Back in Action, 2011

This past Monday, we had our first dance lesson of 2011. This month it remains in employer-provided facilities (and is only open to employees and their friends/family), but it was a success. We had about 40 participants and everyone seemed to enjoy themselves a great deal.

Through the month, we will do some final fine-tuning around the structure of our lessons (which have already come a very long way since we started in 2008) in preparation for moving them to a public location opening them up for public participation. We even have a new volunteer to help with lessons. We are all very excited about what's to come in March and are on track with preparations for the transition.

Aside from that, our website is almost complete and can be visited at: http://www.movewiththemusic.org.

Recap: Tasks Involved in Starting a Non-Profit

We are about to start our lessons back up this coming Monday and we are making steady progress towards making them public in March.

We finally have all our registrations and thought we'd recap on a recommended order of doing things. We didn't do things in this order, but in retrospect, it would have made things easier.

1. Do research on the need you want to address and how you might address it.
2. Create a business plan or something close to one.
3. Write the Articles of Incorporation. Be sure to include the right language to register for 501(c)(3) status.
4. Incorporate with the state. Incorporation differs slightly state to state.
5. Register with the federal government to get an Employer Identification Number (EIN).
6. Create a conflict of interest policy.
7. Write the organizational Bylaws.
8. File for 501(c)(3) status with the federal government.
9. Register to operate in the applicable state and city. This may require a master business application and license applications.
10. Open a bank account.

If you plan to employ people, you will probably have one or two additional steps, though we are not familiar with them as we are an all-volunteer organization. A few others items that can be worked on in parallel and don't really need to be done in any particular order include the following.

• Build a team.
• Recruit a board of directors.
• Create a record-keeping process.
• Create a logo.
• Build a website.