HELP with 501c3 status!!!

[catstamm]

We have some wonderful people looking into it for us but, we can't have enough help! Any suggestions would be great! Katie and I have not had the time or money to establish ourselves as a 501c3.....can anyone point us in the right direction? Is anyone under an umbrella w/ a national rescue? We are going broke and need help! The only money coming in is adoption fees and anyone who does rescue knows that doesn't pay to much of the vet bills....:pray: :pray: :pray:

[areese]

Gosh...it's such a difficult process. Our Art Association was going to go ahead and get that status (we are incorporated as a not for profit organization but not a 501c3) but it was so involved ..we chickened out. YOu think you could get a doxie loving lawyer to volunteer his or her services for the paperwork?? There's gotta be someone out there...

[Tex]

Oh Cat....I have no idea what legal stuff you're talking about, but I do know that rescue requires support and FUNDING. Good luck with everything. Keep us posted.

[Patt]

As I suggested before I would contact your local IRS they have all the forms. Have you contacted Janet or Dena? They are both located in So. CA I'm sure they could advise you. I know Janet has the 501c3 status. Good luck!

[lotsadox]

I know that it's a lot of paperwork, but that will not guarantee you any funding. You are going to need to establish a donor base (this can be done without 501c3 status) and have fund raising events to help out. Adoption fees alone will not pay the bills. Dachshund Rescue of Houston has 2 major events a year and also Reliant Dog Show. The 2 events bring in a couple of thousand each (sometimes more) and dog show usually brings in another $800 or $1000. We usually have 50 dogs in rescue and right now have about 10 being boarded which really eats into the money. We never have enough. We have one :angel7: who gives us $1,000 every once in a while or sometimes pays our boarding or vet bills and alot of people like me who give $100 when they can. Donor base is essential and does not require 501c3.

It took a couple of years to get our 501c3. I wasn't involved in doing it, but I know that Shelly and Kathy worked on it for ages. They did it themselves without a lawyer. Shelly said that it just took a lot of paperwork. I also remember her saying that they had to have a lot of records of financing and adoptions. If you haven't started a separate checking account for your rescue, I suggest that you do that first. Use a checkbook/accounting software to keep your records. Something like Quickbooks/Quicken if you can. And keep all your adoption paperwork organized. It will save you a lot of time and work when you try to get the 501c3 status. Good luck and keep us posted.

[Courtney]

CTDR just got its permanent 501c3 and I understand it was a very long process with lots of paperwork. I think you will need to find a lawyer and/or accountant. I don't really know anything about it, but I am sure you can find something through google. Good luck!

[Lisa]

The fund raising sounds great too! When we have our dachshund meetups we always put in a couple of dollars and if the money isn't needed for the space the rest goes to Canadian Dachshund Rescue. Also Rob brings in rescue people and they do bling collars and sell stuff etc every couple of months. It's great, because you get a lot of neat doxie items AND it's going to a good cause.

Plus you can do 50/50 draws and raffles etc. It's great....here is the picture and shirt we won from the last raffle, to give you an idea.

http://static.flickr.com/35/104441243_32d96d584e.jpg
http://www.imagestation.com/picture/sraid201/pa810c8c6b71ef6f41beda026b790a51c/eff75f4f.jpg

Here are the bling collars we got, I think they were $20, + $4 per letter - JanUet to you remember? They are VERY popular.
http://www.imagestation.com/picture/sraid202/p91752541878bfaabce891cc9c32a314e/eff2a7aa.jpg

And I have never once asked if CDR is not for profit or not, because there are no tax receipts for events anyway. If you don't have a dachshund meetup in your area, you might want to start one and then do some fund raising. You can go through the yellow pages and search all vets and see if they would let you put up flyers for any "big" events too! Once they see Cami, how could they say no?

[Katie@sddoxierescue.org]

I know that it's a lot of paperwork, but that will not guarantee you any funding. You are going to need to establish a donor base (this can be done without 501c3 status)

We have received some donations without having our 501c3, but we've also had people who don't want to donate once we tell them we can't provide them with a receipt for their taxes since we're not "official." Having a 501c3 also opens the door to grants, some of which are thousands of dollars. In the end, we think having that status will really help us.

The last event we had a booth at was not dog-specific, so while we got a lot of attention and people wanting to pet the dogs, we took in a whopping $19 in donations. It cost us more in gas to get there than that. :sosad:

[Lisa]

Oh Katie, that IS sad!!! I hope you guys get it without too much trouble. You are an amazing bunch of :angel7: :angel7: doing a fabulous job. :bigrayz: :bigrayz: :bigrayz: :bigrayz:

[catstamm]

Such cute stuff Lisa, love the collars...but, who pays for all these things? The calendars we are selling for cami have helped us raise some money for her future but, if we had had to pay to have them made we really would have more than 5.00 profit per calendar :confused:
Maybe we have to get more established and find those generous people out there!:duh: