Cohousing-L Mailing List: Re: survey on "for-profit entity"

[Raines Cohen (raines-coho-L]

Howard Landman <howard [at] polyamory.org> wrote on 4/17/01 6:32 AM:

>1)  Let the HOA collect and pay out the money for atypical
>activities, and make sure to stay within the dollar limits
>imposed by the IRS.

What are these limits as they apply to a mutual benefit nonprofit 
corporation, the form of most HOAs?

My experience in 20+ years of starting nonprofits and serving on boards 
is that once you have nonprofit status accepting and paying taxes on 
"Unrelated Business Income" is rarely an issue or a red flag, especially 
if your HOA is handling hundreds of dollars per unit per month in dues, 
any rental/activity income is presumably comparatively small and unlikely 
to reach any threshold.

In fact, renting space for activities related to your mission should be 
classifiable as related business income, and shouldn't be a problem at 
all.

We're a California Mutual Benefit nonprofit corp. (I forget which 501 
that is), the standard CA HOA form, and we (a) don't have a policy for 
outside use of the CH yet, just let members reserve it for functions they 
host, and (b) For meals, post the difference between $ spent by chefs on 
ingredients and the cost of meals eaten by members to each members' 
account.

Raines

P.S. On the "public" CH issue: Don't forget to reach out to people 
starting new CH groups in your area and make it available (even if it is 
just with individual members of your community hosting their events) to 
them. Remember, they're NOT competition: every new option brings more 
opportunities and more potential members into the CoHousing world. Try to 
move beyond "we did it" exhaustion and figure out what you (or selected 
members of your community) can do to keep the doors open. We may be in a 
unique situation at the moment, with four built and one retrofit 
community within five miles of each other (and another [Pleasant Hil] 
under construction just 20 miles away, with many of its members, and thus 
its meetings, in this area), and at least one group-in-formation 
(EBCOHO), but with the growth of the Cohousing movement I think it's only 
a matter of time until its routine for a given area to have multiple 
Cohousing groups at various steps of the process.

Raines Cohen <coho-L [at] raines.com> <http://www.swansway.com/>
Enjoying the great biking weather while it lasts.

  Vice President, Swan's Market Cohousing [Old Oakland, CA]
Where a neighbor with a party wall to the CH had to come over to see if 
musicians were actually playing, the sound isolation is that good.

  Member, East Bay Cohousing [no site yet] <http://www.ebcoho.org/>
Evaluating its role as an umbrella group vis-a-vis existing communities.

  Boardmember, The Cohousing Network <http://www.cohousing.org/>
Hosting the North American Cohousing Conference, July 20-22, Berkeley.


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