Replying to myself! I guess, in short, what I'm asking is - can we apply for a tax ID number without pursing the 501c3 status? As an "informal" arm of the school district, can we do that?
I'm trying to find information on the Michigan gov website and the IRS but it isn't terribly clear.
I'm trying to sort through the pros and cons of having our parent group pursue non-profit status, separate from the school district. Currently, our funds are all in a district account. We've never had a problem with this, but the district will not allow us to use its tax ID number and we'd like to get our own. I also realize (shhhh...) that our spring carnival raffles have not exactly been legal, since we haven't been getting the appropriate raffle license (because we have no tax ID number).
If we file as a 501c3 can we still run our finances through the school district? We'd all prefer to keep our accounting the way it is now.
