O Google, Grant Us Thy Donate Now Buttons

March 28, 2008 4:18 PM

We're a newly minted nonprofit, and we want to use Google Checkout rather than Paypal. I've read the how-to on what we need to do to get verified, but there's a hitch.

We can do everything they ask except send in our Federal IRS 990 Tax form. That's because our FY ends in June, and we have been incorporated for less than a year. We have not, therefore, filed any taxes yet and as it would happen, we don't have the 990 to show them. We do have our letter of favorable advance ruling, which does allow us to start collecting funds as donations. So, the question(s) being:

1) Is there anywhere better than the associated Google help group to post this question within Google itself? I love their stuff, but figuring out how to get help is slightly painful.

2) have you done this before? will they accept our letter of favorable advance ruling? If I just send them the scanned PDF image of our letter and explain all of this, will it work or will they ignore me?

We are actually legit and this is really annoying. I don't want to have to even think about using PayPal for this - I avoid them when I can as it is, and I certainly do not want to funnel our reservations and donations through them because of some weirdly specific rule about one stupid piece of paper. TIA.

posted by Medieval Maven to Computers & Internet (6 answers total)

The 990 form is a form of financial disclosure and it has a lot more information than the early letter of favorable ruling. I've reviewed grant requests at some agencies that will accept the advance letter and some that will not. You can give it a try with Google, but the document you're trying to sub is not the equivalent of the 990.

If it's really a problem ask your tax advisor if there's an option to shift your financial reporting calendar to submit a 990 ASAP. A lot of hassle, but you could do it.

Good luck!
posted by 26.2 at 6:05 PM on March 28, 2008

I'm asking someone at google who used to be part of the checkout group. Hang tight.
posted by rbs at 6:33 PM on March 28, 2008

You could always file a 990 for the preceding year and just show no activity. Since there is no activity/no taxes owed there is no penalty for late filing.
posted by flug at 9:25 PM on March 28, 2008

Looking forward to more info from rbs. Unfortunately, flug, since we did not "exist" in the previous FY (no tax ID, the IRS didn't have a record of us, etc) then that sort of would not work. I don't want to lie or fudge. I just want to use this service, because it's what makes sense for us as an org.
posted by Medieval Maven at 6:04 AM on March 29, 2008

Here's what my contact at google said:

"yeah, no need for a 990. they can just send their letter from the IRS granting them 501(c)(3) status."
posted by rbs at 3:01 PM on March 30, 2008

Thank you so much! Off to send an email now!
posted by Medieval Maven at 6:31 PM on March 30, 2008