[Theforum] Re: questions?

[Luther, Ron]

Hi John,

It could well be my ignorance ... I am not familiar with any "official" Non-Governmental Organizations here in the US. [Okay - until you brought it up, I had never heard of NGOs before - I had to look up what it stood for.  ;-)  ]  I took a quick look at 'NGO Networks for Health', which seems to have a Washington DC address - so maybe you can do this in the US.  That one appears to be a cooperative project between several established (and most likely registered) organizations.  A further search on Google turned up a number of NGOs that seemed to involve cooperative exercises between some pretty big (and I'm guessing incorporated) players --- I didn't see any that looked like they were started and run by a handful of folks as a hobby.  Can you create a 'hobby' NGO in Europe?

We'd have to find someone who is more knowledgeable about NGOs in the US... cuz it sure ain't me!

Let me try putting my [limited] understanding of the US viewpoint in another light ...

<IANAL(or CPA) and like that there>
If you were the treasurer for your football team here in the US and you had weekly dues to put money away for beer and trophies at the end of the season, and you put that money in a bank account for the team and it earned some interest.....

.... unless that football team is an incorporated 'legal entity' you, the treasurer, would *personally* be responsible for any tax owed on the income earned on that bank account.  [We have a national tax on income here in the US.]

Now - realistically it probably wouldn't amount to much ... but over here I'm pretty sure it would be a 'personal' rather than a 'organizational' liability unless the organization is a legal entity.
</IANAL>


Anyone else can feel free to correct me if I haven't got that quite right. It's been a looooooong time since I 'treasured' for any organization.


RonL.
(That NGO stuff does sound kinda cool, though.  I'm not seeing any "How to" links ... anybody else?)

-----Original Message-----
From: John Handelaar [mailto:genghis at members.evolt.org]

Forgive my ignorance about US (or applicable state or
whatever) law, but is there really no such recognisable
thing as an unincorporated association where you are?

Over here some surprisingly huge NGOs have never been
incorporated.  Thought I'd be the one to fess up to
my ignorance just in case anyone else was wondering...