Keeping nonprofit status relies upon filing tax forms responsibly, the...

Keeping nonprofit status relies upon filing tax forms responsibly, the Internal Revenue Service says in its crackdown. Credit: iStock

Jean Valente had been arranging medical care for a Ghanaian woman when she got the letter.

It was from the Internal Revenue Service telling her that her St. James-based nonprofit, Beyond Our Borders, had lost its nonprofit status because it had not filed tax returns in the past three years.

"There was so little money involved that it didn't make sense to pay the accountant to fill out the form," she said, adding that her group's annual budget is $25,000. The group has no paid staff and relies on volunteers to raise money and pack medical supplies and books for Ghana and El Salvador.

"It's like it's one more thing," she said, adding that she spent Monday going through financial records in an attempt to get the nonprofit status back. "And sometimes you just don't have the time."

Beyond Our Borders joins roughly 2,400 nonprofits on Long Island whose tax-exempt status was revoked this month for not having filed returns at least once in three consecutive years.

A law passed in 2006 changed the requirements; until then, small nonprofits didn't have to file annually, and those that hadn't would now need to file once between 2007 and 2009 to maintain their nonprofit status.

The IRS mounted a widespread campaign to reach out to nonprofits in danger of losing their status and even extended the deadline to file last year by five months.

"It's frustrating, but these organizations did have time," said Ann Marie Thigpen, director of the Long Island Center for Nonprofit Leadership at Adelphi University. "You understand why these things happen. At some point, you need organizations to be accountable."

Thigpen said the purge may help to get a sense of how many nonprofits operate on Long Island; she's heard estimates of 6,000 to 8,000, but that likely includes many that haven't been operating for years.

"It's impossible to get the correct numbers. You only typically know when a not-for-profit begins, not when it ends. Because most don't end," she said. "This may indeed help lead to an accurate count of not-for-profits, which is important."

While some nonprofits, like Valente's, are clearly still operating, others on the list haven't appeared to be active but hadn't dissolved officially.

Two of them -- Big Brothers Big Sisters of Suffolk and Playing It Safe Inc., both based in Levittown -- came as a surprise to Bill Tymann, chief executive of Big Brothers Big Sisters of Long Island.

Tymann said that after Big Brothers Big Sisters of Suffolk merged into its Nassau counterpart in 1994, no one appears to have officially dissolved the now-defunct group.

And three years later, after Big Brothers Big Sisters of Long Island took over Playing It Safe Inc., a safety-education nonprofit, it appears that no one dissolved that group either, Tymann said.

"It's an interesting occurrence after so many years," Tymann said. "It's certainly not a concern of ours and I'm glad it's being put to rest."

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