We were finally going to get our 501c3 for the cause but now our Treasurer won't respond and there seems to be no way to get ahold of him. Maybe he lost the money, maybe he passed away, I don't know. I tried contacting the Massachusetts attorney general's office but they were no help. I am at my wit's end for over a decade I have tried to save something important putting my time and what very little money I had in this only for this to happen.

Go kick the guys door down.

When you are low income and don't have two days in a row off it is hard to make the 8 hour and 22 miniut drive one way down there.

Stuff like this must happen all the time. There must be a way you can fire him or terminate him.

That is rough news, but there are good instructions in this thread.

Especially the one about moving on.

Sometimes you just have to cut bait.

If there is no one in the area that can make a physical contact, try a registered letter. The post office would get a signature to prove they are there, or it would be returned as undeliverable. The letter should include instructions to contact you immediately.

You want to document every effort you have made to contact your treasurer - times and dates of your telephone calls, copies of all e-mails, etc.

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I second Superheater's advice. This isn't going to happen. Use it as a learning opportunity and move on. One of the lessons to learn is to never give other people power over something that is important to you. Why could you not have served as your own treasurer? I am certain that you were not handling large sums of money and performing complex transactions. A simple checking account in the organization's name would have sufficed.

Opening a bank account, filing for the articles of incorporation, getting a TIN and submitting the tax exempt application are low bar hurdles that quickly determine whether the people doing it are for real or LARPing. Articles of Incorporation takes one evening, TIN app takes 10 minutes, bank account takes an hour at the local bank branch, Form 1023 will take you a couple of weeks and a thousand bucks. If you can't do them in a reasonable amount of time, then you do not have the capability to do the HARD work of actually carrying out your mission.

I don't have enough information to determine what's happened, but clearly you're organization needs a different treasurer and there should be a provision in your bylaws that let's you remove him from office.

Assuming there are two people on each bank account, it's a straight forward task to work with the banks/financial institutions you use to get the signature cards etc updated.

Depending on how much money your organization handles each year, filing a 990 with IRS should be relatively simple -- possibility you can file a 990EZ or a post card return.

There also may be some state provisions that may come into play.

Bob H

I just talked to my secretary and we agreed that we should shut down the organization. This does not mean I am giveing up on this. The next step is going to be starting another not for profit focuseing on mass transit preservation. Hopefully this organization will attract a more diverse crowd of supporters as mass transit is a larger catorgy with a larger fan base than a single locomotive. So yes we may be also trying to save b*ses and subway cars and of course F40s. I also hope more railroad preservation organizations will take more seriously the preservation of F40PH locomotives.

Something is fishy that no one else knows about the money, and that a new treasurer can't be appointed or elected.
Who has been filing annual reports, and when were they last done?

Is the treasurer somebody you know on a face to face basis, or somebody who popped in from the internet? It sounds like you've been scammed, but how deep the wounds cut depends on the amount of money you have lost. You need to have at least two people having oversight of your treasury, complete transparency, and knowledge of who your board consists.
Without kicking you in the shins over this, I think some fundamental mistakes in the organization are rearing their ugly heads. Trust has to be earned.

I finally talked to him. He says we still hav $490. Yes we can remove people and we have in the past. But even with all the sudden it doesn't change the fact it's Darius bad record-keeping in gaps and paperwork. The problem is when I started the organization I didn't have a large social circle to pick from and as they say beggars can't be choosers. I'm going to take the lessons I've learned from this endeavor and with another individual who I personally know and who has volenteered with me at our local museum hopefully start another organization.

Mr. de la Barre,

Sir, I feel your pain. Just speaking as a person who has never had success working within the usual museum type model in better than 50 years of wasted time, money, and effort, I'd like to suggest another approach to you.

First off, preserving an F40-PH is a damn good idea, and it looks like opportunities to do so are drying up fast. One thing it looks like you can count on is your own dedication and determination, so private ownership might be an option to consider. Unless you are wealthy, this is a lot to bite off, even with a small locomotive. It will take over your life, most likely for many years, and I caution you that if you're married, you most likely should not consider owning a locomotive.

Many businesses, such as scrappers or locomotive rebuilders, are happy to deal with an individual instead of an organization. If your approach is not self righteous, and you are not asking for handouts, you may be very pleasantly surprised to receive cooperation from folks that owe you nothing. At least an F40-PH can be moved on it's own wheels, parts should be relatively easy to get, and people who know how to work on them are much more common than Baldwin, Porter, or Witcomb specialists. If you succeed, an F40PH could definitely earn back some of the money you'll be on the hook for before getting to that point.

The preceeding is not meant as a put down of museums, societies, or non-profits. We NEED them all, but not every project can be handled that way. When it comes to storing your F40PH, they may very well be happy to give you a place to park or work on it. We need private owners, too, and most of all, we preservationists of all varieties need to get along and cooperate as much as possible.

Best of luck to you, may the preservation gods smile on you at long last.

Since you have communicated with the treasurer and know what the assets are, it might be easier to bring the organization into compliance, clean up the books, and continue with the same organization. There is going to be some work involved if you close out the organization. The IRS is going to want a final tax return (and possibly returns for prior years if they weren't filed, although it can probably be an abbreviated form.) The state will probably require an application to close down the corporation (assuming you were incorporated). You'll need to get the books cleaned up whether you close down or continue. Any assets when you close down would have to be donated to another 501(c)(3) non profit. If you didn't yet have the new non-profit established and approved by the IRS, it wouldn't be eligible to receive the residual assets.

Others may have found it easy to get IRS approval, but I worked closely with the attorney and we both invested quite a bit of time in insuring that the documentation was bullet proof and in preparing the application. It also took about a half year for the IRS to process the application. Since we applied, the IRS has had their budgets cut and covid brought them to a near standstill. I suspect the processing time would be considerably longer if one were to apply today. The attorney who prepared our application specialized in non-profits and worked for a national firm. He estimated that his pro-bono time would have billed out at over $10,000. My recollection is that the actual out-of-pocket IRS application cost to apply as a new 501(c)(3) is about $800.

Disclaimer, although am not an accountant nor attorney, I do have an MBA and have been involved as secretary/treasurer and registered agent for our organization for the past nine years, set up the administrative processes, and completed the Form 990 tax return for eight of the nine years. Prior to being involved with the current organization I was an officer in a non-profit transportation museum for nine years.