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Is this a non-profit business? How do I go about this?

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tweaked

Junior Member
Florida

Here is the deal:

I have a website, where I run a live video feed from a camera that is placed on a piece of property that I own. We allow people to watch the wildlife on our camera, 24/7/365. Well, the website has gotten extremely popular and people are wanting to donate funds to help pay for feeding the wildlife, and help pay for the maintenance, repairs and upgrades of equipment. I know we need to get some kind of licensing or something, but I am at a loss as to what we need to do? Would we quality as a non-profit organization? If so, how do I go about getting that done? If we make money off of advertising other people's businesses on our website, are we allowed to "pay ourselves" if it is a non-profit org?

Sorry for all of the questions, I have just never dealt with this type of thing before.
 


Some Random Guy

Senior Member
You are not a charity and are a very small orgnaization, so the tax-free benefits of a non-profit status are not there. Similarly, you would likely lose out on becoming a C-corporation due to the filing fees and paperwork overwhelming the minor income that is coming in.

Therefore, you may be better served by being a sole proprietor or LLC.

What you really need to determine is whether this is a business or a hobby. Do you plan on making money off this endeavor? Will the donations and sales be enough to offset your costs? If you are not in it to make money, then most of your expenses such as animal feed and computer hardware may not be deductable.

http://www.hesscpa.com/uploads/Choice_of_Entity.pdf

I would suggest writing out a realistic plan for your income and expenses related to this web cam over the next year and sit down with a local accountant to discuss how to best structure it from a tax perspective.
 

tweaked

Junior Member
It started out as only a hobby, but it has the potential to make a decent amount of money (mostly through advertisements). It does cost us a good bit of money to maintain everything, but we have thousands of viewers each day and a lot of people wanting to donate. We have allowed some people to share some of the expenses. For instance, we had an issue arise about a month ago that cost us around $800 in repairs. That amount was paid for in a little over 4 hours. Right now, we bring in a couple of hundred dollars monthly through what little bit of Google Advertising we do, but that number will soon grow quite a bit. We are also wanting to start offering advertising spots to private companies, as well as selling our own merchandise (T-shirts, mugs, bags, etc...).

So we most likely need a business license of some sort, am I right?
 

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