Platform news
The founder pathway is live, and it starts with an honest question
Our guide to starting a US nonprofit is open to everyone: seven stages, checklists, templates, real fees and five free tools. First, though, it asks whether you should.
If you've ever sat at a kitchen table wondering whether to start a charity, this one's for you.
The Start a Charity pathway is now open to everyone, free, with no account needed. It walks through the whole thing in order: defining your mission, planning, forming the nonprofit corporation, applying to the IRS, staying compliant, setting up operations, launching, and growing.
It starts with "should you?"
Most guides assume the answer is yes. Ours begins with an honest self-assessment, because for some people the best way to do good is to join or partner with a charity that already exists, or to start as a program under a fiscal sponsor (an established charity that takes in donations for your project). Those are good outcomes, not failures. Our three-minute quiz can help you think it through.
What every stage includes
- A short explanation of what this stage is and why it matters
- A checklist you can tick off, saved privately in your browser
- Templates you can download and adapt, from bylaws to a donor thank-you letter
- Realistic time estimates and the actual fees, checked against official sources
- Common mistakes, and the golden hints that help you avoid them
- Links to the official government pages
Five tools that do the thinking with you
The structure chooser compares a standalone nonprofit, fiscal sponsorship, a donor-advised fund and other options in plain words. The budget builder adds up a realistic first year and lets you download it as a spreadsheet. The board planner shows which skills your board is missing and where to find them. And the compliance calendar lists the year's federal deadlines, plus state deadlines for the states we've checked so far, starting from your own fiscal year end.
Nothing you type into these tools is stored.
General information, carefully checked
Everything in the pathway is general information, not legal or tax advice. Rules change, and every situation is different. But we've worked hard to make it accurate: every fee and deadline is checked against an official source, every page shows when it was last reviewed, and we'll keep reviewing them.
When the Exchange opens, every stage will also have a button to ask an experienced member charity for help with exactly that step.