charitable_solicitation_registration v1.0.0

name: "charitable_solicitation_registration" description: "Handle state charitable solicitation registration for a charity that asks the public for money: map where it actually solicits, run a per state exemption check that tests dollars and paid solicitors separately, file before the first solicitation, apply the Charleston Principles honestly to online giving, keep donation pages and point of solicitation disclosures compliant, and run renewals on a tracker instead of memory. Use when a nonprofit starts fundraising in a new state, launches online donations, hires a professional fundraiser or commercial co-venturer, crosses a revenue threshold, or discovers it has been soliciting unregistered. This is compliance workflow, not legal advice."

Charitable Solicitation Registration

Purpose

State law, not federal tax status, decides whether a charity may ask residents of a state for money. The IRS puts it plainly: about 40 states have charitable solicitation statutes, and they usually require registration with the state before soliciting its residents. A 501(c)(3) determination letter does not satisfy any of them.

This skill turns that patchwork into a system: one solicitation footprint map, one register with a row per state, a decision rule applied the same way every time, and a renewal tracker that flags trouble before a deadline passes. The single file summary an organisation usually starts with, a paragraph saying it is exempt everywhere or registered at home, is the failure this replaces.

It does not give legal advice and it does not file anything. Close calls, late discovery of past solicitation, and any state where the facts do not fit the published rule go to nonprofit counsel with the register attached.

Workflow

1. Build the solicitation footprint before touching a form.

• List every state where the organisation asks for money, by channel: direct mail lists by recipient state, email campaigns, events and galas, phone campaigns, door to door, peer to peer fundraisers and their participants, grant applications to funders in state, and the donation page.
• Add states where it has an office, staff, a mailing address or a program site. Physical presence is its own trigger in most states, separate from fundraising.
• Pull donation data by donor state for the last two fiscal years: count and dollars per state. This is the evidence base for the online analysis in step 4 and the threshold checks in step 2.
• Record what does not count as solicitation in most states and do not inflate the map with it: earned revenue from programs, government contracts for services, and genuinely unsolicited gifts. Keep the gift and the absence of any ask documented.

1. Run the per state decision rule, in this order, for every footprint state.

• Does the state have a general registration statute at all? Check the current regulator or statute page. Published lists of no registration states disagree and age fast, so a list is a lead, never the answer. Record the citation and date checked. See references/state-decision-rules.md for why.
• Is the organisation in an exempt category in that state? Common categories are bona fide religious institutions, accredited educational institutions, licensed hospitals, membership organisations soliciting only their own members, and federated campaign recipients. Categories and conditions differ by state, and several states still require an exemption filing or a periodic reaffirmation. Exempt is a filing status to prove, not a feeling. Cite the provision relied on.
• Does it pass the small organisation test, both halves? First half is dollars, and the number and the counting method vary: Pennsylvania exempts at $25,000 or less in annual contributions, Colorado at gross revenue of $25,000 or less with government and 501(c)(3) grants left out of the count, Tennessee at $50,000 in gross contributions. Second half is who solicits: in Pennsylvania the small exemption holds only if nobody is compensated to conduct solicitations, so a paid solicitor ends it at any dollar level.
• If any step fails, the answer is register. Record the decision per state as one of registered, exempt, no_register or unknown, with the rule and source behind it. Unknown is a work item with an owner, never a resting state.

