permaculture

[Sean Maley <semaley@yahoo.com>]

It is USA-centric and non-profit isn't the same as charitable here.  IRS 
501c3 determination translates to charity here, 501c4 for Land Trusts, etc.  
Both non-profit corporations and a quasi-corporate entity known as a Limited 
Liability Corporation (LLC) may file for 501c3 status with the IRS.  An LLC 
obtaining charity status isn't for amateurs.  It is easy to be a charity if 
you fit into a narrow range of activities like education.

Charity status for a non-profit corporation (in the USA) depends on your 
state and what you say in your "purpose" statement.  We found it necessary to 
first obtain approval from New York State Department of Education for filing 
articles of incorporation, because we indicated education as one of our 
chosen charitable purposes.  The intent for working with Community Land 
Trusts and potential interpretation as "business development" caused us the 
most grief.  The easiest thing for an unpaid lawyer to do in our case was to 
suggest getting rid of activities which resulted in conflict among those 
members left out of the new plans.  Since we don't simply want to educate, 
but rather seek a non-Earth and people destroying culture, we ran into 
difficulty putting this into legalese in a way that maintains our charitable 
intentions.


-Sean.
----- Original Message ----
From: Jim <ashevillecurrencyproject@gmail.com>
To: permaculture@lists.ibiblio.org
Sent: Tuesday, February 6, 2007 2:30:08 PM
Subject: [permaculture] NGOs, 501c3s and USA-centrism


Hi-
Many countries have way to differentiate for-profit and non-profit entities.

501c3s are a creation of the USA tax code. In case you hadn't noticed, 
not everyone on this list is from the United States of America. Though 
those of us from the US tend to think that everyone knows what we mean. 
(And all too often, folks from around the world do. I heard a speaker 
who visited China say that folks there understood where North Carolina 
and Wyoming were. He asked the audience: How many people here know where 
Beijing and Shanghai (new names?) are?)

Judging from an earlier entry that said
"The Permaforest Trust is a not-for-profit education centre and 
demonstration farm created to promote sustainability.[in New South 
Wales]" it looks like this is a similar entity in Australian law.

In contrast, in the United Kingdom, " The Permaculture Association 
(Britain) is an education and research charity registered with the 
Charity Commission for England and Wales 
<http://www.charity-commission.gov.uk>. Our registration number is 290897."
http://www.permaculture.org.uk/mm.asp?mmfile=charitystatus


I'm not writing this for everyone to talk about non-profits, but to 
mention that these are all different from being an accredited NGO.

In the late 1980s, partially to get stodgy governments off their feet, 
the UN started encouraging (even more than they had in the past)
NGOs to register and raise heck. Thus, the organizers of the Earth 
Summit purposely included an citizen parallel summit-- they knew that it 
would collectively be more honest and insightful than the governments.

The Center for this kind of thing is the NGLS (Non-Governmental Liason 
Service)
http://www.un-ngls.org
Though, that said, I didn't find an easy link to how to apply for such 
status (there is both general status, and status for each conference, if 
I remember correctly).

I subscribed to their Go-Between newsletter for years leading up to the 
Earth Summit in 1992 and afterwards.
There is a subscription form on the website noted above.
-- Jim
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