The legal foundations that should be in place are missing or unconfirmed.
You may have drifted out of good standing as a corporation, you may be fundraising in places you have never registered, or you may lack the basic policies a nonprofit is expected and sometimes required to have. These are the quiet gaps that cause no trouble until a funder asks, a regulator checks, or a conflict erupts with no policy to govern it. This work confirms your corporate standing, gets you registered where you fundraise, and adopts the policies you are required to hold. It is not legal advice about the specific rules in every place you operate, which vary and change; where the rule is unclear, it sends you to confirm with the state or a professional. Use this if your corporate standing is unconfirmed, you fundraise where you have not registered, or you lack the required policies.
Your organization is a corporation in one home place and possibly registered in others, and that standing must be kept current with annual filings or it lapses, sometimes silently. Check that your corporate registration is active and current in your home state and anywhere else you are registered to operate, and that any required annual report or renewal is filed. If standing has lapsed, follow the state's process to restore it, and add the renewal to your compliance calendar.
Open the Corporate Standing Check →Many places require an organization to register before it asks the public there for money, and this catches organizations by surprise the moment they fundraise across state lines or online. List every place you actively ask the public for money, including online appeals that reach specific states, and for each confirm whether registration is required before soliciting there. Register where required, and put each registration's renewal on your calendar.
That is a gap that may have become a live exposure, with back registrations or penalties possible. Get a nonprofit accountant or an attorney to scope it before you file, so you fix it in the right order. This is a route, not a stop.
A set of governance policies is expected of nonprofits and some are effectively required, and their absence is both a compliance gap and a real risk when a conflict or a complaint arises with no policy to govern it. Draft the core policies, a conflict-of-interest policy with an annual disclosure, a whistleblower policy, a document retention and destruction policy, and a gift acceptance policy, plus any your funders or state require. Adopt them by formal board action, record it in the minutes, and build the routines that make them real.
Open the Required Policies Kit →Where registration rules across multiple places are genuinely tangled, or where a past failure to register has created a real exposure, a nonprofit accountant or an attorney should scope it before you act. And a policy that must fit a specific legal requirement, or a conflict that has already erupted, needs a professional's eye. The guide gets your foundations in place and maintained; it does not replace the professional who resolves a real legal tangle, and it tells you when you have reached that line.
Your corporate standing is confirmed current everywhere you operate. You are registered where you fundraise, with renewals tracked. And your board has adopted the required policies, which are actually being followed.
Most leaders move from here to Get Ready for and Survive an Audit, or to Find and Manage Your Risks. Board governance and development holds the board's broader role.