• Welcome to the StartRIGHT Service. We are excited to join you on this journey. The service is broken into two phases. The following steps will walk you through the process

• After your Phase 1 appointment, your specialist will be working hard to craft governing documents for your organization.
• In about three weeks, your governing documents will be ready for your review and will be sent to you through an e-mail with a link to your own Dropbox folder. This may seem daunting, but we provide detailed instructions on every document to make sure you know what to do with each document.
• Once you have reviewed and downloaded your documents, you will mail the appropriate documents to your state or county with the corresponding filing fee.
• While you are waiting for the state to approve your documents, you can still be actively pursuing your ministry. Continue developing your launch plan, forming your board of directors, and planning your ministry’s activities.

Once approved, StartCHURCH will receive your approved documents and will call you to schedule your Phase 2 appointment. This is the perfect time to schedule your organizational board meeting!

Once you have received your state-approved documents, you can:

• Hold your first board meeting
• Open your bank account
• Move to Phase 2 of the StartRIGHT Service.

• During your Phase 2 appointment, your specialist will ask you questions to complete your 1023 application. The IRS estimates it would take anyone about 150 hours to complete the 1023 application for a church or ministry. We want to give you back 149 of those hours. In most cases, we can get what we need to complete your application in one hour.

• Three weeks after your Phase 2 appointment, you will receive your federal 1023 application to submit online to the IRS.
• Please take some time to review your application. We want to make sure the document we have prepared is an accurate reflection of your organization.
• If you have questions or changes to the application, please let us know. If you are happy with everything, please follow the instructions and submit your application online as soon as possible.
• We place a three-month deadline on the application. If it is not submitted within that timeline, the information may become outdated, which can delay the process.

• Once you submit your application online with the $600 filing fee to the IRS, you will receive a confirmation page with an agency tracking number. We recommend printing and saving that page for your corporate records.
• The IRS’s processing time typically ranges from 3 to 6 months. If the IRS has additional questions about the application, they will send you a letter in the mail. If you happen to receive a letter, please forward it to StartCHURCH, as we will create a response as part of the StartRIGHT Service.

• The IRS will send your federal determination letter, also known as the IRS approval letter, within approximately three to six months.
• That determination letter is proof of the organization’s 501(c)(3) tax-exempt status.
• You and your donors can now rest with ease knowing your donations are tax-deductible.