The United States Internal Revenue Service. Many might argue that no fun and interesting blog post should ever start with those words, let alone be about the tax code. The IRS is an organization known for enforcing stringent rules and laws with complicated filings and forms, that sometimes inspire feelings of dread and cause anxiety. But take heart because the IRS has done something special--they created a tax code that encourages and rewards people for giving to help address social needs. The IRS oversees the regulations that make charitable giving tax advantageous for millions of Americans, and, alas, it is these rules and laws that helped inspire the establishment of the Delta Phi Epsilon Educational Foundation.
As a 501(c)(7) organization, the Delta Phi Epsilon Sorority is classified as an exempt membership (social and recreational club) organization and, as such, gifts to the sorority and its chapters directly are not tax deductible according to the tax code. The sorority is limited in the kinds and amounts of income that it can bring in while still maintaining a tax exempt status. 501(c)(3) charitable organization, as defined in the tax code, however, can collect funds for charitable and educational purposes, and it was with these intentions that the Delta Phi Epsilon Educational Foundation was established.
[Did you follow all of that? Why isn't there a Schoolhouse Rock segment to cover this??]
For many years, the sorority and foundation existed together but infrequently were jointly strategic. The foundation was squarely focused on providing scholarships to individuals and emergency aid to sisters. At the same time, the sorority's programming was maturing and more extensive learning opportunities developed to keep pace with the needs of our membership, with those costs almost exclusively passed on to collegiate chapters.
Today, the relationship between the organizations has evolved. Delta Phi Epsilon Sorority requires support from a recognized charitable organization to conduct fundraising for educational programming and philanthropic giving, and to provide scholarship assistance to members and legacies. And since the Delta Phi Epsilon Educational Foundation was originally founded to provide such support, we have renewed our commitment to ensuring we can help provide the educational programming and philanthropic outlets for sorority women that our members require.
In truth, we do have to remain legally separate and at "arms length," but that should not keep us from understanding each organization's needs and how we can serve our common constituencies. We delineate our roles simply: the sorority is in the business of member recruitment and chapter management, whereas the Educational Foundation is focused on fundraising for all sorority education and service opportunities. The foundation's self-sustaining board allocates a fee to the sorority in exchange for day-to-day operations management by sorority staff, keeping our costs low.
The best way the foundation can serve our sorority and sisters is to fulfill the purpose designed by the IRS-- to provide resources for scholarships and other educational and philanthropic programming, such as Convention, New Member Programming and contributions to the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation and ANAD. In future posts, we will share more information about funding philosophy and what we would like to be able to fund with alumnae and collegian contributions. For now, please know that we have an extraordinary opportunity to do some amazing things for our sisterhood and to ensure the viability of DPhiE in the future sorority landscape ... but we can only do it with gifts from you and our sisters.
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