1. File before the first solicitation in that state.

• Most states require registration before soliciting, so sequence the work backwards from the campaign launch date, not forwards from today. A few states give a short window after first receiving assets or contributions, such as California at 30 days and Tennessee at 30 days after crossing its threshold. Treat a window as a deadline, not permission to wait.
• Check for a prerequisite filing first. A small number of states require a foreign entity or business qualification before the charity filing, Colorado with its Statement of Foreign Entity Authority is one, and Washington DC and North Dakota are named in regulator guidance for a similar step. Solicitation alone is not business registration in most states, so do not file foreign qualifications everywhere out of caution either. Check per state.
• Assemble the standard package once and reuse it: IRS determination letter, articles of incorporation, bylaws, most recent Form 990 with schedules, officer and director roster, financial statements at the level step 5 requires, any professional fundraiser, fundraising counsel or commercial co-venturer contracts, and a registered agent address where the state requires one.
• Decide on the Unified Registration Statement per state, not once for all states. The URS was built by the National Association of State Charity Officials and the National Association of Attorneys General to cut duplicate entry, but acceptance has shrunk as states moved to their own portals. Recent guides count only a small number of states accepting it as the primary form, with many more taking it only with state supplements, and some, including Colorado, Florida and Oklahoma, not taking it at all. Where a state portal exists, use the portal.

1. Apply the Charleston Principles to online giving, and write the analysis down.

• The Principles are guidance the National Association of State Charity Officials issued in 2001 for internet solicitation. They are not binding law, and states apply them unevenly. Say that in the analysis, every time.
• Domicile test: an organisation domiciled in a state, meaning its principal place of business is there, registers there if it solicits online. No online analysis avoids the home state.
• Targeting test: a non domiciled organisation that runs an interactive site and specifically targets residents of a state registers there. Targeting evidence includes state specific appeal pages or copy, geo targeted ads, mail or email follow up to residents of that state, and a campaign built around a place in that state.
• Receipts test: a non domiciled organisation that receives contributions from a state on a repeated and ongoing basis, or a substantial basis, through its site registers there even without targeting. The Principles leave repeated, ongoing and substantial undefined, so set an internal trigger in advance, for example review any state reaching a stated count or dollar figure in a rolling year, and log the review.
• Passive page alone: the Principles treat a non interactive or merely informational site differently from an interactive donation page, and a few stray unsolicited gifts do not by themselves create the receipts pattern above. But some states read a donate button aimed at their residents more strictly than the Principles do, with New York and New Jersey commonly flagged for that reading. Where donations from a state are growing, registering is usually cheaper than defending the argument.
• Re-run this analysis every year against the donor state data from step 1. A viral post or one peer to peer campaign can move a state from passive to substantial in a month.

1. Set the financial statement level per state before renewal season, not during it.

• Most renewals require the latest Form 990, a fee, and financial statements. The level of outside accountant work rises with revenue, and the trigger is per state. Worked examples are in references/state-decision-rules.md: California requires audited statements over $2 million in total revenue, New York requires a CPA review over $250,000 and an audit over $1 million, Massachusetts requires an audit over $500,000 on its Form PC.
• Calendar the audit or review engagement from the tracker flags. An audit discovered in the filing month is a late filing in most states.
• Keep the state filing copy of the Form 990 in step with the federal filing, including extensions. Several states tie their due date to the fiscal year and expect the return as filed, and a mismatch between the two copies draws notices.

1. Register the people and deals around the charity, not just the charity.

• Professional fundraisers, paid solicitors and fundraising counsel are regulated separately in most states: their own registration, in some states a surety bond, contract filings before a campaign starts, and campaign financial reports after it ends. Verify the vendor's registration in each campaign state before signing, and file the contract where required.
• A commercial co-venture, where a business advertises that a purchase will benefit a charity, triggers its own registration or contract filing duties in a number of states, and the ad copy must state the benefit terms the state requires, such as the amount or percentage per purchase and any cap or end date.
• A fundraising platform is not a loophole. Depending on what it does for a fee, a state can treat it as fundraising counsel, a professional fundraiser or a commercial co-venturer. Map the platform's actual services to the state definitions before the campaign, and confirm who files what in writing.

