New Pennsylvania BCO-10 Registration Form

The Pennsylvania Bureau of Corporations and Charitable Organizations has recently made updates to the BCO-1O Registration Statement along with the corresponding instructions to complete the form.

For our clients that engage us to prepare the Form BCO-10 for them, we will be using the new form. However, the Bureau is accepting old versions of the form until further notice, so registrations that have previously been drafted using the older form can still be issued.

If your organization self-prepares and files the BCO-10 form we encourage you to review the new form and corresponding instructions, along with the renewal due dates provided on the state’s website. We encourage you to utilize the instructions as a helpful resource as they now include general instructions about submitting the form and instructions for each line of the BCO-10. There are also definitions in the instructions which is especially helpful for questions 15, 16, and 17 related to compensation for soliciting efforts, professional solicitors, and professional fundraising counsel.

Please note the following:

• Short Form Registration Applicability: Specified types of charitable organizations
  are permitted to register without filing a financial report. The following
  types of organizations are exempt from having to submit financial reports:

1. Organizations which solicit contributions for the relief
   of a specific individual, when all of the contributions collected are turned
   over to the named beneficiary for his/her use without any deductions and
   provided that all contributions collected shall be held in trust.
2. Organizations which only solicit within the membership of
   the organization by other members of the organization. The term “membership”
   shall not include those persons who are granted a membership solely upon making
   a contribution as the result of solicitation. “Member” means a person having
   membership in a nonprofit corporation, or other organization, in accordance
   with the provisions of its articles of incorporation, bylaws or other
   instruments creating its form and organization and having bona fide rights and
   privileges in the organization such as the right to vote, to elect officers and
   directors, to hold office or position as ordinarily conferred on members of
   such organizations.
3. Organizations which receive gross contributions of no
   more than $25,000 per fiscal year whose fundraising activities are carried on
   only by volunteers, members, officers or permanent employees and only permanent
   employees are compensated for those fundraising activities.
4. Veterans organizations chartered under Federal law,
   organizations of volunteer firemen, ambulance associations, rescue squad
   associations and their auxiliaries or affiliates, which are not exempt from
   registration, did not receive gross contributions in excess of $100,000 and did
   not use a professional solicitor.

• When submitting the IRS 990 return, all schedules must be
  submitted with the 990 form, not just Schedule A.
• IRS 990 group returns of parent organizations should also
  be attached if the organization filing the BCO-10 is a Pennsylvania affiliate
  of a parent organization.