If you’ve been at the past few member meetings then a lot of this info is review, but if not we have exciting news - we’re finally moving forward with the long awaited transition to nonprofit status! The broad strokes are below for those that haven’t heard yet, please take a moment to review so you’re in the loop. If you’d like to watch a recording of our last member meeting where we talked about these details and more, you can download it here.
Asmbly Makerspace, Inc. has offered ATXHS a move-in-ready 501(c)3 in which we will be the sole occupants in membership and leadership. The transition to nonprofit format proposes changes to our legal organization. No changes are being proposed to our space or operation. We will still operate out of the same space with the same tools (although we do hope our nonprofit status will afford us opportunities to improve what we can offer!).
Asmbly who?
A little background on Asmbly:
- Asmbly was formed by a small group of people looking to make a nonprofit version of ATXHS with all the same discipline offerings and more like ceramics and jewelry making.
- They received nonprofit status in 2019, but were never able to secure a space to further their endeavors.
- The organization has maintained it’s paperwork and legal status, but is otherwise inactive.
Why nonprofit?
- Nonprofit status better fits our operation
- Numerous tax benefits
- More incentive for donations
- Opportunity to create new bylaws
- Legal benefits to avoiding owner-members
Why Asmbly?
After extensive discussion, ATXHS Board recommends that we adopt the Asmbly name during transition. The name Asmbly is meant to evoke the gathering of a wide-ranging creative community which better reflects the aspiration to grow our membership and diversify our offerings.
Multiple benefits to using this name:
- Research completed for business name conflicts
- Asmbly already has SEO and organic Google ranking
- Asmbly has several hundred email list subscribers
- Asmbly doesn’t convey a specific creative discipline
- yet applies well to everything we are and do
- Domain names have already been acquired
We are working diligently to complete this transition in Q1 (by the end of March) and are actively working on the legal and logistical pieces. Branding and logo work is in process to make sure we have a solid image to present when we kick off a big marketing campaign.
Fundraising
We will soon be starting up a fundraising campaign soon and are looking for members interested in helping develop and work on that. If you are interested in helping, head on over to this post to get involved - https://yo.atxhs.org/t/nonprofit-fundraising-campaign/1973.
The fundraiser has launched! Check it out here - Have you shared our GoFundMe yet?
If you have any questions or concerns not addressed here, feel free to reach out to board@atxhs.org.