I’ve been working on applying to foundations and grant-making organizations. To do that I needed a budget that I could present and point to.
I have three steps in the budget: 1) the bare minimum (goal $12,000) , 2) what would be nice to have (goal $18,000), and 3) “in my dreams”
Arriving home from a short trip, I found a letter in our accumulated mail from the Internal Revenue Service.
Yes! They have approved us as a 501(c)3 organization! That means contributions to WMFH-LP are tax deductible!
And it also means we are now able to apply for financial grants from foundations and such, more potential sources for the start-up funds we need.
The determination is retroactive and applies to any contributions since we have been up and running.
This is really good news.
Our local paper, the Dispatch, has written up a very good article on us. You can view it at:
http://cdispatch.com/news/article.asp?aid=34646
It got front-page below-the-fold exposure in the Monday, July 7th edition. That has spawned a few emails coming in to us and a supportive letter to the editor in the Wednesday edition of the paper.
Also, I had the opportunity to tour and talk to the folks at WMSV at Mississippi State University and at WMUW at Mississippi University for Women. It has been very helpful to me to talk through some of our programming ideas and learn more about how other non-commercial stations in our area operate.
And finally, we have decided to pay a small fee to join the local chamber of commerce organization. Our goal is to use their membership database to build some sponsor relationships with local businesses.
Hi,
Things are quiet here at the future WMFH-LP broadcast station, but we are still making some small progress.
After getting our 501(c)3 application completed we received back a confirmation letter in the mail from the IRS. They say it will be approximately 90 days before we receive our “determination letter” on our charity status. It could go longer if they have questions about our application.
But we are not standing still waiting for that. We are also contacting local businesses in this area, trying to interest them in advertising/underwriting on our station.
So far we have not found any takers! but we are still at it.
We also hope to grow our community presence in the next few weeks in other ways. If you have ideas about that, please let us know!