I've got the form 1023 application for 501c3 tax-exempt status ready to send
out except
- I need folks to review it here.
- I need to photocopy it.
- I need to fill out form 8718, wherein we give the QRS $150 for thinking
about giving us 501c3 status (this is an easy form).
- Mark needs to cut a check for $150.
I'm not going to enter the full form here. Much of it is extremely boring
stuff like the name of the corporation, when our annual accounting period
ends, whether or not we are a private foundation or a church, and whether
we have any endowments. I'm pretty sure I answered all that right, and if
you don't trust me you can come look at the hard copy. I don't want to
type all that. If you want to see the blank form and instructions, you can
get it (look for Forms 1023 and 8718) from the IRS's web site at
http://www.irs.ustreas.gov/prod/forms_pubs/index.html
Since I didn't want to type a lot of stuff on the form, most of the longer
answers to questions are on attachments. Copies of all 16 attachments are
in the files ~janc/501c3/a01.txt through ~janc/501c3/a16.txt . (These are
identical to what I'm sending to the IRS, except they get ones that are
more prettily formatted.) The data for the financial part of the form is
is ~aruba/reports/501c3 . Some of this appears in the attachments too.
I'm going to enter all the vaguely interesting parts of the form in this item
though. Most of this has been discussed in this conference before.
54 responses total.
PART I - IDENTIFICATION OF APPLICANT
item 3: Contact Person.
I listed myself and gave my phone number.
item 6: Activity Codes.
Here we have to choose from their list of several hundred catagories.
We choose these two as primary and secondary goals:
123 Discussion groups, forums, panels, lectures, etc.
560 Supplying money, goods, or services to the poor.
item 9,10: Have we filled tax returns?
We haven't. Attachment 1 explains that it is because we have never
earned over $25,000 a year and so are not required to.
item 11: They want copies of our articles of incorporation and bylaws.
These are attachments 2 and 3.
PART II - ACTIVITIES AND OPERATIONAL INFORMATION
Item 1 in part II is the big enchilada. This is where we explain what we are
doing that qualifies us to be worthy of a tax exemption. Our answer is
attachment 4, which has been modified only in small ways since we last
discussed it here. Here's the whole thing:
Attachment Number 4
Cyberspace Communications, Inc (EID 38-2998091)
Form 1023, Part II, Item 1:
Question:
Provide a detailed narrative description of all the activities
of the organization--past, present, and planned. Do not merely refer
to or repeat the language in the organizational document. List each
activity separately in the order of importance based on the relative time
and other resources devoted to the activity. Indicate the percentage of
time for each activity. Each description should include, as a minimum,
the following: (a) a detailed description of the activity including
its purpose and how each activity furthers your exempt purpose; (b)
when the activity was or will be initiated; (c) where and by whom the
activity will be conducted.
Response:
Cyberspace Communications has activities in the following
four areas:
A. Maintaining and developing Grex. The primary activity of
Cyberspace Communications, occupying about 95% of our organization's
time, is the operation of a public-access computer system called "Grex"
(after the Latin word for "group"). This computer system is currently
housed in a rented room at 416 West Huron Street in Ann Arbor and has
been in continuous operation since June of 1991. It is operated by a
volunteer staff under the direction of the Cyberspace Communications
board of directors and currently has about 18,000 registered users.
Grex provides a wide range of services to the community that further
the mission of Cyberspace Communications:
1. A bank of dial-in modem lines in Ann Arbor (at 734-761-3000)
and an Internet connection (at grex.cyberspace.org) are available.
These allow people in the Ann Arbor area to easily access our
service (through the dial-in lines), but also allows access by
people all over the world (through the Internet connection).
Maintaining our own direct dial-in service means that even
people with only "obsolete" computers (readily available for
less than $40) can easily use all our services.
2. A simple registration process enables users coming in from either
the dial-in lines or the Internet to create Grex accounts for
themselves. This process is designed to be as barrier-free as
possible, encouraging the widest possible range of users to
access our system. Users are not required to pay any fees, nor
are they required to give any information about themselves.
Accounts are created immediately and there is no delay in gaining
access.
This registration process is the key to our charitable mission.
