A fabulous February to you, friends!

Yesterday I went to the post office and carefully dropped off a package containing the fruits of my labor over the last month: the Effing Foundation's application to be classified as a public, 501(c)(3) charity, all 50-plus pages of it. YEAH!

Why would anyone spend literally tens of hours filling out an interactive PDF form that won't let you save your progress so that every time Acrobat Reader crashes you have to type the whole thing in again?

I'm glad you asked!

Since the point of the Effing Foundation is to solicit donations from the public and use those donations to do charitable things -- in our case, particularly focusing on education and the arts -- having the IRS officially recognize this with the 501(c)(3) designation comes with a number of benefits. The biggest benefit for donors is that contributions to the Foundation would be tax-deductible (minus the value of any significant thank-you gifts received in exchange). It also means that the Foundation would pay fewer taxes, receive reduced postal rates, and be eligible for certain programs -- like discounts on technology and software at TechSoup, for instance.

Right now, donations to the Foundation have an undetermined status, kind of like Schrodinger's cat. Donations made to us are neither tax-deductible nor not tax-deductible until we hear back from the IRS. Receiving the 501(c)(3) designation would mean that all donations to us are tax-deductible, back-dated to our day of incorporation.

This month I'd like to give a huge shout-out of appreciation to our tax attorney, Jon, who patiently answered all of my questions and provided invaluable feedback on our application. Thanks also to our Board for holding a Special Meeting on short notice to help complete the application, and to volunteer Christiana for sharing her nonprofit consulting skills to improve our budget and planning documents. You all are awesome, fabulous people!

IRS forms weren't the only thing I read this month (even if it felt like it some days)! Check out:

• "Sex and Science: It's Complicated" by Molly Longman
• "5 Harmful Myths the Ethically Non-Monogamous Community Needs to Address" by Michon Neal

Thanks for reading. I hope your February is full of good things, and I can't wait to share more progress with you next month!

Peace,
~Kit Stubbs, Ph.D.

You can follow the Effing Foundation for Sex-Positivity on Tumblr, Facebook, or Twitter. For more sex-positive goodness, check out my personal blog and Twitter (@vortacist).