Important Tax Alert for MN Nonprofits!

According to the Minnesota Council of Nonprofits there are an estimated 4,000 nonprofits in Minnesota that will lose their 501(c)(3) tax exempt status unless they go online and file form 990-N. The nonprofits are small organizations that operate on the calendar year with financial activity under $25,000.

They will have their tax deductible status revoked (and will need to pay $750 to be reinstated to the tax status and receive tax deductible contributions) if they do not file the 990-N by May 15th, 2010.

For more information and/or to download a list of the affected nonprofits visit the MCN website at www.mncn.org.

The Nerdery's Website Challenge

Anni O'Neill at the Southern Minnesota Foundation is a good friend of mine who recently forwarded me a great resource for nonprofits and community groups.

Every year Sierra Bravo, a website company in Bloomington, holds an overnight website development challenge. Programmers from around the midwest team up to provide selected nonprofits with 24 hours of free design, development and programming in order to create a new website for them. When all's said and done, each nonprofit receives over 200 hours of service for FREE!

This year's challenge is being held on March 20-21, 2010 in St. Paul. Nonprofits can apply for the challenge on The Nerdery's website: www.overnightwebsitechallenge.com.

Anni's husband works for Sierra Bravo and she says, "I've attended the final hours of the event for the past two years, and it is an amazing experience to witness."

Online Giving in MN is Changing

Have you heard the buzz? There's a new website in town and it just might change the face of online giving in Minnesota. It's www.GiveMN.org and it went live last week.

According to my coworker, Matt (who's also on GiveMN's Strategy Cabinet), "It's a visionary & exciting project!"

Here's the deal... GiveMN.org has been pre-loaded with basic information on Minnesota 501(c)3s and gives contributors information about all charitable nonprofits in Minnesota. It provides every charitable nonprofit equal access to online contributors. And, it encourages local online giving.

A couple of big things... there is no cost to a nonprofit to participate in GiveMN.org, and, at least initially, all credit card processing fees for donations will be covered by GiveMN.org funding partners.

To learn more:

• check out the Initiative Foundation's GiveMN page,
• encourage all nonprofits (there are over 20,000 in Minnesota!) to claim their page,
• or better yet... try it out! Find your favorite nonprofit and donate today.

And if you want your dollar to go a little further... next Tuesday, November 17th is Give to the Max Day. Every donation made that day will receive a portion of a $500,000 match.

(NOTE: When this same model was tried in Dallas, donors blew through an online match of $400,000. That day, they raised over $4 million!)

With GiveMN.org, the fundraising potential for Minnesota's nonprofits and the causes they support is HUGE.

Please help spread the word!

Pomp and Circumstance...

This afternoon we just graduated our 14th group of nonprofits from the Healthy Organizations Partnership program. And this round of HOP was special because all of the groups were area Community Action Programs - aka. CAP/CAA agencies. It was great to have a round of training and capacity-building where everyone had similar goals, challenges and interests!

Best of luck to our recent grads:

• BiCAP, Bemidji
• Lakes and Pines CAC, Mora
• Ottertail-Wadena CAC, New York Mills
• Tri-County Action Program (TriCAP), St. Cloud
• Tri-County Community Action (TCC), Little Falls
• Wright County Community Action, Maple Lake

Take a look at all of the group photos on Facebook!