[sac-board] Re: SAC Constitution and Proposed Amendment 2.0

I believe Peter is correct that the members of an organization are 
not liable only the board members. If incorporated, only the 
corporation's assets are at stake.

When I joined SAC I was a bit surprised the club was not incorporated.

I have not hear the arguments against incorporation of SAC and would 
be interested to know why the club has been against that?

Few if any lawyers would take a case against an incorporated 
organization that has only a few thousand dollars worth of assets, so 
that in itself would be good protection.

I think the best protection is:

1. Try to make events as safe as possible.
2. Incorporate.
3. Keep the insurance current.
4. Don't use waivers as they may alert people that there may be 
danger and that the club is worried about getting sued. To some that 
may be an invitation to sue.

Jeff

At 07:58 -0700 7/19/05, Peter wrote:
>With regards to liability, the general membership isn't really at 
>risk - just the officers.
>Incorporation shields the officers from personal liability by 
>creating a legal entity.
>
>Actually, incorporating in Arizona is a lot less expensive than 
>that. It will cost you $10 to
>reserve the corporate name for 120 days. The fees are $60 (only $40 
>for a non-profit). It will cost
>$10 annually to file the required annual report with the ACC. No, it 
>isn't very hard at all - it is
>more just assembling existing/known data into the application. The 
>result is a non-tax-exempt
>non-profit corporation. A non-profit corporation is still required 
>to file an income tax return with
>the IRS annually.
>Another possibility is concurrently filing for a 501(c)(3) exemption 
>of the IRC (done through the
>IRS). This will cost around $500 and is a little more involved than 
>incorporation (it is the federal
>government, after all). The result is a tax-exempt non-profit 
>corporation. This situation would be
>very advantageous for a club like SAC.
>
>Peter

-- 
Jeff Hopkins
HPO SOFT
Hopkins Phoenix Observatory
http://www.hposoft.com/Astro/astro.html

*********************************************************
  Small minds speak about people * Average minds speak of events
************   Great minds speak of ideas!    ****************
*********************************************************
                     Hopkins Phoenix Observatory
                       7812 West Clayton Drive
                   Phoenix, Arizona 85033-2439 U.S.A.
                                www.hposoft.com

Other related posts: