foundational document

    You will need to write up a foundational document. The most common approach is either a Constitution (for an association) or Articles of Incorporation (for a religious non-profit corporation).

    The details of Articles of Incorporation are controlled by state laws, but the principles are very similar to those for an assocation’s constitution.

    If you want to incorporate, you will want to hire a lawyer. You can research and prepare the paperwork yourself, but you should have a lawyer review it before you submit it to the government (the fee will be a lot less if you come with the paperwork prepared). or you can simply have a lawyer create all the correct paperwork for you.

    I will discuss a constitution simply because most of you are going to start as an association.

    It is important to keep your constitution as simple as possible, because governments don’t like continual changes to constitutions. All of the specific details and things subject to change should go into your by-laws.

name

    The first section of your constitution should give the name of your per, temple, coven, or church and the location where you operate. See the sample below:

    Name is a per/temple/coven/church located in city/town in the state of state.

    You can provide an exact street address.

purpose

    The second section is your purpose.

    The government likes to specifics. And the government will be checking to see if there are any non-religious or for-profit activities or purposes listed.

    You will also want to be general enough that your group can respond to changing times and start new activities.

    You may want to look at the purpose of Pr Ntr Kmt as an example.

secular officers

    The third section is your officers and secular leadership.

    You will want to list the officers of your organization, both secular and religious. These can be combined or separate.

    There are officer-less churches, but those are fairly rare and go against the grain of what the government wants to see.

    Your constitution should list your required officers and a summary of their duties. You can also state how they are selected (or elected), or you can state that the board of directors is responsible for establishing those procedures. You may grant your cboard of directors authority to add additional officers.

    There are four standard secular officers. These jobs may be combined with religious jobs.

    The president is the person who is in charge of running things. This could be called the high priest or high priestess or presiding elder.

    The secretary is the person who is in charge of keeping all the written records and filing all paperwork with the government.

    The treasurer is the person who is in charge of keeping track of the money.

    It is possible to combine those two jobs into a single secretary-treasurer.

    The board of directors is the group that has ultimate secular authority. You may combine religious authority as well and call the group by a religious name, such as board of elders. This group writes the by-laws, often selects the three primary officers, and oversees all operations of your group.

    The board of directors may or may not include the three above officers, at your option. Even if combined, the officers might be elected separately. You might consider having the board choose the three officers from its membership. There are a lot of choices of structure here.

    Sometimes the president is also the chairperson of the board of directors, but sometimes these are different offices.

    You may want to have one or more vice presidents. A single vice president typically has the responsibility to be ready to step in and carry out the president’s duties when the president isn’t available. With multiple vice presidents, each vice president is usually in charge of some particular area of your group's activities. If there are multiple vice presidents, you may also want an executive vice president who coordinates the other vice presidents and carries out the duties of the president when the president isn’t available.

    You may have additional officers who are charged with important responsibilities.

    A simple example follows:

    A board of directors of at least three directors and not more than 15 directors will be chosen by the religious leadership. The board of directors will choose a president (who will also serve as chairperson of the board of directors), secretary, and treasurer.
   The board of directors will be responsible for overseeing the secular, business, and legal activities of name of group and writing and maintaining the by-laws.
   The president will supervise the day to day secular, business, and legal activities of name of group and serve as chairperson of the board of directors.
   The secretary will keep all written records of name of group, including minutes of the meetings of the board of directors, and file all paperwork required by state and federal government.
   The treasurer will keep all financial records of name of group, manage the budget, money, and assets of name of group, and provide the secretary and board of directors with all financial paperwork required by state and federal government.