It enables a wide variety of people who could not otherwise
afford Internet services to use our system. We serve many poor
people as well as other users who could not justify paying
commercial rates for services they only use occasionally. People
from all over the world connect over the Internet to access services
that are prohibitively expensive or completely unavailable in
their own countries.
Our open registration policy also supports our educational
mission. Our free and anonymous access means we have a very
large population of young users, as well as many older users
who want to experiment with the Internet without paying to do so.
3. We produce a variety of instructional materials, both printed
and electronic, designed to help people learn to use Grex. We
answer hundreds of user questions a week through E-mail and our
on-line live help facility.
Educating users in the use of Grex is a necessary component of
both our educational and charitable mission.
4. Grex hosts electronic conferences on more than 100 topics, all
of which are open to all of our users. Typical conference topics
include music, the arts, writing, consumer information, housing,
finance, small business, philosophy, living with disabilities,
men's and women's issues, parenting, pets, computers hardware
and software, nature, cyberpunk, and role playing games. There
are also rather non-topical "creative" conferences, and a general
discussion area called "agora". All Cyberspace Communications
policies are discussed and developed in a public conference called
"coop".
These discussion forums are the key to our educational mission.
The only direct teaching done by Cyberspace Communications is
focused on how to use our system. Our broader educational mission
is served by providing and maintaining these discussion forums
where the content is entirely generated by the users. The wide
range of users attracted by our open access policy ensures a wide
range of knowledge and opinion. On-line forums are very effective
in drawing people with diverse backgrounds into shared discussions.
Cyberspace Communications does not attempt to limit discussion to
"serious" topics. We believe that simply socializing on line can
greatly aid the personal development of many of our young users.
On-line forums can be a very non-threatening environment in which
to learn social skills, up to and including those needed to
democratically run a community service, and to gain proficiency
in written communications.
5. Grex provides a range of basic Internet services, allowing all
users to send and receive E-mail, surf the web, and publish their
own web pages. In all cases, our service is of much lower quality
than commercial servers, using older, non-graphical user interfaces
and a rather slow Internet connection, but it is nevertheless usable.
Providing these services for free is an important part of our
charitable mission, and helping people learn their use is an important
part of our educational mission.
6. Grex runs on a sophisticated Unix system, to which all users are
given full access. As a volunteer operation, Cyberspace Communication
constantly works to recruit and train new people to help run Grex.
For several people, experience using or running Grex has been a vital
step in launching or advancing careers in computing.
7. Out of necessity, Grex's staff must be very active in policing
the system, ensuring that hostile users do not abuse our service to
the detriment of our other users or of other systems on the Internet.
However, we recognize that many of the "problem" users are, in fact,
young people who need guidance to become good citizens of the net,
so we strive to respond to problems in an educational rather than
punitive manner. We believe we have had a very good success rate
with this.
B. Publicizing the services offered through Grex. Grex is well-established
and well-known and word- of-mouth advertising already brings us more users
than we can easily handle, so publicity currently accounts for under 2%
of our time. We do do some publicity focused on Ann Arbor area users,
and we increase our publicity whenever we expand our resources.
C. Fundraising to support Grex. We are primarily funded by donations from
our users. We have not been very active in seeking outside funding lest
we lose the sense of being a "grass roots" organization, nor do we like
to pressure our users for money very much lest we scare off people who
cannot afford to pay. Thus our fundraising is very passive, consuming
less than 2% of our time.
D. Repair and distribution of used computers. In the past Cyberspace
Communications has coordinated the repair and distribution of second-hand
computers to people who need them to access Grex and lacked the money or
expertise to obtain them. There has been little demand for this to date,
so this activity has accounted for less than 1% of our time.
Users of Grex engage in a wide range of off-line social activities, but
Cyberspace Communications itself has very little involvement in organizing
or funding these activities.
