Chapter Dissolution Announcement and Information
Dear STC Chapter Members and Friends,
It is my responsibility as president of this chapter to give you some difficult news. On Tuesday, Sept 27, 2011, the chapter administrative council received notification that the Society office has dissolved several chapters the request of the IRS. Our chapter is one of those affected. Our chapter was an independent tax-exempt organization. We followed STC guidelines for filing our tax forms, but apparently for the last several years our tax filings have not been in compliance with IRS guidelines for organizations like ours.
The IRS has already seized the assets of one chapter, and we had to act quickly to protect our assets. At the Society’s request, we have closed our bank account and transferred our balance to the Society office. The Society has legally dissolved our chapter and we legally no longer exist as an entity.
I spoke with the Community Relations Manager in the STC office and we have a plan for moving forward. Our plan consists of the following steps:
- On Friday of this week at 12:00 Noon MDT, we will have a Town Hall Meeting. GoToMeeting information is included at the end of this message. In this meeting, we will discuss our current situation, and answer any questions you have about our plans for moving forward.
- The former chapter administrative council will create a petition to create a new chapter. We will post the petition details to our website. In order to submit our petition to the Society office, we will need the actual signatures of at least 15 current members. We will also need to change the name of our chapter, as the IRS won’t let us re-form with the same name. We will discuss possible names during the conference call on Friday.
- To obtain the necessary signatures, we will be holding a Saturday breakfast social on Saturday October 8th from 9AM to 11 AM at Kneader’s restaurant in Draper. (177 East 13800 South, Draper, UT 84020) This Kneaders is directly off the freeway, just east of I-15 at Bangerter Highway in Draper. You will not need to spend the whole two hours; We will be there the whole time, but you can just drop in sometime during that two hour time frame and sign the petition and say hello.
- Once we have the necessary signatures, we will submit our petition to the Society office. They will make the necessary arrangements to incorporate our chapter as a new non-profit organization based in Virginia (the home state of the Society office). We register in Virginia for continuity of leadership reasons. As our local chapter leadership changes on a regular basis, and as we have no office location in Utah, we use the Society office for our official address for legal and financial purposes.
Once the proper legal structure is in place, we will create a new local bank account and the Society will return our funds that we had at the beginning of this change. We will also nominate the former administrative council for reconfirmation to continue to serve the rest of their terms of office.
As part of this change, we will need to change our chapter website location, twitter account, facebook page, etc. We will keep you up to date on those changes as they occur.
Thank you for your patience as we work through this transition. We acted in accordance with the STC policies as we understood them. We are working with STC to identify where the breakdown in communication occurred so that we properly file all legal paperwork in the future.
In conclusion, we are asking for two things from you: First, please join us for our town hall webinar (webinar connection information included at the end of this message) THIS FRIDAY at noon. Second, please drop by the Kneaders in Draper on Saturday October 8th to sign the petition for reinstatement.
If you have any questions about the transition or our situation, please don’t hesitate to contact me via the form at the bottom of this page. If you want me to call you, please enter a phone number. The other fields are required.
I look forward to talking to you on Friday and seeing you in person on Saturday the 8th of October.
Sincerely,
Paul Pehrson, former Presdient of the Intermountain Chapter of the STC
on behalf of the IM-STC administrative council
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