Starting a Nonprofit

Event description

You have a cause and people telling you to start a nonprofit. That may be the right move, and it may not be. This workshop helps you tell the difference before you file anything.

Abbie Yamamoto starts with your mission and the questions that decide everything after it: who already does this work, who it serves, and whether your version is different enough to justify a new organization. From there you will look at the full range of structures available, because a 501(c)(3) is only one of them. Fiscal sponsorship, merging with an existing nonprofit, and mission-driven for-profit models like the L3C and the public benefit corporation can all carry a mission, sometimes with far less overhead.

If a nonprofit is the right fit, you will walk the Maine path end to end: reserving a name, recruiting a board that brings independent judgment rather than friendship, filing articles with the Secretary of State, applying to the IRS for tax exemption, and meeting the annual filings that keep it. The session closes on how new organizations raise their first dollars before they have the track record foundations expect.

Abbie Yamamoto, Ph.D., is Principal Consultant and Owner of Mission Mavens LLC and serves on the board of the Maine Association of Nonprofits. She grew a local nonprofit from no budget to $750,000 and from no staff to ten, facilitated a nonprofit merger, and managed a legacy institution with a $5.3 million budget, more than 90 employees, and 300 volunteers.