Item 2: What are or will be the organization's sources of financial support? List in order of size. 1. Membership dues. 2. Other individual and corporate donations of money, goods, and services. 3. Special fundraising events (charity auctions, etc.). 4. Sale of promotional items (T-shirts, etc.). Item 3: Describe the organization's fundraising program, both actual and planned and explain to what extent it has been put into effect. Include details of fundraising activities such as selective mailings, formation of fundraising committees, use of volunteers or professional fund raisers, etc. Attach representative copies of soliticitions for financial support. Cyberspace Communications is not very active in fundraising. It is primarily supported by voluntary donations from individual users. We encourage users interested in supporting Grex to become members. Various messages on the system encourage users to join, and we occasionally ask users to become members, but solicitations for donations are generally kept low key to avoid making users who cannot pay feel unwelcome. About 100 of our 18,000 users are members. We also hold occasional on-line fundraisers to help purchase new equipment, and periodically we hold charity auctions where donated goods and services are auctioned off on-line. We also raise some money by selling Grex T-shirts, coffee mugs, mouse pads, and similar items. Cyberspace Communications has never been very active in seeking government or corporate funding. We have asked local Internet providers to donate net connectivity, and may in the future solicit donations of equipment and services. Though we are less likely to seek monetary support in the form of corporate or government grants, this possibility has not been excluded.
Next there are a bunch of questions about the names and addresses of the board
members, how much they are paid and whether they are owned by Microsoft. I
checked lots of "No" boxes.
Item 8: What assets does the organization have that are used in the performance
of its exempt function? (Do not include property producing investment
income.) If any assets are not fully operation, explain their status,
what additional steps remain to be completed, and when such final steps
will be taken. If "None," indicate "N/A."
Cyberspace Communications has the following assets:
1 Sun 4/670 dual-processor computer with 6Gig disk. Main Grex
computer. Operational.
1 Sun 4/260 computer with 2Gig disk. Backup computer. Operational.
16 Modems. For dial-in lines. Operational.
2 Chase IOLan terminal servers. To interface the modems to Grex.
Operational.
2 Ascend P50 ISDN routers. To interface Grex to the Internet. Operational.
1 486 computer. Old router, now used for network administration.
Operational.
1 Pentium computer. Future mail server. Awaiting funds to purchase a disk.
A desk, various chairs and shelves and office fixtures.
Various spare parts and tools.
Item 10 asks if we are party to any leases and asks for copies. Attachment
8 is our lease.
Item 11a. Describe the organization's membership requirements and attach a
schedule of membership fees and dues.
Membership costs $6 a month, or $60 a year. Members must be individuals.
(A category called 'Institutional Members' exists, but they do not have
voting privilege and are thus not technically members at all.) Members
are also asked to provide some form of ID, which is not normally required
from our users.
-------------
Item 11b. Describe the organizations present and proposed efforts to attract
members and attach a copy of any descriptive literature or promotional
material used for this purpose.
The web pages and login screens on Grex contain notices asking users to
consider becoming members. Membership is often mentioned in our public
discussion forums, especially those relating to the administration of
the system. The following text is displayed to users who ask for more
information on-line:
>Thanks for asking how to support Grex. You don't have to pay to use Grex,
>but user's donations pay all the bills. If users don't support Grex, it
>will go away. Please support this valuable community resource.
>
>The best way to support Grex is to become a member. Members get to:
> - vote in Grex elections (if you've paid for three months or more)
> - receive the 'Wizard in Training' manual free (again with 3 months)
> - use our internet link.
>
>Organizations may also support Grex and be recognized as Institutional
>members. Institutional members have the same privileges as regular
>members, except the right to vote.
>
>The minimum membership dues donation - Individual or Institutional - is
>$6/month or $60/year (US currency). Send a personal check or enclose a copy
>of other ID with your dues. Other donations at any time from members or
>non-members are welcome. Write to 'aruba' for more info. Send cash,
>checks or money orders to:
>
>Cyberspace Communications Inc
>P.O. Box 4432
>Ann Arbor, MI 48106-4432
Cyberspace Communications occasionally circulates fliers and places
advertisements in various publications, but these are primarily designed
to attract users to the system, not to win new members.
----------------------
Item 11c. What benefits do (or will) the members receive in exchange for their
payments?
Members receive the right to vote in board elections and run for board
positions. They may call for and vote in referenda.
Members may receive, if they like, a copy of a 23-page photocopied user
manual. This is also available to all users for our cost of one dollar.
