Creating a 501c3 entity for your lodge

So i have had the honor of investigating the option of creating a 501c3 non-charitable organization for our lodge. We have noticed that with the changing face of Freemasonry, and the current economic climate, fund-raising has become quite a labor intensive task; so we are designing it to help out with the fund-raising aspect of our annual scholarships and other charities. We have a set of by-laws and articles that will separate this entity from the lodge in a legal sense.

I will admit, there seems to be some room for error here but when dealing with such an important task you can never be too safe. Does any brother have experience with this? And if so, what specific problems have you had with this?

Thanks in advance for any comments.

At my lodge I know a lot of the older guys don't want to do saying "we haven't had one, why do we need one now?". It would help when getting donations for the company to write off. Hope we can change the minds of those who are not looking at the big picture.

You might want to show them this...



... then I'd go into the discussion on the per capita increase. Hopefully that would show our brothers that, at the risk of sounding like Chicken Little, the sky is indeed falling.

Thanks for the info, will pass it on the the brothers.

Make sure you get with the GL civil Law commitee on this before you start going for this. It could potentially become a liability if it is not done right at the beginning.

Great idea, thanks!