"I'm from the government, and I'm here to help you."
Actually, sometimes that's true.
The annual process of registering to do business and/or obtaining a license to solicit in multiple individual states is a requirement for many charities. And -- with each state having different rules and different forms (many of which are truly confusing and opaque) -- the process is an administrative nightmare. Indeed, there are a number of law firms whose main book of business is assisting their charity clients with this chore.
We'd do well, however, to keep in mind that the state staffers administering these programs aren't the ones who make up the rules and aren't the ones who designed the forms. In fact, it's been my experience that if one calls these offices and politely asks for assistance, the staffers will go out of their way to assist you.
I hear "state regulator" horror stories from charities all the time. I know that dealing with bureaucracy can be frustrating. But I don't hear commendations when state staffers act like advocates, not enemies. I witnessed two examples of that last week, in the states of Washington and Virginia.
In the interests of privacy I won't name names, but here are the stories. I had a client member charity come to me with a problem. The charity's executive director had mis-read the due date on the annual registration form; she had confused last year's due date with this year's new and different date. She was facing a penalty, and worse, she was going to miss the due date for applying to the state's own employee fund drive, for which state registration was a pre-condition. This is a small charity. The penalty and the campaign loss would have hurt. I told her I couldn't help her, but that she should call the regulators office and explain the situation. She did, and guess what? They gave her an extension so she could avoid the penalty, even though the availability of an extension was never mentioned in the registration instructions. Then they fast-tracked the issuance of the registration so the charity wouldn't miss out on the fund drive.
In the other case, the charity asked me to explain how to answer a question on a registration form. I read the question several times. I had no clue what it meant. So the charity called the regulator's office. "Oh, dear," said the pleasant lady who answered the phone. "We've told 'them' nobody understands this question." She proceeded to explain in plain English what the question intended; then she asked a few questions about the charity's operations and offered pointers on how to answer the question. Simply.
Kudos to these staffers and their states. Keep hiring people like that, please.
If you have any stories about regulatory staff that have gone out of their way to help you, please share them here.