Members do not receive in special privileges in connecting to Grex
or using any services on Grex itself. However, they do have have
expanded privileges in connecting from Grex to other computers on
the Internet. The most important Internet services, E-mail and
web browsing, are free to all Grex users, but only members can use
their Grex accounts to do such things as use a 'telnet' program
to log into another system on the net, or use an 'ftp' program to
transfer files to and from other systems on the net, or use an 'irc'
program to access the Internet Relay Chat. These are services that
we cannot offer to thousands of anonymous users because we lack
the resources to support them, and, in some cases, because they
would enable hackers to use our system as a safe base for attacking
other systems on the Internet. Since these services are not of much
interest to most people and are provided with much better quality
by even the least expensive commercial Internet service providers,
they do not seem to be a large incentive for most of our members.
Item 12a says: If the organization provides benefits, services, or products, are the recipients required, or will they be required, to pay for them? If "Yes," explain how the charges are determined and attach a copy of the current fee schedule. I said "Yes". and wrote: Only as described in the response to item 11c above.
Next two tricky questions:
Item 13: Does or will the organization attempt to influence legislation?
I checked "Yes"
If "Yes," explain. Also give an estimate of the percentage of the
organization's time and funds that it devotes or plans to devote to
this activity.
Cyberspace Communications does not and will not attempt to influence
legislation as a substantial activity. Legislation is often
discussed on our system by our users, but Cyberspace Communications
does not limit participation in or otherwise attempt to influence
the content of such discussions. Cyberspace Communications may,
in the case of legislation in areas that would directly impact
our ability to perform our mission (e.g., Internet free speech and
privacy), take a public stance on issues, but this would be unusual
and never a substantial part of our activities. Our only such
action to date was supporting last year's "blue ribbon campaign"
against the "Communications Decency Act" by temporarily blacking out
our web page. Given the uncertain future of Internet legislation,
the possibility that Cyberspace Communications would find it
necessary to make more substantial lobbying efforts, as allowed
for under section 501(h), cannot be excluded, but our plan and firm
expectation is that lobbying will continue to account for less than
a hundredth of one percent of our activities.
[Note that generally 501(c)3 organizations are banned from lobbying, so
checking "yes" to this box can be enough to get your application
denied. However, section 501(h) does allow organizations to do so
with in certain limits and doing certain paperwork. So basically all
this says is that we might attempt to influence legistation, but only
within the limits allows for by the law for 501(c)3 corporations.]
14. Does or will the organization intervene in any way in political
campaigns, including publication or distribution of statements?
I checked "No"
If "Yes," explain fully.
Although Cyberspace Communications does not and will not support
any candidate for any office, any of our users may publish,
distribute and discuss campaign materials through our system.
Cyberspace Communications does not limit participation in or
otherwise attempt to influence the content of such discussions,
and people of all views would be welcome to join in.
[Here I explained even though I checked "No". My opinion is that
the kind of thing I described does *not* constitute an action by
Cyberspace Communications, and so "No" describes what we are doing,
but I wanted to be explicit about the fact that users are able to
use our system to endorse candidates.]
PART III: TECHNICAL REQUIREMENTS This starts out with lots of check boxes that end up saying that we are asking only for 501(c)3 status effective when the application is recieved by the IRS, and not retroactively to the founding of Cyberspace Communications. That's because it's been too long, so we can't get retroactive status. It also says that we are asking for a definitive judgement. The only reason you wouldn't want that would be if your organization was too new to have a track record. It gives a list of all users who have donated more than $476.17 (me and Rob). It claims that we aren't a church, school, hospital, or child care organization. (We'd have to fill out more forms if we were, so don't even joke about it where the IRS can hear you.)
PART IV: FINANCIAL DATA
Part A of this gives financial breakdown for the last 3.25 years. All these
numbers are in Mark's file ~aruba/reports/501c3
Part B is the current balance sheet as of the end of the first quarter of
1998. It says:
Cash 2303.71
Inventories 384.10
Depreciable Assets 3859.00
Total 6537.00
There are also lots of zeros on the form, like for the corporate stocks we
owne and accounts receivable we have. All the liabilties are zeros too.
