How is your club set up? What are the pro's and con's of each? Are there other options?

Did no one see this?
Does no one have an opinion to share on this topic?

I have never been able to understand how a disc golf club can be set up as a 501c. There is not a subsection that fits what disc golf clubs do.

Discontinuum is set up as a non-profit taxable corporation. Non-profit means they don't distribute profits to shareholders but retain them for the club's stated purposes. Taxable means they pay taxes. They are doing very well that way.

Bruce, ask Waterloo how they do it. They are 501c3 and are very good at it. Of course, it helps when you give most of your money to the Austin Ronald McDonald House every year.

HFDS is a DBA. /msgboard/images/graemlins/ooo.gif :eek: :D
However, the bank account is a business account with 3 names tied to it. (President, Treasurer, and the DBA holder - a founding member)

We are looking at moving to 501c6 status, similar to Discontinuum I believe, but probably won't get there until late this year (we've got States - a separate DBA by the way - to run first).

We've been lucky to have dedicated and valuable members tied to the DBA and bank accounts for such a long time.

Interesting....

Looks like the adga needs to talk to Waterloooooooooooo too.

This doesn't really answer the question, but I figured it may help somebody. Read everything under "how we did it".

'Nooga (http://www.chattanoogafdc.org/sandt.htm)

Discontinuum is not a 501c. After looking into it, they concluded that there was no subsection into which they could fit because (a) they wanted to sell stuff and (b) they wanted to open their leagues and tournaments to non-members. Discontinuum is a taxed non-profit corporation.

One of the reasons the PDGA has to have the $5 day-of membership thing is to satisfy the non-profit sub-section that applies where you offer your services only to members.

If you are giving your profits to the Ronald McDonald House, that is laudable and it would get you in under c3. If you exclude non-members I think that is what you have to do to get in under C6.

It has been awhile since I read the law.

Here is the helpful IRS bulletin explaining 501 status.

http://www.irs.gov/publications/p557/index.html

at first glance wouldn't 501 (c) 7 fit?
Keep in mind I did say at first glance, and of course, it would depend on working the Art of Inc and all future business around the IRS regs.

When I had a moment I read the bulletin, and it did not seem to do a very good job of explaining the ins and outs of the statute that governs all this. I just don't have the time to do the reading right now, but maybe next week.

501c7 does look like it would work. The only problem I see is if your club makes more than 35% of its gross receipts from tourney fees that come from non-club members, but you can probably get around that with the $5 PDGA charge. If not, you could make your own $5 charge.

our weeklies run about 90-95% members, so even with more nonmembers coming in for the larger events we'd probably still qualify.