Greetings and Salutations,
The biggest news is how the nine groups in Wisconsin will have tobe reorganized under a subsidiary corporation to the SCA, Inc. called SCA-Wisconsin,Inc. The reason for this is the state of Wisconsinis requiring full auditing to continue to operate as a non-profit companywithin the state. This would involve auditing of over 700 groups and many otheraccounts, the cost of which would be in the hundreds of thousands annually andwould effectively make it impossible for the SCA to continue. Unfortunately, Wisconsin has only giventhe SCA, Inc. until July 31, 2010 to comply with the audit requirements ordiscontinue doing business within the state.
The solution is, for the states requiringthis full audits, the SCA is creating subsidiary corporations of the groups inthose states. Usually the overall assets of the groups in these states shouldfall under the limit for the amount required for auditing, but even if it didrequire auditing, it would only be the groups within that state needing itthen. The state of Illinois was the firststate to require this and the SCA has already reorganized the groups within Illinois under asubsidiary corporation called SCA-Illinois, Inc. The state of West Virginia is also going through thisprocess. It is expected that many more states will also begin enforcing thisauditing requirement soon as well. Due to short notice the state of Wisconsinhas given to comply, the SCA is now determining which states will enforce thisrequirement and trying to be proactive with creating subsidiary corporationsfor those states in hopes to avoid this *rush* situation in the future.
What needs to happen for the nine groupswithin Wisconsinis once we have the new subsidiary corporation SCA-Wisconsin, Inc’s Articles ofIncorporation and Bylaws written up by our law firm and we have received ournew federal tax identification number, the groups will have to close theirexisting bank accounts and open new accounts using the new tax id. In addition,the reporting for 2010 will have to be duplicated for these groups, with halfthe year reporting under the old tax id and half the year under the new one. Becausethe window for this to happen is very small and the process is somewhatcomplicated, Society and Kingdom level officers will aggressively be workingwith the nine groups to make this switch over happen as smoothly as possible.
We had our first Wisconsin Exchequers meetingat Border’s Skirmish that the Society Exchequer attended to field questions andexplain the process. I will be holding a follow up Exchequer meeting at WW onSaturday at 9am (check the class schedule for location).
On the off chance that we are not able to geteverything in place by the 7/31/2010 deadline, we have come up with a backupplan in which the Kingdom will assist these groups during the interim. Thismeans either way there should be no affect on the ability for the Wisconsin groups to meet, hold their planned events, ortake care of financial obligations.
Don’t be too surprised if we begin this wholeprocess with some of the other states that are within the Kingdom as well inthe near future.
So the only other thing I want to mention isthat its time to get your 2nd Quarter Reports done. Please get theseto me as soon as possible. Electronic copies are fine, especially if you havethe ability to scan your signed copy and June bank statements.
**Tip-Of-The-Month: Even if you hold an eventthat you don’t charge any fees for, you need to fill out the Non MemberSurcharge (NMS) form and send that to the NMS Deputy Exchequer. (Remember, asof July the NMS fee is now $5.)
YIS,
Rodrigo