There is a breakdown of the Depreciable assets in attachment 16, as follows:
Cyberspace Communications has the following assets reported on line 8 of
form 1023, part IV.B. The prices given are estimates based on recent
market values of similar second-hand equipment, however much of this
equipment is rather exotic and obsolete, and market prices vary widely.
Sun 4/670 computer (main Grex computer) 1650.00
2 Ascend Pipeline P50 routers 1000.00
2 Chase IOLan terminal servers 800.00
15 modems 75.00
Sun 4/370 computer parts 50.00
Sun 4/260 computer (backup machine) 25.00
Other computer parts and equipment 200.00
Office furniture and tools 50.00
=================================================
TOTAL 3850.00
That's all. If you have comments or suggestions, please post them here. I'm willing to make changes. We need to send this off before the end of May, or else the financial data will be more than 60 days out of date and we'll have to redo it all. We'd like to send it out as soon as possible. I'm not sure what the procedure is to actually decide to send it out. Technically, we should probably wait for the next board meeting to approve it. I'd rather get it off my desk, and the sooner it gets sent out, the sooner people can start deducting their donations (since, if granted, our 501c3 status will be effective as of whenever the IRS receives the application). But we've waited seven years, I suppose we can wait three more weeks. Grumble.
I think you've done a fantastic job, Jan, and the sooner we send it out the better. I don't feel the need to wait for the next board meeting; this has been discussed for a long long time. The only commentd I have are: -In #3, when you list our sources of income, I'm not sure the JCC sales, from which accounted for a fair chunk of our income at one time, fit any of the categories you list. Possibly "donations of equipment". Perhaps there should be another item, "Sale of donated items". Or possibly we don't need it. -There was an apostrophe out of place in the support text you quoted; it said "user's" where the text says (correctly) "users'". -There was one place where you said "Cyberspace Communication" instead of "Cyberspace Communications". Let me see if I can find that...
(delete that "from" from my first bullet point) The missing "s" was in #2, Section A, subsection 6.
#5, under 11c: "Members do not receive in special privileges in connecting to Grex or using any services on Grex itself." s/any/in By the way, I really liked the way you handled that section. Nice job, Jan.
Thanks for the corrections. I'll let them accumulate a bit longer and make them all in a batch. While the board has certainly agreed to the notion of applying for 501c3 status, and has approved the $150 application fee, it hasn't approved this specific wording of the application. If the IRS accepts this application, then Cyberspace Communications will be committed to live by what I've said here. I've tried to accurately represent what we are already committed to doing and not tie Grex to doing anything it doesn't already do, but I think that this is an important enough document that it should have clear board approval before we send it out. I wouldn't object to just getting all the board members to say it is OK with them on line instead of formal voting, but I'm not sure it makes sense to hurry things after waiting seven years.
Institutional members *are* members. The privileges of "members" are specified in the bylaws and are a matter of *State* law. A Michigan non-profit corporation is permitted to specify the privileges associated with different classes of membership. In fact, a charitable non-profit could have lots of members with *none* being able to vote, but they would still be members in law. 11c should be edited to recognize two classes of membership and their respective privileges.
This response has been erased.
Just what I was going to say. Does it count as educational that I have been helping grexers with their English in on-line chats, and once even corrected a term paper written by a Bulgarian in English? One grexer in Turkey has chatted with me twice, and received a fair amount of help with English (I make correction in the top part of the screen while the other grexer is still typing in the bottom half). This is an extraordinary chance for many people learning English to practice it in real life communication.
And I tutored someone in algebra for a semester, using talk. But I think Jan is correct, that these are not actions of Cyberspace Communications - merely facilitated by it.
I think they might be mentioned incidently somewhere as some of things we make possible ... but I agree that they aren't actions of Cyberspace Communications, per se. I'd approve it in the format presented, with those minor corrections of typos appended. Yup. It's an extraodinary document, Jan. Thanks!
Don't forget yopu owe the city taxes on that$3800 worth of equipment...
I am very, very impressed with this stuff, janc! An excellent job!
My only comments:
1. I think you should say "no" about influencing legislation.
Grex does not hire lobbyists and is not a political organization.
While some of our *users* may post "political" stuff here, that
material doesn't state a corporate position because we don't have
one. The CDA stuff is in the past. I'm concerned that we will
get into a long, counterproductive tailspin with the IRS about this.
2. Yes, I think the Board should approve this application.
The IRS doesn't get into a tailspin over 'influencing legislation', so long as one stays within the guidelines, which requires declaring as a 501(h) [?] organization. The rules are then moderately liberal.
I think Jan handled the lobbying issue very well. We want to be sure to present ourselves as we are, not as we think they'd like us to be.
My point is that we do *not* "influence legislation" as that term is understood by the IRS. Also, I'm hardly thrilled at the idea that we declare as a 501(h)[?] group. The magic category for donations, etc., is 501(c)(3). Period.
i don't think those classifications are mutually exclusive.
501(h)whatever is a declaration that you will be bound by existing law on influencing legislation. If you don't elect this option, the limit is "no significant influence", which it would be up to examiners to define. If you elect, the amounts are spelled out. It is a *crazy* law that species the legal requirements but which does not apply unless you fill out an application to have it apply. I think other meant that the classifications can be elected independently. Not quite, though, as you must be a 501(c)x to elect 501(h)y.
logically, what i said was that being classified as one of those would not preclude being classified as the other as well. that is consistent with your followup statements.
Yup. 501(h) and 501(c)3 aren't alternatives. They are just different sections of the tax code. Some sections describe different kinds of tax exempt organizations, but 501(h) isn't a different kind of organization. It's an alternative set of rules that you can choose to have your political involvement evaluated by, if you like. Given the explanation, I doubt if the IRS will care if we check yes or no on this question. I think everything that the explanation allows is legal with in the law for 501(c)3 status. If it isn't, I don't think we would want 501(c)3 status. I also don't want anyone reading this, be it the IRS or users of Grex, to imagine that we are going to limit discussions of legislation on Grex, or that Cyberspace Communications is *completely* barred from having opinions on legislation. I want it to be absolutely clear that we are reserving the right to do everything allowed by the law. So I deliberately skated close to the edge here. It is more important to be absolutely clear on what Grex wants to do here than it is to get this application accepted on the first submission. So the ambiguity here is whether the question about attempting to influence legislation means "in any way at all" or "in any way not allowed for by the 501(c)3 law". If I answer the second interpretation "no" then in the eyes of someone reading with the first interpretation, I could be barring us from things we don't need to be barred from. I think the correct thing is to interpret the question broadly and stake out our ground explicitly, in a form that can not be easily misinterpreted.
Don't worry, they'll come back with a slew of questions - maybe even on this point.
I agree, jan.
OK, I've reviewed the corrections suggested in this item. >#11 of 30: by Mark A. Conger (aruba) on Mon, Apr 27, 1998 (17:32): > -In #3, when you list our sources of income, I'm not sure the JCC sales, from > which accounted for a fair chunk of our income at one time, fit any of the > categories you list. Possibly "donations of equipment". Perhaps there should > be another item, "Sale of donated items". Or possibly we don't need it. I was thinking of that as fitting under number 2: "Other individual and corporate donations of money, goods, and services." Some donated equipment we sell, some we use. I don't think we have to designate in this section what we do with if after it is given to us. I've let this stand. > -There was an apostrophe out of place in the support text you quoted; it said > "user's" where the text says (correctly) "users'". fixed. > -There was one place where you said "Cyberspace Communication" instead of > "Cyberspace Communications". Let me see if I can find that... > The missing "s" was in #2, Section A, subsection 6. fixed. >#13 of 30: by Mary Remmers (mary) on Mon, Apr 27, 1998 (20:42): > #5, under 11c: "Members do not receive in special privileges in connecting > to Grex or using any services on Grex itself." s/any/in fixed. >#15 of 30: by Rane Curl (rcurl) on Tue, Apr 28, 1998 (01:27): > Institutional members *are* members. The privileges of "members" are > specified in the bylaws and are a matter of *State* law. A Michigan > non-profit corporation is permitted to specify the privileges associated > with different classes of membership. In fact, a charitable non-profit > could have lots of members with *none* being able to vote, but they > would still be members in law. > > 11c should be edited to recognize two classes of membership and their > respective privileges. I've done this. I've let the "influencing legislation" part stand.
