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FOUR BASIC MODELS OF NONPROFIT AFFILIATION LEGAL COUNSEL FOR PHILANTHROPY AND THE NONPROFIT SECTOR

FOUR BASIC MODELS OF NONPROFIT AFFILIATION


INFORMATION AND RESOURCES ON NONPROFIT LAW & REGULATION
      NONPROFIT LAW LIBRARY     STATE-BY-STATE REGISTRATION & COMPLIANCE

FOUR BASIC MODELS OF NONPROFIT AFFILIATION

  1. Contractual Relationship. In this type of nonprofit affiliation, the organizations remain independent and agree by contract to a collaborative effort (joint funding proposal or program, contract for combined administrative services).
  2. Strategic Alliance. Organizations remain independent, but may have overlapping board or shared staffing arrangements. Close organizational coordination to provide complementary programs, eliminate duplicative services and administrative redundancy, and/or to conduct joint fundraising, public relations.
  3. Consolidation. Legal combination of organizations resulting in organization with new name, combined board and staff, one CEO.
  4. Nonprofit Merger. Legal absorption of one organization into another. Surviving organization's name remains the same, the board of the other dissolves or is subsumed, along with its assets, liabilities, and obligations, into surviving organization. Usually involves significant downsizing of staff.