Yes, Deb, your Articles of Organization are included in the application for Non Profit and the IRS wants to make sure it meets the rules. For example, there needs to be a statement about NOT doing political things and another statement about what happens to the organizaions assetts if it ever decides to fold. The wording of each needs to be pretty specific.
Our group already has by-laws in place. Do they have to meet the approval of the IRS? I saw that their were a bunch of Articles of Incorporation on the internet that I thought might be able to be modified to fit our school. Thanks for all the input. I was hoping it wouldn't take so long - eek! - but I guess that must be why they allow you 27 months to get it all done.
Phil's right - it depends on how much time you spend on the infrastructure.
I got involved in the wake of an embezzlement and the discovery the organization had no real rules or processes. Needless to say, we were determined to do it "right" so we started from scratch. Unfortunately, the Forum wasn't as robust back then and the Guides didn't exist. So it was more pioneering on our own. But the IRS was very helpful.
Bylaws took about 2 months (mostly because approvals could only be obtained at monthly meetings). Meanwhile we were getting our state paperwork in place (state tax exemption and Bingo license). I probably spend a month - and lots of time on the phone with IRS reps - to get the 501 (c)(3) paperwork done. It was approved within 6 weeks.
Unfortunately, we didn't understand the timing of incorporating and planned to do that "later". Big mistake. Incorporating creates a brand new org - so if you already got your 501(c)(3), it's not transferrable from the "old" org. You have to file again AND pay the $500 fee. So we ultimately decided not to incorporate.
I would say from the time we started on bylaws until the time we had our approval letter in hand - it was about 5 months.
It took us about 15 months from the day we decided to go for 501c3 until the day we got the approval letter from the IRS (and then a few more months to deal with the state government). HOWEVER, most of that time was spent generating the Charter (the IRS calls it Articles of Organization) and it took that long because we decided to take our time. We looked at everything we were doing and drafted a Charter that was tailored to our group.
If you really pushed it (and had someone working on it full time), 4-5 months may be doable. I would think 6-9 months is more typical of a parents group (after all, we do have other responsbibilities), but I don't have any data to back that up - it is just a guess on my part.
BTW: We have been helping some of the other PTOs in the city do the same thing. We have a slide show that descibes the major steps (and some of the pitfalls) and how we went about doing it. You may find it useful.
