eSign Articles of Incorporation Made Easy

Esign articles of incorporation

hello this is susan woods of susan woods nonprofit solutions thank you for your time i'm continuing with the series starting nonprofits tutorials and in this video message we are focusing on step 12 of 20 which is file the articles of incorporation with the secretary of state office so again this is step 12 of 20 of starting a 501c3 nonprofit organization and we're talking about filing the articles of incorporation with the secretary of state office nonprofit professionals must complete an application to file the articles of incorporation with the secretary of state office in the state in which they plan to operate to earn approval to operate in that state again nonprofit professionals people who are applying for 501c3 status must complete an application to file the articles of incorporation with the secretary of state's office to earn approval from the secretary of state office to operate the non-profit in that state so if for example you want to operate your 501c3 non-profit organization in north dakota then you would need to complete an application with the north dakota secretary of state's office to file the articles of incorporation now the articles of incorporation just spells out what you plan to do in the state what kind of services you're planning to offer in the state you also have to include two clauses one is called indemnification and the second is called disillusion so you will have to include those two clauses in addition to explaining the purpose of your 501c3 nonprofit organization and then the secretary of state's office will determine whether or not your purpose indemnification clause in disillusion clause meets the requirements to operate in the state now once they've said okay yes you meet the requirements to operate in the state then they will send you an approval of your articles of incorporation and normally it's just a copy of your articles with the stamp that says the articles has been have been filed with the secretary of state's office and it will also have the date of filing now the date of filing is very very important to document because you will need it later on in the application process now while you're filing your application once you get your filed copy of your articles of incorporation that says they've been approved and filed with the date you must include a copy of the filed articles with the form 1023 application for recognition of exemption supplemental responses in order for the irs to give you a determination letter this is one of the documents called supplemental responses that you must attach to your form 1023 application for recognition of exemption in order to earn the determination letter now the determination letter is the approval letter from the irs that says congratulations you have earned 501 c 3 status that's the process this is step 12 following the articles of incorporation now i'm going to provide a very short demonstration of how to file articles of incorporation for two states now every state all 50 states use a different process to filing the articles of incorporation every state i have of course you know i complete the application package for people across the country and i'm thus far i've worked with 18 secretary of state's offices so i can tell you that they're different and i'm sure all of the other ones are different so you have to learn how to file the articles of incorporation in the state in which you plan to offer your services now i'm going to demonstrate how to file in north carolina and south carolina just to show you how different the two processes are okay so i'm going to pause my screen pause the sharing for just a moment so that i can get those two websites pulled up i've already have them cued i just have to get them pulled up for you so if you would just let me pause for just one moment when i do that thank you so much for your patience i just this is just one thing i would like to demonstrate um in the learning so i'm going to [Music] resume sharing my screen in just one moment so that you can see what i'm talking about in the first place that i'm going to show you is the north carolina secretary of state's office website so now you should be looking at the north carolina secretary of state's office website and the first thing you want to do before filing your articles is to make sure that your name that you want to use for your 501c3 non-profit organization is available so you want to do a search i'm just going to do company and i'm just going to put starting with and then i'm just going to put john doe learning uh oh misspelled learning learning plan incorporate it because you want to use the incorporated because you are incorporating your non-profit when you file the articles of incorporation with the secretary of state's office that means you are incorporating incorporating your non-profit organization so i'm going to search and see if that name is available because no need to filing your articles of incorporation if the name isn't available available because your application will be rejected so in this case the name is available it says results i'm sorry records found zero so that lets me know the search search results tell me that the john doe learning plan incorporated name is available so now i go to the next step with the north carolina secretary of state's office i'm going to click on the next tab here and let me pause my screen just one second please to make sure that you're seeing the right yep okay again i just want to demonstrate this so i really appreciate your patience and allowing me to do this so i know from my experience with using the north carolina secretary of state's office website that you go to the forums north carolina still uses forms it's not an online process completely yet so you will have to locate the form that you would need to file the articles of incorporation for a non-profit be careful when you're looking to file your articles of incorporation to make sure that you look for the form in this case for a non-profit organization not a for-profit and you would notice if you did a for-profit because for-profit fees are normally substantially higher than the filing of a non-profit articles of incorporation so north carolina charges 60 dollars to complete an application to file the articles of incorporation and that's another thing that varies from secretary of state's office to secretary of state's office is the filing fee some are less some or more than 60 dollars so i found the right form so i'm going to click on it and i'm going to put it on my desktop then i'm going to open it up and it just gives you the first page includes the instructions for completing articles of incorporation for a non-profit organization and of course you will read the instructions so that you will understand um what you're doing that's always good and then once you've read the instructions um you just complete the application and again this is what north carolina looks like so you