Jacob Ferrari

Commercial Tenants, Take Advantage of the Recession!

Commercial Tenants, Take Advantage of the Recession!   Overview The writing is on the wall! According to expert reports, the United States economy is headed for recession. While no one likes the term recession and may think that only liabilities and heartache lie at the end of the recession road, there are actually many opportunities …

Commercial Tenants, Take Advantage of the Recession! Read More »

law books, legal books, library

New Washington Nonprofit Corporations Act and Charitable Assets

Overview With the advent of the new year, the Washington Nonprofit Corporations Act (RCW 24.03A) is now in full force and effect. While much discussion has already been devoted to specific governance changes to member and non-member organizations, we have yet to address how charitable assets will be managed under the new act. In this …

New Washington Nonprofit Corporations Act and Charitable Assets Read More »

The Joint Venture Policy and The Parent-Subordinate Consistency Policy

Overview We will discuss the final policies in this series in a single blog post. These policies concern specific situations in which a nonprofit organization may find itself depending on the nature of its structure and operations. These policies are the joint venture policy and the parent-subordinate consistency policy. While these policies are important to …

The Joint Venture Policy and The Parent-Subordinate Consistency Policy Read More »

The Travel Reimbursement Policy

Overview In many ways, a nonprofit organization is just like a for profit organization. Nonprofit organizations hire executives, purchase property, engage in business, and, most importantly for this blog post, require significant amounts of traveling for staff and volunteers to perform the needed operations of the organization. When a considerable amount of traveling is done, …

The Travel Reimbursement Policy Read More »

law books, legal books, library

The Document Retention Policy

Overview It is a simple rule that it takes a lot of documents to run an organization. Governing documents, transaction documents, property documents, tax documents, and many more. What happens when these documents start to pile up? How long should an organization hold on to these documents and what should they do with them when …

The Document Retention Policy Read More »

The Conflict of Interest Policy

Overview For organizations exempt from income tax under Section 501(c)(3) of the Internal Revenue Code, the most important governance policy the organization can have is the conflict of interest policy. The policy is not only explicitly asked about for every organization in the Form 990 Informational Return but is also asked about in the Form …

The Conflict of Interest Policy Read More »

earth, scion, leaf

Washington State Passes New Nonprofit Corporations Act!

Overview Earlier this week, Governor Inslee signed into law Senate Bill 5034. Simply put, this law completely overhauls and replaces the current version of the Washington Nonprofit Corporations Act. The effort to pass this law started in 2008 with the adoption of the Model Nonprofit Corporations Act by the Washington State legislature. From there, a …

Washington State Passes New Nonprofit Corporations Act! Read More »

notebook, laptop, macbook

How the Tax Cuts and Jobs Acts Revises the Computation of UBTI: Three Major Revisions

Introduction Organizations exempt from federal taxation must still pay taxes on unrelated business income (UBI) (i.e. income gained from a regularly conducted trade or business that is unrelated to the organizations exempt purpose). In 2017, Congress passed the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act (“TCJA”) which made major revisions to how unrelated business taxable income (UBTI) …

How the Tax Cuts and Jobs Acts Revises the Computation of UBTI: Three Major Revisions Read More »

desktop, abstract, minimalism

Supporting Organizations Part 2

The Relationship Test In our last blog post we discussed Supporting Organizations and the first three tests for how to determine if a 501(c)(3) public charity is a supporting organization. In the second part of this two part series, we’ll discuss the fourth and final test of supporting organizations: the Relationship Test. Depending on the …

Supporting Organizations Part 2 Read More »