Small Setback

We have had a small setback in our plans. Unfortunately, we have thus far been unable to find a venue for our lessons that fits into our budget. Even the local community centers are priced such that it would be difficult to sustain our programs without taking dependencies on donations, which we feel creates too much risk at this point in time. There are some venues that we might be able to use for a large discount or for free, but they would impose age restrictions, which we are leery of given that we are about making dance accessible to EVERYONE. Nonetheless, we have to start somewhere and if this could give us a sustainable model that we can grow from, this might end up being a fine route to take.

For now, we will continue operating as previously. While we hope to move by April, we have the good fortune of having time to continue exploring the differnt possibilities.

Seperately, we have had the misfortune of losing one of our team members, who is moving out of state. We will miss him and appreciate all the effort he put into helping us have a positive impact on our community.

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.

Bylaws Ready

We have completed writing Move with the Music's bylaws. We were able to find ample resources online to determine the what the bylaws should contain, created an outline, and filled the document out from there. The legal aspects of the document were largely modeled off of the of other non-profit organizations that we were able to find. Given the legal pertinence of the document, we still have several questions. Because of this, it appears quite important to seek legal counsel at this point to, at a minimum, have the bylaws reviewed. We really want to ensure that they provide the organization (including its directors, officers, and volunteers) with adequate protection, flexibility, and balance of organizational power.

Our board currently consists of only one individual. However, with the bylaws prepared, we are ready to begin seeking candidates to round out the board.

On another note, we will begin planning our return from Winter break tomorrow. We intend to start our dance lessons back up in February. By March, we want to be ready to open our lessons up to the wider community and to do so, we will need to find low-cost facilities. Our area has decent community centers, so we'll be taking a closer look at those. However, we will need to evaluate the associated costs since to our knowledge, the community centers provide non-profits with a discount rather than a fee waiver.

Move with the Music has 501(c)(3) status!

We just received notice in the mail yesterday that we have been approved for 501(c)(3) status! This is huge and will really help to deliver our programs to the community.

On another note, every year we take a break during December and January, during which we pause dance lessons since attendence dwindles off around this time due to the holidays. This should give us time to focus on preparing for the coming year and delivering bigger and better than ever!

A few first steps we need to take: (1) Expand our board and (2) find a good venue to make our programs available to the public.

Still Waiting for the 1023 Results...

It's been a while now and we're still waiting to get the results of the 1023. Fingers still crossed...

On another note, our weekly dance lessons continue on as strong as ever. Usually around this time of year, participation tapers off as we head into the holiday season. However, we have maintained decent attendance. Regardless, we still intend to take our usual break during December and at least the first half of January. We actually find that after breaks, attendance surges, likely due to a build-up of anticipation.

Finally Have the IRS Form 1023 Ready to File

We finally finished preparing the IRS form 1023 and will be sending it out this week. In part, this took as long as it did because we decided to finish a detailed description of our organization that included research on the benefits of dance and the community need for programs like those we intend to run. In the end, it turned out to be a great document and helped to fill in all of the details requested by the 1023. Hopefully we'll be granted 501(c)(3) status shortly and can tie up the loose ends with our business license application.

Based on questions asked in the 1023, it seems that many people establish non-profits with the intent of making operation of the non-profit their primary employment. For us, we've had to balance the effort required to get all of the registrations together with our professional work, regular operation of the non-profit, and our personal lives. We've realized that after being granted 501(c)(3) status, things will not return to their previous state since continuing the development of the organization and maintaining its 501(c)(3) status will be like having a second job. Interestingly, every time we make progress on developing our organization, parellels between starting a non-profit and a for-profit business become more and more evident. Think, for example, about how a founder of either type of organization must decide whether to quit their current job and focus full-time on their venture or to do both simultaneously.

Something on my mind that I hadn't thought about before is that there must be non-profit "angels" and "venture capitalists" who help finance and advise early-stage non-profits. I wonder how they define and measure "returns"?