Free Nonprofit Starter Kit
The four areas founders trip on
Most nonprofits do not fail on strategy, they get into avoidable trouble through paperwork, governance, and tax mistakes nobody warned them about. They cluster into four areas:
- Governance: a board that is mostly family, friends, or paid staff; decisions made without proper process.
- Compliance: missing the annual Form 990 (three misses in a row and the IRS auto-revokes your status), or skipping state charitable-solicitation registration.
- Donors & tax: not sending proper acknowledgment letters, so donors lose their deduction; soliciting before you are recognized.
- Strategy: founder dependence, no reserves, and scope creep that drifts from your exempt purpose.
Quick self-audit
Answer each one honestly. A “no” anywhere is something worth fixing before it costs you:
Score yourself
- A majority of your board is unrelated to you and unpaid by the organization.
- Compensation and major decisions are approved by uninvolved board members and written into the minutes.
- You know which Form 990 you owe and when it is due, and you have calendared it.
- You have checked whether your state requires charitable-solicitation registration.
- Every donor gets a written acknowledgment with the IRS-required language.
- Your activities still match the exempt purpose in your Articles.
- The organization could keep running if you stepped away tomorrow.
Where to fix what you found
Each “no” maps to a tool built to close that gap, you do not have to solve it from scratch:
- Governance gaps → the Governance Suite (board handbook, committee charters, risk).
- Compliance gaps → the Operations & Compliance Suite (compliance tracker, Form 990 prep, document retention).
- Donor & fundraising gaps → the Fundraising & Development Suite (donor management, acknowledgments).
You have finished the Starter Kit
You now know whether a 501(c)(3) fits, the road to get there, and where founders trip. When you are ready to actually build it, the suites do the work.
See the suites →
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