[Board] Fwd: Good news re: OpenMRS, Inc. 501(c)(3) status

[Jeff McKenna]

Forwarding to the OSGeo Board, only because it is interesting how the
non-profit IRS status comes down to relationships.  Which take time and
effort.

-jeff





-------- Original Message --------
Subject: 	[Foundations] Good news re: OpenMRS, Inc.
Date: 	Tue, 11 Mar 2014 09:34:20 -0400
From: 	Paul Biondich <pbiondic at regenstrief.org>
To: 	Foundations List <foundations at lists.freedesktop.org>


All:

I've been a semi-lurker on this mailing list for a couple of years, the
entirety of that time has been spent in hopeful anticipation of
receiving 501(c)(3) status for our project, OpenMRS.  Good news:  on
Friday we finally received our public charity designation. :)

During that process, I was able to establish a pretty strong working
relationship with an employee in the exempt division and learned a fair
bit on what the decision-making process entails.  It turns out that our
designation award was her swan song:  she resigned from her job the day
we received it!   I'm convinced that if it wasn't for our good
relationship with her, we would have literally been at square one (or
two) of the process after her departure.

If folks have any questions about what we went through, feel free to
drop me a note.  If you're curious to read the back-and-forth
correspondence, it's located on this web page
<https://wiki.openmrs.org/display/RES/OpenMRS1+Limited>.

Two quick questions:

1)  Now that we are on the other side of the IRS review process, I want
to take a step back and reconsider new legal counsel.  Are there
specific individuals out there that are "known quantities" and get
strong endorsements from you all?

2)  I need more peer support.  I know that is the purpose of this
mailing list/community, but I'd like to go out of my way and find some
opportunity to participate in an event or two that has most of you in
the same place.  OSCON is the obvious one (alongside the pre-meeting),
but I wondered if you all had any suggestions on other events where I
could have shared space to brainstorm with people that have gone through
the experience of setting up back-offices, fundraising strategies, etc
etc.  Specifically, the IRS nudged us away from a 509(a)(3) supporting
organization into a 509(a)(1) public charity, and that has implications
for how we balance our incoming "revenue".  We need to become more
facile in fundraising from "public" sources, as a result.  I've spent
quite a bit of time surveying how other organizations have done it, but
where I'd like more insight is understanding how well each of these
approaches has worked.

It's nice to be able to start planning a more explicit future for our
project now, so thanks in advance for the support you both have already
provided us and will provide us in the future.

All the best,
-Paul

------
Paul G. Biondich, MD MS
Associate Professor of Pediatrics / Informatics
Indiana University School of Medicine
Director of Global Health Informatics, Regenstrief Institute
Director of Informatics, AMPATH / Kenya
Co-Founder and Project Lead, OpenMRS
Co-Founder and Project Lead, OpenHIE
O: +1-317-423-5655 <tel:%2B1-317-423-5655>