The only part that had non-trivial changes is attachment 9, which has been
corrected to take into account Rane's statement that institutional members
are real members. Here's the new version:
====================================
Attachment Number 9
Cyberspace Communications, Inc. (EID 38-2998091)
Form 1023, Part II, Item 11:
Question:
a. Describe the organization's membership requirements and attach a
schedule of membership fees and dues.
b. Describe the organizations present and proposed efforts to attract
members and attach a copy of any descriptive literature or promotional
material used for this purpose.
c. What benefits do (or will) the members receive in exchange for their
payments?
Response:
a. Membership costs $6 a month, or $60 a year. Members must be individuals.
Members are also asked to provide some form of ID, which is not otherwise
required from our users.
b. The web pages and login screens on Grex contain notices asking users to
consider becoming members. Membership is often mentioned in our public
discussion forums, especially those relating to the administration of
the system. The following text is displayed to users who ask for more
information on-line:
>Thanks for asking how to support Grex. You don't have to pay to use Grex,
>but users' donations pay all the bills. If users don't support Grex, it
>will go away. Please support this valuable community resource.
>
>The best way to support Grex is to become a member. Members get to:
> - vote in Grex elections (if you've paid for three months or more)
> - receive the 'Wizard in Training' manual free (again with 3 months)
> - use our internet link.
>
>Organizations may also support Grex and be recognized as Institutional
>members. Institutional members have the same privileges as regular
>members, except the right to vote.
>
>The minimum membership dues donation - Individual or Institutional - is
>$6/month or $60/year (US currency). Send a personal check or enclose a copy
>of other ID with your dues. Other donations at any time from members or
>non-members are welcome. Write to 'aruba' for more info. Send cash,
>checks or money orders to:
>
>Cyberspace Communications Inc
>P.O. Box 4432
>Ann Arbor, MI 48106-4432
Cyberspace Communications occasionally circulates fliers and places
advertisements in various publications, but these are primarily designed
to attract users to the system, not to win new members.
c. Individual members receive the right to vote in board elections and run
for board positions. They may call for and vote in referenda.
Institutional members do not have the right to vote.
All members may receive, if they like, a copy of a 23-page photocopied
user manual. This is also available to all users for our cost of one
dollar.
Members do not receive any special privileges in connecting to Grex
or using any services on Grex itself. However, they do have have
expanded privileges in connecting from Grex to other computers on
the Internet. The most important Internet services, E-mail and
web browsing, are free to all Grex users, but only members can use
their Grex accounts to do such things as use a 'telnet' program
to log into another system on the net, or use an 'ftp' program to
transfer files to and from other systems on the net, or use an 'irc'
program to access the Internet Relay Chat. These are services that
we cannot offer to thousands of anonymous users because we lack
the resources to support them, and, in some cases, because they
would enable hackers to use our system as a safe base for attacking
other systems on the Internet. Since these services are not of much
interest to most people and are provided with much better quality
by even the least expensive commercial Internet service providers,
they do not seem to be a large incentive for most of our members.
If there are further corrections, please let me know before the board meeting. I will bring a copy of the final version to the board meeting, and make varous photocopies and send it off afterwards. Board members: It would probably be good to review all this before the meeting.
The information on income from "money, goods and services" is independent of what you do with those. If you sell goods, purchased or donated, that is money income. The value of goods donated is only of interest to the donor, by the way (for tax purposes). We are prohibited by law from setting any value on donated goods (or property).
Under response section a), i think it would be most clear to identify the two distinct classes of membership up front. As written, it says, "Members must be individuals." I suggest "Members must be individuals, except in the case of Institutional Membership. See section c) for a description of the difference between regular and institutional memberships."
Oops. I should delete the "members must be individuals." sentence from part (a).
OK. A version of the *COMPLETE* application is now on the web at:
http://www.cyberspace.org/local/grex/501c3.html
This took an absurd amount of typing, but I think it was worth doing, just
to be able to add this to our collection of on-line Grex documents.
