Non-Profit Organization

Why was this group created?

Several people in the section ran into situations where a group member contacted a Governmental Unit, Commercial Company or an individual who wanted to donate surplus equipment to a specific ARES team or to an Emergency Communications Service in general.

The problem was that the donor was required to donate the surplus equipment to ONLY a qualified 501(c)(3) organization.

We could have created several separate qualified 501(c)(3) organizations, one for each district or team. We discussed the issues of multiple levels of management, record keeping and organization of maintaining separate entities and we decided to create one entity, qualify it under current IRS regulations, manage it though the current functioning ARRL/ARES organizational structure and make it available to all emergency communications teams in the Western Washington Section.