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Comment by simonw | Hacker News Reader

It matters more for non-profits, because your mission statement in your IRS filings is part of how the IRS evaluates if you should keep your non-profit status or not.

I'm on the board of directors for the Python Software Foundation and the board has to pay close attention to our official mission statement when we're making decisions about things the foundation should do.

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> your mission statement in your IRS filings is part of how the IRS evaluates if you should keep your non-profit status or not.

So has the IRS spotted the fact that "unconstrained by the need for financial return" got deleted? Will they? It certainly seems like they should revoke OpenAI's nonprofit status based on that.

Why? Very few nonprofits contain that language in their mission statements. It's certainly not required to be there.

Perhaps not, but if it was there before and then got suddenly removed, that ought to at least raise the suspicion that the organization's nature has changed and it should be re-evaluated.

Did you know the NFL was a non-profit for a long time? So long in fact, it exposed the farce of nonpros. Embarrassingly so.

The teams have always been 32 tax paying companies. The NFL central office was a 501(c)(6), but the tax savings from that was negligible.

In fact, when they changed their status over a decade ago, they now no longer have to submit a 990 and have less transparency of their operations.

You are phrasing this situation to paint all non-profits as a farce, and I believe that's a bad faith take.

The NFL expanded from 30 to 32 teams in 2002, your whole first clause is incorrect.

My point was, nonpros are used as financial instruments by and large. The NFL gave it up for optics, else they wouldn't have.

Of course, that reading of the IRS's duty is going to quickly be a partisan witch hunt. PSF should be careful they dont catch strays with them turning down the grant.

Our mission statement was a major factor in why we turned down that grant.

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