aka "Group Exemption Letters"

Delivering Exceptional Insurance Programs to Clients Throughout North America

"Where most of an organization's members are entrepreneurs or independent contractors, the organization does not meet the requirements of IRC 501(c)(5). Rev. Rul. 78-288, 1978-2 C.B. 179."

A discussion of "contributing" work and stuff to a charitable organization.

social welfare groups

Business Associations

Thinking of building something with this functionality for "Coworking Take 2"

"To counter this trend, and to encourage collaboration in the workplace, we built an internal tool called Lunch Roulette that selects random pairs of Fellows to join each other on impromptu lunch dates.…"

"Humans are habitual problem-solvers, so obsessed with puzzles and patterns that for millennia we’ve posed riddles and created games to fill our “idle time.” But these obsessive problem-solving habits are traditionally seen as a distraction from the “real work” of business, scholarship and public policy.

That is no longer true… if it ever was.

This is the first of a series of three open-format workshops scheduled for 2009 & 2010, where we’ll gather to explore the new ways game play is becoming “useful” work—useful for people and institutions."

"Kickstarter is a new way to fund ideas and endeavors.

We believe that...

A good idea, communicated well, can spread fast and wide.
A large group of people can be a tremendous source of money and encouragement."

"Here’s the summary. The market for seed capital is clearly broken. Most individual angels will only do about 1 deal per year, which means their portfolios lose money 40% of the time due to insufficient diversification. Even premier angel groups like the Band of Angels say they only do about 8 deals per year. Our math says you need to do 125 to achieve good diversification. On the other side of the table, only 14% of entrepreneurs who want angel funding will find it. Those that do will spend about 6 months looking for money instead of building their businesses."

"This website provides data on businesses with and without employees. These are referred to as “employer firms” and “nonemployer firms.” Employer firms have the lion’s share of receipts and payroll, while nonemployer firms are far more numerous."

Nonemployer business demographics, by sector and industry

Trends in non-employer and small business firms, establishments and companies from 1997-2006, United States. Note the rates at which nonemployer and <20 employee firms are growing, compared to larger firms over the same period.

"The estimated 27.2 million small businesses in the United States:

Employ about half of the country’s private sector workforce

Hire 40 percent of high tech workers, such as scientists, engineers and computer workers

Include 52 percent home-based businesses and two percent franchises

Represent 97.3 percent of all the exporters of goods

Represent 99.7 percent of all employer firms

Generate a majority of the innovations that come from United States companies"

"I write for free because there seems to me to be no meaningful relationship between whether a publication pays me and whether it’s worthwhile for me to write for them. I’ve been skillfully edited and I’ve been allowed to babble on painfully unchecked by paying and non-paying publications alike. I’ve garnered indirect material benefit from paying and non-paying publications alike. I’m not suggesting that anyone follow my example or positing that I know what The Future of Journalism entails, but I do know, barring catastrophe, what my particular future is: I am going to keep getting paid to write when I can and writing for free when I can’t. If/when this situation becomes untenable for me as a way of actually making my living, I’ll start making more of my money with my non-writing endeavors. People have been doing exactly that, and writing sad essays about the injustice of having to do exactly that, for much longer than the Internet has been around."

"An important addition to the growing international dialogue about the commons can be found in the new anthology, Genes, Bytes and Emissions: To Whom Does the World Belong? (discussed in this previous blog post). Recently released in German, the essays in this book are now available online in English.

The book was edited by Silke Helfrich and published by the Heinrich Boell Foundation; Helfrich is the former director of the Foundation’s Mexico City office, which hosted a major conference, Citizenship and Commons, in December 2006. The collection, whose title in English is To Whom Does the World Belong? offers a thoughtful and provocative array of viewpoints on the commons. (The links below connect to pdf files of the essays.)"

"Oddly, certain kinds of workers in Massachusetts cannot be shackled by noncompetes: doctors, social workers, and broadcasters among them. But why should a TV anchor be allowed to jump from one station to another, while we make an EMC engineer take a year of unpaid leave before he can form a new company? How does that benefit our economy? My biggest concern is that new legislation only requires noncompetes to be “reasonable,’’ rather than nixing them entirely. To ensure that we get there, individual employees will have to dive in to this debate - rather than leaving it to big companies who know how to lobby. And CEOs who are willing to think about the good of the state’s economy - beyond their own firm’s desire to avoid spawning potential rivals - should speak up."

"Being a 501(c)(3) has also made Kiva feel comfortable asking its members to help cover the organization’s operating costs, which totaled $5.9 million in 2009, according to Fiona Ramsey, Kiva’s director of public relations. Jackley zeroed in on the idea of optional transaction fees at the 2007 Net Impact Conference. She was on a panel with members of two related nonprofits—DonorsChoose.org Inc., which allows people to donate directly to United States classroom projects, and the GlobalGiving Foundation, which facilitates direct donations to a wide range of projects around the world. An audience member asked the panel how each organization covered its costs. Jackley learned that DonorsChoose suggested that users make an optional 15 percent donation in addition to their base donation. GlobalGiving, in contrast, automatically took a 10 percent fee out of users’ base donations."

"Working in an collaborative environment that simultaneously supports business, technology, creativity, and performance give rise to new concepts. Below we list of some of the ideas we use in our work--terms you may hear or things you may experience if you become a member and spend some time in this unique environment."

"The Arts Alliance is the local administrator of the Minigrant program, which awards grants of up to $4,000 to Michigan nonprofit organizations for high quality, locally developed projects that increase public access to art and culture. Organizations applying through the Arts Alliance must be from Livingston, Monroe or Washtenaw Counties. They may be arts or non-arts nonprofit organizations, public or private schools, cities, townships, or villages. Activities such as exhibits, performances, artist residencies, festivals, and conferences are eligible for funding. For more information or to download a Minigrant application and guidelines, see the FAQs."