On thing I noticed as I typed the form in is that because I check No on Part II, line 4 I didn't have to fill out question 6 and 7. The upshot of this is that I think our 501(c)3 status may after all be retroactive to the founding of Grex if that status is granted.
Re: #37 Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.
re #39 What she said.
I'll add this document to the archive files as soon as it has Board approval and the wording is finalized. I wonder if submitting this to the new kinder and gentler IRS will mean we have a better chance of getting approval?
I haven't done an ascii text version of the whole thing, just the portions posted here. I decided maintaining a laser printable version, an HTML version, and an ASCII version would be too much work.
(Isn't the html version laser printable? I can do in html most of what I want to do in word etc.)
Thanks, Jan. Incredible work!
I guess the html version is printable, but not the way I did it. The HTML version I did is a rough facimile of the actual form, including all the questions. I have to send the real form in to the IRS, not my HTML facimile. Many of the answers shown in the HTML form don't actually fit in the boxes on the IRS form (which are often tiny) and are thus organized instead as attachments with lots of cross references from the form to the attachments and back again. So the printable-for-the-IRS version turns out to be very different in structure and format from the browsable-for-Grexers version. Maybe at some point I'll try to make an ASCII version by pointing lynx at the browsable version and fixing up whatever shows up there.
Regarding the Web-readable version: Perhaps Part I should be entitled "Identification ..."? ZIP Code is separated with a hyphen. Part III #2: "one of the expections" should probably read "one of the exceptions" :-) I don't think they are referring to spitting! further question: why does (b) there not apply to us? OK, I'm too tired to read any more, but it really does look VERY nice, despite my quibles. Any update on when it was or will be sent?
>Perhaps Part I should be entitled "Identification ..."? yes. >ZIP Code is separated with a hyphen. Not on the original form. >"one of the expections" should probably read "one of the exceptions" yes. >further question: why does (b) there not apply to us? Because our gross receipts have been over $5000 in all recent tax years. I didn't do any proof reading of the stuff I typed in from the IRS forms. I'm happy to correct any other problems in that that anyone notices.
Re ZIP Code: Oh. *shrug*
The text version of Grex's 501(c)3 application is now available at /usr/local/grexdoc/archives/501.txt. It's not as pretty as the GUI version but the info is there.
Thanks for generating that Mary.
We recently received the following form letter from the IRS. It just
confirms the receipt of the 501(c)(3) application:
========================================================================
Internal Revenue Service Department of the Treasury
District Director Southeast Region
Internal Revenue Service Center F-5548 ALS E0
P.O. Box 192 Refer Reply To:
Covington KY 41012-0192929 17053-155-03504-8
F1023 /2A
Date: June 4, 1998
CYBERSPACE COMMUNICATIONS
C/O JAN WOLTER
406 W LIBERTY
ANN ARBOR MI 48103-4343064
Document Locator Number: 17053-155-03504-8
User Fee Paid: $150
ACKNOWLEDGEMENT OF YOUR REQUEST
We have received your application for recognition of exemption from
Federal income tax and have assigned it document locator number
17053-155-03504-8. You should refer to that number in any
communication with us concerning your application.
We will review your application and send a reply as soon as possible.
However, we must process applications in the order that we receive
them.
You may normally expect to hear from us within (120 days). If you do
not hear from us within that period and choose to write again, please
provide a telephone number and the most convenient time to call if we
need to contact you. If you wish, you may call E. Wolf between the
hours of 8:00am and 4:30pm EST at (513) 241-5199 for assistance.
Thank you for cooperation.
Form 5548 EOA ALS
========================================================================
Notes:
- The IRS uses 12-digit zip codes. Figures.
- The Covington KY office does all 501(c)3 determinations. They have
about 200 people there who do nothing else. That's why the letter
says "southeast region" even though we are northeast.
- Originally I thought we would only qualify for 501(c)3 status as of
the date they recieved our application (June 4), but I think we will
actually get it retro-active to the formation of Grex, assuming we
get it at all.
Fools....
pessimist!
grouch?
You have several choices: