSTS
- Enforcing Donor Intent
Donors often ask what happens if a charity takes a restricted gift and then uses it for something else. The charity is bound by the restriction, but the harder question is who can make it comply. In most states that has traditionally been the attorney general, not the donor. Whether a donor can sue depends on the state, and neither Arizona nor Washington has a statute that says so directly. This post covers what donors and charities can rely on in our two states.
- Is the IRS Targeting Specific Nonprofits?
We wrote recently about the historical pattern of governments using tax audits, funding cuts, and stigmatizing labels against nonprofits they disfavor. That post was framed as a general pattern worth watching. This one is about a specific, current allegation that the IRS is targeting specific nonprofits for examination that fits squarely inside it. What Was
- When a Nonprofit Volunteer Is Really an Employee
One of the questions we hear most often from small nonprofits goes something like this, “our office manager has volunteered four days a week for two years, she loves the organization, and she has never asked to be paid. Is that a problem?” The short answer is that it can be. In this post we