The legal and political climate affecting nonprofits will be different in every state. These state rules about nonprofits are important. Every nonprofit is incorporated under the laws of a particular state (or, very rarely, the federal government); those laws prescribe details about the powers and responsibilities of the board, the membership (if any), and outside observers. Many state regulate fundraising to some degree, so nonprofits that seek support from the general public will usually need to be registered in their home state and, sometimes, in several others as well.

There is no one source that will point to online reference materials about such questions for every state. Several statewide associations of nonprofits have started websites which cover similar ground for their own state to the information assembled here for Washington. One example is the Minnesota Council of Nonprofit Organizations at http://www.mncn.org/ . There is a National Council of Nonprofit Associations (both Minnesota's Council and The Evergreen State Society are members). Minnesota maintains an up-to-date list of the members of NCNA at it's website with the URL http://www.mncn.org/ncna.htm .

There is a list of all the state charities officials, with their addresses, available online from The Internet Nonprofit Center by gopher at gopher://people.human.com/00/inc/data/states . Some state Charities Offices now have websites and other online resources; one notable one is Maryland's at http://www.gov.state.md.us/sos/charity/html/cod.html .

Organizations that need to register to do fundraising in more than one state will be interested by the "Standard Registration" project of the National Association of Attorneys General and the National Association of State Charities Officials. Arkansas, California, Connecticut, DC, Georgia, Kentucky, Louisiana, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, Nebraska, New Hampshire, New Mexico, New York, North Dakota, Oklahoma, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, South Carolina and Virginia currently will accept a standardized registration form (sometimes with attachments) in place of the forms printed in each state. Full details are in a packet available from the National Council of Nonprofit Associations (and other sources); send email to Jane Robinson Ward (mailto: jrward@ncna.org) for details. The first version of the Standardized Registration form was announced in January 1997; more states may join the project soon, and the forms and processing will undoubtedly change and people begin to have experience with how this new system works.

By Putnam Barber. For release 2/3/97. Copyright 1997, The Evergreen State Society.