will put in your name of the non-profit organization a corporation is and you just go through i'm not going to read through each line because again it varies from secretary of state's office to secretary of state's office what the application even entails most of it has similar information of course the name and address of the non-profit and your board members or incorporators whatever that secretary of state's office calls your board of directors and then um it has a second page here that you complete and then you just put the date and the name of the entity and one thing i don't like about the secretary of state's office is they normally use the word business instead of non-profit i wish they wouldn't do that but just know you're not starting a business in the way we know a business is for-profit this is a non-profit organization and you know that because that's what form you selected and then you would sign i'm sorry you would type the name of your incorporator's name and your title whatever your title is and you can mail it in some people still mail it in but recently the north carolina secretary of state's office allows you to upload this document and then pay your fee online and that's a new feature you still have to complete this document but at least you can upload it to the secretary of state's office and pay the fee 60 fee online so that's north carolina that's how north carolina looks so i'm going to pause my screen once again so that i can now pull up the south carolina secretary of state's office um site so that you can see the difference because again every secretary of state's office has a different way of presenting the information so now i'm going to resume my screen and now i am on the south carolina secretary of state's office website and it looks dramatically different it's so easy and south carolina is my home state so i'm proud of south carolina because this is so easy so you have to welcome paige and welcome to the south carolina secretary of state's corporation search filing and document retrieval system and you want to like i said i don't like this word business new business i wish it was a new non-profit because it can be so confusing but we know we're starting on a business because i've already cue this page up and i started i searched for the non-profit entities sorry about that so i'm going to click on start a new business filing and the first thing is what's the name of the business that you want to start with now you notice i didn't have to go from one site to one site i just clicked on it and it took me to this page so that's an improvement right over north carolina so i'm gonna do the same thing john doe see if south carolina has a john doe learning solutions i think that's what i called it i'm going to see if south carolina because south even though north carolina didn't have one that doesn't mean south carolina doesn't so let's see i think i misspelled incorporated the last time okay so i'm going to do a search this name is available okay north carolina said no names were found like this but this tells me more clearly that this name is available so i can just go ahead and click on add new entity and then uh you have to log on for south carolina because everything in south carolina is web based you don't complete a form and upload it like you would with north carolina you do everything here so i'm going to um form selection yes domestic entity and i'm going to click on non-profit be careful of what you choose non-profit and then it says available forms articles of incorporation isn't that what we want yes it's what we want 25 start filing and so then you just go through the different screens and you complete the information and at the end you will review step three is review and pay and then you get a confirmation now that doesn't mean that you've been approved no your confirmation just tells you you've applied and they are reviewing the information that you presented to them so again this doesn't mean that you are approved this means you have successfully applied and that goes for north carolina and south carolina when you upload your application in north carolina it's for review you will be notified via email whether or not your application is approved and they will also attach a filed copy of your articles of incorporation to that email you would then download that copy of your file articles of incorporation and put it to the side save it on your desktop or wherever you save documents so that you can attach it in the supplemental responses when we get to the 1023 application for recognition of exemption process now if there is a need for additional information or clarification then that email will stipulate that too you won't outright be rejected they would just ask for additional information so i just wanted to share with you the two steps to filing your um i'm sorry completing your application to file your articles of incorporation so i'm going to pause my screen one more la one last time so that i can go back to the powerpoint and finish up this class okay just one moment almost there i hope this this has been helpful to you so i'm going to continue on with the powerpoint again i'm susan woods i started a 501 c 3 nonprofit organization in 2006. i offered two programs underneath the umbrella over a 10-year period even though i don't offer any programs right now i do maintain my 50163 status by filing my form 990 information return every year to prevent revocation by the irs i've earned three non-profit management certificates one from winthrop universe i'm sorry please forgive me three non-profit management certificates one from duke university one from wake forest university and one from winthrop university i'm also a three-time graduate of winthrop university earning a bachelor of science and business administration degree a master of arts and teaching degree and a master of business administration degree i teach in-person classes and i also offer online classes all of my classes are listed on my website and again i do complete the form 1023 application for recognition of exemption for clients across the country and that includes completing an application to file their articles of incorporation everything that you've learned so far steps one through twelve i complete for my clients across the country my website is www.trustsusanwoods.org com that's www.trustsusanwoods.com thank you so much for participating in the starting nonprofit tutorial series this was step 12 of 20 of starting a 501c3 nonprofit organization if you want to start a non-profit organization yourself and you don't have the time or maybe you don't have the desire to do the work that needs to be done to complete the application i invite you to go to my website www.trustsusanwoods.com and click on the reserve consultation link so that we can talk about your non-profit vision and how i can help you get your 501c3 status again i'm susan woods of susan woods non-profit solutions thank you so much for your valuable time and have a great day you