The Angel of Hope Community Forum

We are just getting started on our Angel Park here in Fergus Falls MN and are wondering about how you approach an organization,that has a 501c about "going under them" for a tax exempt staus...has anyone went under the Unitied Way?
what organizations would you recommend?

Here in Binghamton, NY we had such limited funds to begin with and a very small committee that we did not go the route of a 501C (but wish we did!). Thankfully, we were able to proceed without it as it seemed that people that donated did not care if they were able to take a tax deduction or not. Where it did come into play was when a major donor like a business was involved and surprisingly even there, they still went ahead and donated. It actually took quite a few years for us to actually get any traction as we started with small fund raisers to make people in the community aware of our project. For instance, when there was an event where we could have a table to sell angel pins etc. we did that which doubled as a publicity thing as well. What was extremely helpful was our local newspaper had a column about good things happening in the community and we were interviewed about the Angel of Hope and our vision to bring one to the area. Our fund raising grew after that and we then held our first major event, an Irish Festival with Irish Musicians, food raffles, baskets etc. We raised over $5,000 from that and then we were really on our way and the selling of bricks was started which provided us with the major money we needed. To get back to your post - we did this all with no 501 c.