Will enable charities and professional fundraisers to comply with fundraising regulations in one place
Washington, DC, and Chicago, IL, April 04, 2018 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) — The National Association of State Charity Officials (NASCO), the Multistate Registration and Filing Portal, Inc. (MRFP), GuideStar, and CityBase have joined forces to simplify compliance with state fundraising regulations.
“Thirty-nine states require charities and professional fundraisers to register before raising money,” explained MRFP president Chris Cash. MRFP is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit corporation formed by NASCO members in 2013 for the purposes of administering and contracting for the development of the single filing portal. “The registration and reporting requirements vary from state to state. Online fundraising has further complicated this situation. We need to simplify the state registration process through a single national charity registration system. We are excited to be partnering with GuideStar and CityBase to create this.”
“The current registration and reporting process is time-consuming and complicated,” noted Josh Goldstein, VP of product at CityBase, a provider of end-to-end payment solutions, digital services, and API development for local governments and utilities. “Nonprofits spend lots of time each year navigating these state-by-state reporting requirements. The portal will save charities time by capturing this information in one place. We will also ‘auto-fill’ many fields with data that GuideStar has collected from the IRS or from the charities themselves.”
The portal also will increase nonprofit transparency. “We are working with the state charity offices to help them use this registration data in their work,” stated Jacob Harold, president and CEO of GuideStar. GuideStar is the world’s largest source of information on nonprofit organizations and itself a 501(c)(3) public charity. “We will also make much of the registration data, minus private information, available for download. Researchers, policy makers, and the public will be able to use this open data to learn more about the sector. We will also incorporate state registration information into GuideStar’s Nonprofit Profiles. We are proud to help charities devote more time to their missions while ensuring compliance with state requirements.”
CityBase and GuideStar will launch an initial prototype with registrations for a few states this summer. They will work with NASCO to add more states prior to a full launch later in 2018. Additional states will be added over time to eventually create what proponents hope will be a 39-state solution.
About NASCO and MRFP
The National Association of State Charity Officials (NASCO), www.NASCOnet.org, is an association of all state offices charged with oversight of charitable organizations and charitable solicitation in the United States. NASCO provides a forum by which the states can communicate and collaborate on issues of common interest regarding charity oversight and enforcement. NASCO officials established MRFP to provide governance for development and operation of an online system that will allow nonprofit organizations and their professional fundraisers to comply with all states’ registration and annual filing requirements through a single online portal. Members of MRFP are state agencies (attorneys general, secretaries of state, or other agencies) participating in the multistate registration portal.
About GuideStar
GuideStar, http://www.guidestar.org, is the world’s largest source of nonprofit information, connecting people and organizations with data on 2.7 million current and formerly IRS-recognized nonprofits. Each year, more than 9 million people, including individual donors, nonprofit leaders, grantmakers, government officials, academic researchers, and the media, use GuideStar data to make intelligent decisions about the social sector. GuideStar Nonprofit Profiles are populated with information from the IRS, directly from nonprofits, and via other partners in the nonprofit sector. In addition, users see GuideStar data on more than 200 philanthropic websites and applications. GuideStar is itself a 501(c)(3) public charity.
About CityBase
CityBase gives people and businesses an intuitive way to interact with utilities and government agencies. CityBase’s technology dramatically improves constituent services through payment solutions, digital services and API development for cities, states and utilities. For more information please visit http://www.thecitybase.com/.
Press release available here.
Jackie Enterline Fekeci GuideStar 202-637-7606 jackie.enterline@guidestar.org Chris Cash MRFP, Inc. 303-860-6906 chris.cash@sos.state.co.us