One large step forward!

Threes are apparently an important number for Msomi….we incorporated on April 23rd and we sent off the 501(c)(3) application on October 3rd, which means April 3, 2019 is the date we will await our letter confirming our official legal status as a fully-fledged non-profit.  It’s definitely a large step forward!  Thanks to Sarah for all her hard work and dedication to this, to Ryan Parrot from Sons of the Flag for referring us to Shelby, a lawyer in Boulder who helped us, pro bono, work through some of the legal-ease that paved the way to significantly reducing the time our attorney had to spend reviewing the application (which also saves us quite a bit of money).  Also, thanks to Deb for providing us the attorney’s name on referral, and to our attorney, Darren, who was so kind and responsive when he was approached.  Clearly, it takes an entire team to get this done and I might be just a LITTLE proud of the team I get to work with in this organization.

With any luck, we’ll have our official IRS stamp of approval before tax-filing day, so those who so generously donate in 2018 can take it as a tax deduction if they wait to file…for those who might be unnerved by waiting until so late in the filing game, we hope you’ll donate again next year and get to write it off in 2020!  As frustrating, tedious, and long as the paperwork preparation felt (mostly by Sarah, who may be regretting her decision to be our intern), I’d like to point out (mostly because I have to remind myself) that we had 27 months from the date of incorporation to file the paperwork and retain non-profit status from the date of incorporation.  Yet here we are, a mere 5 months and 10 days removed from incoporating and our application is already there.  Much like there are a lot of ABDs (all but dissertations) and only a few PhDs, I suspect there are a lot of non-profits who are legally established but never quite get their full status.  So I’d say we’re doing pretty darn well.

It’s been a really hectic couple of months and I don’t see it slowing down any time too soon.  However, I do hope I’ll be able to get back on the wagon with this blog and write a new one at least every 2 weeks.  It fel really important to get this one out there, so it’s a nice to get the ball re-rolling.  Meantime, please share our stories and tell people about us.  Msomi Academy for Girls is moving full steam ahead!