IRS Yearly Reporting Form 990-N ... EASY!

Forms, forms, and more forms ... It's amazing how much paperwork is involved in organizing and running a nonprofit organization! I just filed our yearly IRS form for 2009, required even though we technically only existed for 10 days in 2009. But amazingly, especially for an IRS form, it was EASY!!! It was by far the simplest form I've ever had to fill out for the government ... basically all it asked for was our EIN # (Employer Identification Number), name, address, and then answer two yes/no questions ... that was it! And it was all done online. WOW!

And to think, after the nightmare of filling out the IRS Form 1023, I was actually dreading this form.

- Janissa

Grant writing - next steps & anybody want to help?

Now that I've got the grant application for FOL under my belt, hopefully I'll be able to crank other grant applications out a little (lot) quicker. Next in my sights is Oprah's Angel Network. I've got the application requirements, so now I just need to get writing.

I have a list of a dozen or so other places to submit grant applications. The next step is to get the application requirements for each of those. Then, more research on other organizations and foundations to approach for money.

Anybody want to help with this?

- Janissa

Registration with other websites -- GuideStar.org, TechSoup.org

Last week, I registered Laptops to Lesotho with GuideStar.org and TechSoup.org. Both required verification that L2L was a 501(c)(3) organization, so I had to send them our IRS Letter of Determination. I got a confirmation back but it will take a few days for Laptops to Lesotho to show up on their sites.

GuideStar.org is a verified list of official tax-exempt nonprofit organizations. Other websites that accept donations for causes, like Facebook Causes and JustGive.org, require that our organization be on the GuideStar list before they will accept us on their websites. As soon as we get into the GuideStar database, we can start accepting donations via Facebook, JustGive, and others.

TechSoup.org gets tech hardware and software donated by a variety of companies and then distributes them to nonprofits for a small processing fee. Now that Andrew is Treasurer, he will be looking at getting accounting software from TechSoup. We can also get other hardware from them, like a network server and possibly internet access hardware.

- Janissa

L2L bank account set up

I got the bank account set up for L2L, finally. First we had to wait for our official 501(c)(3) status from the IRS, then the bank took a week to set up the account -- they had to do a special investigation because we're a new nonprofit that's going to be using the account for international payments. I have to go back into town next week to sign the papers and deposit the FIPE check. Andrew and I will be signers on the account.

- Janissa