International Documentary Association Application

One of my goals over the next couple of months is to apply for fiscal sponsorship through the International Documentary Association (http://www.documentary.org/). Success means that I’ll get an IRS 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization status and that means donors will get a tax credit for money given to help fund the project. The caveat is that they cannot have received something in return. For those who don’t know how all that works, let’s say people donate $100 and I give them a T shirt through something like kickstarter.com.  They then have to deduct the worth of the T shirt from their donation since they received a benefit. So, if the T shirt is “worth” $15, they get an $85 tax credit. Hey, those are IRS rules, not mine. For more information, consult the IRS website or your tax adviser.

That said, the application is very detailed and putting all the information together will be time consuming. That’s okay. They need to do what they need to do. The thing I had been struggling with the most was the budget section. Happily, I found someone in the form of Scott Laidlaw (https://www.thebiggeststoryproblem.com/) who not only helped me sort this out yesterday, but has graciously consented to be one of my advisers on the project. Thank you Scott and Jennifer Lightwood!

I now feel much more comfortable about my application and didn’t really want to proceed until I had this semi-nailed down. (Haven’t added all my numbers up yet. May or may not have “sticker shock.”) There’s much more work to do, of course, but the support that I’m getting from a number of people will make all the difference as I move forward.

And they’re not all even related to me!

More coming, stay tuned.

Linda

P.S. I’ll try to get the project’s logo up soon. It didn’t like the file format I tried to use last time so I have to work with it some more.