Karen Kong Lamont, PJ Espinal, Donna Collins and Carmen Smith were granted the wonderful opportunity as board members to attend the Professional Fundraising Seminar held by the Association of Fundraising Professionals this year in our continued effort as a board to improve the Association, financially and professionally.

One of the classes taught us about IRS compliance as a 501c3 non profit organization. Two major steps to achieve this are:

1. Annual filings with the IRS.
2. Developing bylaws with a strong ethical and professional standard that comply to the IRS 501 c3 rules.

By completing these two actions, we are opening new doors to receiving grants from major foundations and private donors. Many large foundations do not even review grant requests for non-profits without the 990 IRS Forms.

We would like to thank the Accounting Offices of Mark LaBossierre, who graciously prepared the 990 tax forms for the last few years to be sent to the IRS. His firm provided a tremendous service at no direct financial cost but in exchange for a small space in our community newsletter. Thank you Mark and your staff for helping our community! Please feel free to contact them for your accounting needs at:

Offices of Mark La Bossierre

Phone: 954- 763-4214

Address: 1222 NE 4^th Avenue, Fort Lauderdale

The 990s, once processed by the IRS, will be available for public viewing through the IRS website.

We would also like to thank the Bylaws/Governance Committee: Vinnie Piperi, Rob Smith and PJ Espinal and Carmen Smith. Many hours have been were spent making sure our bylaws comply with 501c3 non-profit rules and the documents received at the Fundraising seminar were instrumental in developing the bylaws revisions the members will vote on at our June 23^rd general membership meeting. This will raise South Middle River Civic Association to the next level. The bylaws can be viewed at www.smrca.com. You can also request a copy via e-mail at vpiperi@aol.com

I would also like to express much deserved gratitude to Bruce Tanner (former secretary), Donna Lee Minott (former treasurer) and Marco Magdayulo (current treasurer) for their excellent record keeping which was vital in gathering all the financial information for this process.

Hats off to all of you!

This entry was posted on Wednesday, June 17th, 2009 at 7:19 am and is filed under SMRCA news. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.