Kevin, thanks for the suggestion. When I was looking for other alumni/alumnae groups' sites, I found something on Alpha Sigma Phi's website that said alumni chapters should file with the IRS as a small business or a self employed business to get an EIN (
http://alphasigmaphi.org/Websites/alphasigmaphihq/images/Officer_Resources/Obtaining_an_EIN.pdf). Do you think that applies to what I'm trying to do?
33girl, we're actually just starting to get off the ground. We had a homecoming tailgate back in October, but that was handled by another alumna who has been running that for a number of years. Our first big event was this past weekend for Founders Day. We're planning to do Happy Hours over the summer, and we hoped to be able to pay for some food and/or drinks at those. We're hoping to have more events as we gain traction and get more interest, but it's been a slow process so far. Our problem is a lot of places want a deposit or down payment for events or large groups. Right now, we're reaching out to all the alumnae from the chapter at Pitt and all the alumnae in the Pittsburgh area from different chapters, so some are more invested and involved than others. We've had a few different versions of alumnae groups try to get off the ground, but this is the first consistent group in a long time. Our undergrad chapter at Pitt was made alumnae in 2016, so maybe that's what you're thinking of?
Titchou, we have maybe $100 right now, so I think you're right and we could probably skip that for now. I think the safest thing is to keep the money from being controlled by only one person. I'm going to look into the EIN and see what that entails.
Benzgirl, I'm going to try to reach out to an accountant after my meeting at the bank. We used PayPal and Venmo this past weekend, but the problem was that we didn't have available funds or a bank account to pull money from to reimburse people paying in cash. We've been doing everything by Google form, and I have to check if we can do payments through that. Our national office doesn't have any alumnae resources- they're hands off and let each alumnae group do their own thing. We don't have any guidelines or any specific structure. As far as I can tell, our group in Pittsburgh is the only SDT alumnae group trying to formally organize (monthly meetings, events other than Founders Day, etc). I think we're going to try looking at other sororities' websites to see their alumnae resources and how their local alumnae groups are structured. Thank you for the idea!
