We had a clear goal and knew what we wanted the Foundation to accomplish,
and it was written down in plain English. I contacted several friends who had undergone a similar process and asked for advice. I also contacted the Garden Conservancy. The outcome was that we should hire a lawyer who has been through the process before.
Looking for a lawyer, we got three possible names and interviewed the lawyers in person. The one we selected, Robert Kalinoski, came with high recommendations, having established a similar organization in Calvert County. We could not have established the Foundation without him, but we found him rather rigid, prone to going down rabbit holes, and ultimately way too expensive for his contribution. He contributed to the letter of Understanding with the University of Maryland during discussions with their Endowment Department.
The documents he produced were incomprehensible, so full of legal jargon that we could not tell what they meant. I (Shahla) rewrote everything he had written, trying to follow legal language while making the writing comprehensible. Kalinoski reviewed all my rewritten documents, made minor changes, and approved them, stating they fully represented the same ideas in his original documents. He also charged for the time he spent reviewing, which I found ridiculous, given that I was correcting what he should have done in the first place. Not satisfied that his review was comprehensive, I had one of the other lawyers review and approve the final documents. Kalinoski did accomplish the main reason for hiring him: to produce documents acceptable to the IRS for granting us 501c3 status.
So, the main lessons learned are (1) use what is available on the Internet and write your own documents using language that is as close to legalese as you can and give those documents to the lawyer for revision, saving you a lot of money. (2) You need a lawyer to navigate interactions with the Internal Revenue Service. (3) It is worth finding if there are State or County programs you can leverage to achieve your goals (we did not find any). (4) Keep everything as simple as possible while still achieving your goals.
Ferdows Foundation, Inc. 