So,
you’ve decided to start an educational NPO.
Before you congratulate yourself on doing something of real use and
value to the community, there’s a lot of work to be done before you even have
your new business cards made.
The work
of start up not only involves planning and paperwork, but also, finding others
who will join up and help you run it.
While some NPOs are begun as partnerships, most start out with a founder
and a few board members.
It
would be nice to help the whole world, but you need to decide on a specific
mission and group of people to serve with that mission. Your enterprise is that much more likely to
be successful if you can focus your target audience to just the right size
you’ve determined the organization size and structure. Just like in business, you want to find a
niche and fill it completely.
Your
organization requires a mission statement that will function as your NPOs
byline. It should embody the charitable
mission at the center of this whole enterprise and be able to immediately tell
others what you’re about and inspire them to help (Poderis 2007).
The
mission statement also allows you to set some parameters for the organization –
limits on what you’ll try to accomplish. By clearly defining your goals as an
NPO, you will help keep the focus on what’s important and possible.
Also,
by clearly outlining what sort of goals the NPO hopes to achieve, you give a
standard for the organization to be measured up against. Even if the specifics of how you accomplish
the mission change, the mission statement will outline what caused you to think
this was a good idea in the first place.
Again, there are guides online[i]
and in books that will show you some good examples of bylaws that can serve as
useful guidelines for you. Any draft of
by-laws includes the things you will and won’t do as a corporation. They may be added to over time, but a basic version
will be sent along with your IRS application for tax exemption.
Some common inclusions in by-laws might include rules for
when documents will be filed and your intentions as a corporation. The number of board members is generally
laid out, along with a regular meeting schedule. Rules for compensation are also usually laid out along with
policies and guidelines.
Ethics guidelines are a very common type of provision in
bylaws, especially in larger organizations.
The accepted bylaws may end up containing many specific provisions such
as travel and the amount of reasonable “executive compensation.” (Salamon and Geller, 2005) You may want to have a provision in your bylaws
that any conflict of interest is disclosed before any board member signs on.
Rules for how decisions will be made are drafted. Meetings can be as formal as you and your
fellow board members like – they should be formal enough to maintain order in
the event of a future dispute. These
by-laws are binding and the NPO must abide by them. Officers may swear to abide by them upon taking office and sign
to that effect.
You’ll also be drawing up a schedule of responsibilities
within the organization. The board
members themselves may want to do the work, or they might volunteer for fund-raising
duty. Whether that’s as grant writers,
solicitors, or running a feeder organization, someone will have to come up with
some amount of money for operations.
That amount could be very small, depending upon the scope and character
of your mission.
You can make additions to a meeting schedule laid out, but
annual reporting meetings and planning sessions are required. You can meet electronically or by telephone,
if the office holders are all over the country.
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