By Sarah Kusnitz
We recently had the privilege of meeting with Laura Solomon, a lawyer that specializes in representing nonprofit organizations and helping them incorporate. She spoke with us about the different types of nonprofit statuses that an organization can have and how many of them are structured to have multiples statuses. Our conversation focused mainly on 501(c)(3) organizations. This is a charitable organization status, allows for tax exemption, and is often religious.
With many of us looking at joining the Jewish nonprofit world and several of us already sitting on boards as student or staff liaisons with camps or Hillels, it’s important that we know how our organizations work and how we can make our voices heard and taken seriously. Often the board meetings can be too focused on the budget. While it’s necessary to discuss financials, it’s equally essential to stay focused on the mission of the organization. It’s as much our responsibility as the other adults on the board to make sure the meetings are productive for more than just budget approval. However; we also have to remember that we are young and fairly inexperienced. As much as we should feel that we can speak up, we also have to be able to sit back and listen in order to learn as much as we can in every position.
For those of us interested in Jewish Professional life, we will almost certainly be involved with Jewish Non-Profit entities. It behooves us to get all the experience and understanding that we can of the inner workings of this world. Laura was explicit in encouraging us to seek out opportunities to shadow people with jobs we might want and ask all the questions that we can. It was incredible to speak with someone who has so much knowledge and passion and is ambitious enough to forge her own path in working for causes she believes.
