State Right to Audit
The Ohio State Auditor has the right to conduct special audits of nonprofits who receive public funds. In Oriana House, Inc. v. Montgomery, 108 Ohio St.3d 419, 2006-Ohio-1325, the Ohio Supreme Court held that the State auditor could conduct a "special audit" of a community-based correctional facility (CBCF) receiving public and was not limited to the biannual audit of the CBCF provided by the RC 2301.53(E) relating to CBCF's. In addition, the State Auditor may issue subpoenas to third parties for special audits. The case is not ground-breaking. Nonprofits that receive public funds have long been subject to audit. However, it should serve as a reminder that with the receipt of public funds comes public accountability.

To download and read the case, click on the case name.

Most states now accept a Unified Registration Statement  for your initial filing.  Some states  have additional requirements. Some have separate requirements.  For a summary showing how the various states requirements differ, see the Multi-State Filer Project web site, hosted by the Multistate Filing Project:  http://www.multistatefiling.org/index.html

WARNING. We have found that the summary information on the above web site often contains erroneous (or perhaps simply not updated) filing dates and other filing information.  Do not rely on the summaries provided without checking with the specific state authorities.

The Unified Registration Statement was well intended to provide multistate uniformity for ease of registration.  It does simplify the initial registration for many states.  However, there is no uniformity among the states for annual renewals.  Some states accept the Unified Registration Statement.  Some require only the filing of the nonprofit's IRS Form 990 and audited financial statements.   Most, however have ther own forms requiring extraction of information from the form 990 and/or additional information or calculations.  So annual multistate filings remain an onerous task.

Carroll Ucker & Hemmer LLC no longer accepts the responsibility for filing state charitable registration applications or annual reports.

Carroll, Ucker & Hemmer LLC includes over 80 years of combined litigation experience with over 30 years related to the defense of architect and engineer malpractice claims as well as a variety of contract and other related business matters.