PlacerSustain: Voices of Placer County's Sustainability Community

PlacerSustain received notification of the IRS approval of its status as a 501(c)(3) exempt chartiable organization.  This has been in the works for 6 plus months.  The IRS review was comprehensive.  PlacerSustain's Mission raised some exemption issues.  We provide an open publication forum through the web and meetings for private individuals, businesses, and other organizations to tell their story and collaborate to pursue mutual interests.  We are interested in facilitating collaboration that supports sustainable economic development.  We work to encourage the application of sustainability practices by private individuals, private businesses, and other organizations.  We are facilitating team building and working group formation on projects that include the private sector.  And so on.  All this raised exemption issues about whether PlacerSustain's activities are conferring "private benefits," which is not permitted for an exempt organization.  Ultimately, we were successful in assuring the IRS that the PlacerSustain relationship with community interests was charitable and educational in nature.  This is good news for the community.  The kind of work PlacerSustain and other organizations are doing to bring the community together to draw upon its existing abundant human resources is essential to Healthy Community.  This requires that private interests, personal or business, have access to information resources about what we are doing, why, and how we can work together.