It's been a busy month where I've had the chance to participate in grant maker roundtables in two communities--the PSGA event and the Oregon Nonprofit Leaders Conference in Medford.

In addition, there has been a lot in the news lately that affects nonprofits. So it seems like a good time to post some random thoughts about a variety of topics.

This week has been a bit unsettling for the stock market and, by extension, any group that seeks foundation grants or has an endowment. The good news is that things seem to have settled down a bit. But there may be more unsettling news in the next few months as the European Economic Community sorts out the problems with the Greek economy. It's not that Greece is that large a country or that important itself, but rather the fact that Italy, Ireland, Spain, and Portugal are also dealing with similar issues. When you include Greece, that means five of the sixteen European countries in the Eurozone are facing cricital economic issues. And what happens in response to Greece's issues will set a precedent for the other four, and perhaps set a direction for the European economy...and the world's economy....that will have a signficant impact for the next several years.

But even in the face of economic uncertainty the nonprofit sector fosters hope and optimism. One thing I enjoy about grant maker roundtables is that I always meet a lot of new people. Sometimes they are new people working with established organizations that I've known and worked with; sometimes it's new people hoping to start new organizations. And occassionally, I'll see someone I know well who is now with a new organization.

How many of the new organizations will survive? Or how many of the new fund raisers with established organizations will be there a year from now? That's an interesting question. My guess is that those who succeed will understand two key points:

• Have a vision for the future; know where your organization is headed and be able to relate grant requests to that future
• Match the donor's interest, both with the type of program as well as the type of support. If a foundation doesn't generally support operating budgets, don't ask it to contribute to your annual campaign; come up with something that is a better match

And on the topic of smaller organizations, there is a deadline looming for small organizations that have not been filing 990s due to having a small budget or being inactive.

The practice has been that once an organization received its nonprofit status it stayed on the list of nonprofits until it did something that justified the IRS's revoking that status. As a result the IRS Business Master File for nonprofits grew each year. But if you ever looked at the detail of that list, for say Washington State, you'd see a lot of names and wonder if all of them actually did something.

The rules are about the change. Beginning on May 15th the IRS may begin taking organizations off the nonprofit list. The IRS will consider a group inactive, and terminate nonprofit status, if:

• the group has not filed a 990 return for the last three tax years, and
• the group failed to file the 990-N postcard form for the past three years

While I understand the need to pare down the list of nonprofits, especially to delete defunct organizations that are no longer operating, I know that on one level this is going to make my job a bit more complicated.

And also, it puts a burden on grant writers. With this change foundations are going to add a step in due diligence to ensure that an organization still has its nonprofit status. For the most part, that isn't all that difficult. A problem comes up though when there is a difference between the name you use to do business and the name that is on the IRS business master file. Up to now we had some flexibility. If an group had a nonprofit letter and we had no reason to believe that status had been revoked, then we felt pretty safe about making a grant since once you were on the list, you were on the list.

Now that organizations will be routinely taken off the list, based upon a lack of activity or a failure to document their activity with the IRS, foundations are bound to be a bit more picky about matching names of applicants to names on the IRS list of nonprofits. So even if you have been filing a 990 all along, now might be a good time to make sure that everyone is clear about the legal name of the nonprofit on file with the IRS, and to make corrections now if they are needed.