‍This month is the 5th anniversary of MLC.  I was going to say the time flew by – and that’s kind of true – but it also feels like we’ve been doing this forever.

I had a moment of nostalgia reflecting back on our firm’s very first blog post where I explained what I thought I was trying to start when I left another great law firm to launch this.  The thing that jumped out to me most (other than my discomfort about the firm’s name which continues today…) is how it was… just me.  And it was just about… starting a law firm.

I barely have any memories of doing this by myself and, when I think about what we’ve been doing here, I hardly ever think of it in terms of “building a law firm”.  My amazing teammate, Michelle joined a couple of months after the post and, from my perspective, co-founded the firm that exists now and what I consider the true project here.  ‍

From when Michelle joined on and we started hiring, the mission of the firm expanded beyond just serving the progressive nonprofit sector aligned with our values and with a flexible approach to billing (though that’s all still present), to being to at least as focused on using our skills as legal professionals to create the freedom to establish a workers’ cooperative that values, empowers, and pays everyone (founders, attorneys, non-attorneys) as equal partners, and prioritizes a dignified, democratic workplace.

‍ I’m also realizing that I haven’t written as directly about our structure and project as I’ve thought (referenced it from time to time, but never as the main focus).  So now feels like a good time to reflect on what it is, the strengths and challenges of a cooperative structure, and what we’re always fighting for it to be.

There are times when I read over the most recent batch of IRS 501(c)(3) denial rulings and shed a tear (figuratively speaking, of course) for the shattered dreams of well-intentioned but misguided applicants. This is not one of those times.

There was a batch of six IRS denial rulings that came across my desk, and I will probably cover at least a few of the other five eventually. But my penchant for schadenfreude drew me to the one that mentioned blatant partisan campaign intervention and prohibited benefits to a multi-level marketing company. And honestly, it’s much worse than that.

Let’s do a quick recap as an excuse to cover these two issues, one of which is as “black-and-white” as they come (electioneering) while the other (managing private benefit so that a relationship to an affiliated for-profit does not cost the 501(c)(3) its exempt status) is typically a very gray area and one that we spend a lot of time talking to clients about in order to get the balance right. But, honestly, I just wanted to share some insane facts.

Where there is money, there are lawyers and consultants. And where there are lawyers and consultants, there are acronyms, deployed like they are words that everyone knows.

There is a lot of money flowing around the impact investment sector. Therefore, it can be very easy for non-profits, and especially private foundations, to get lost in a sea of letters when they want to invest in a manner that advances their charitable purposes. There’s only so much a blog post can do, but let’s see if we can unpack four of the big acronyms.