1. Keep every solicitation itself compliant, including the donation page.

• Point of solicitation disclosures: a group of states requires stated facts at the ask. The common core is the charity legal name, its city and state or state of principal place of business, the purpose of the solicitation, and tax deductibility. Florida Statute 496.411 is the full worked example, and Minnesota adds that a professional fundraiser must name itself as filed and say the solicitation is made by a professional fundraiser. Minnesota applies its disclosure duty to exempt charities too, so check disclosures even where no registration was filed.
• Registration statements on materials: some states require a set statement, with the registration number, on printed solicitations, confirmations, receipts and reminders. Florida requires its Division of Consumer Services statement in capital letters. Build the required statements into the templates for mail, email footers, receipts and the donation page, per state of the recipient where the state requires it.
• Donation page checklist: legal name matches the registrations, purpose copy matches the registered purpose, any co-venture or platform terms are stated, required state statements that apply to online donors are present, and no state is solicited where the register says unknown or lapsed. If a campaign is not registered in a state and may not lawfully target it, geo target the campaign away from it and note a disclaimer alone does not cure active targeting.
• Phone campaigns: paid solicitor disclosure rules are specific and early in the call in states such as Colorado, covering paid status, the telemarketing company, the charity name and phone number, the caller's name, and on request the percentage going to the charity and the registration numbers. Script them, do not improvise them.

1. Run renewals on the tracker, and fix late discovery honestly.

• Keep one register CSV with columns state, status, next_due, revenue, state_contributions, exempt_threshold. Due dates come in two families: fixed calendar dates, and fiscal year offsets such as California's RRF-1 at 4 months and 15 days after fiscal year end. Enter the computed date, not a copied one.
• Run the bundled tracker monthly: scripts/renewal_tracker.py register.csv --as-of 2026-10-16 It sorts by due date, flags OVERDUE, DUE30, DUE90 and MISSING rows, flags exempt rows whose state contributions have passed the recorded threshold, and flags audit or review level for California, New York and Massachusetts. It also computes a California RRF-1 date on its own: scripts/renewal_tracker.py --ca-rrf1-due 2025-12-31 prints 2026-05-15.
• Worked filing calendar, calendar year filer: January, confirm the footprint and donor state data. February, confirm audit or review engagements for states flagged by the tracker. Four months and 15 days after year end, the California RRF-1 and the Form 990 family filings land. Through the year, file each fixed date state from the tracker in due order, file fundraiser contracts before each campaign, and re-run the online analysis after any campaign that draws a new state.
• When past unregistered solicitation surfaces, stop expanding into new states, quantify the exposure by state and year from the donor data, and take a voluntary compliance plan to counsel. States generally treat coming forward and registering as the better path, and back filings, late fees and in serious cases fines or a bar on soliciting are the usual cost of being found instead. Never backdate a filing or describe a late registration as timely.

Output Contract

Deliver, in this order:

• The footprint map: states by channel, plus the donor state count and dollar table it rests on, with the period covered.
• The register: one row per state with its decision, the rule and source citation behind it, the date checked, and the next due date or exemption reaffirmation date.
• The filing plan: initial filings sequenced before launch dates, prerequisite filings called out, the package checklist with gaps named, and per state form choice with the portal or URS call made.
• The online analysis: domicile, targeting and receipts tests applied per state, the internal receipts trigger used, and the states where registration was chosen over argument.
• The disclosure pack: the exact statements and scripts for mail, email, phone, receipts and the donation page, mapped to the states that require each.
• The tracker output: the latest run with OVERDUE, DUE30 and exemption recheck flags, and the owner for each flagged row.

Operating Rules

• Verify every state rule against the current regulator page or statute before filing on it. Fees, thresholds and form names in this skill are worked examples with sources, not a live table.
• Never present the Charleston Principles as law. They are non binding guidance that states apply unevenly.
• Never treat a printed list of no registration states as proof. Check the state, cite it, date it.
• Never let an exemption rest on dollars alone where the state also tests paid solicitors, membership only solicitation, or an exemption filing.
• Never solicit in a state marked unknown or lapsed while the question is open. Pause the targeting, keep unsolicited gifts documented, and resolve the row.
• Keep Schedule B and donor identifying data out of any filing copy that a state makes public unless that state lawfully requires it. Ask before attaching it.
• This workflow supports counsel, it does not replace counsel. Multi state back compliance, enforcement letters and exemption denials go to a nonprofit lawyer with the full register.