Choo! Choo!

In honor of my three year old who LOVES Thomas!

Here we are a couple of weeks since my last post and I'm still chugging away at filling out all the necessary paperwork for the IRS. Of course, I'm juggling a somewhat part time job and being a Mom and a wife but hey, no sweat right? I can always create more hours in a day :) The paperwork has to be exactly right so after I'm done there will be many people reviewing our packet before it is sent to the IRS. Heck, who am I kidding, I may just pay an attorney to look it over because once we send this baby there's no going back - or getting our application fee back either. I've been told that if all your paperwork is in order, you can get your Determination Letter within two months. And the Determination Letter is the holy grail of non profit status. Everything hangs on that letter. The government still allows us to raise money but the catch is that we can't tell people it's a tax write off yet. Key word YET. Everything that is donated from the time we incorporated (which was January 11, 2013) until we get, I say, GET our Determination Letter is retroactive. So in essence, as long as we get approved by the government then all our donations up until then are tax deductible. But we understand why some of our big donors want to wait to make sure we get that letter!
In the mean time, we're planning, planning, planning and strategizing on our Sole Sister Parties, our gala ideas, and trying not to put the cart before the horse; which is very hard because we are ready for this horse to run!  In the mean time, we've gotten our first few donations and have been able to buy some shoes for the orphans. Many, many more are needed and we can't wait till our first Sole Sister Party. We've got lots of fun things planned and hope to have a lot of ladies show up who are looking to support an awesome cause - shoes for orphans and micro loans for women.