Nonprofit Board: No!

[Mike Burns]

In a Philadelphia Inquirer article, in a story about the purchase of Muhammad Ali's childhood/young adulthood home, the current owners stated:

The museum was not set up as a nonprofit. "I did not want anyone else to tell me how best to re-create the home or how to preserve Muhammad's most important legacy. This was to be the purest vision of the legacy of Muhammad Ali, without interference or baloney from committees," said Bochetto.

Neither he nor Weiss will get one red cent out of the project.

Bochetto serves (without pay) as managing director of the museum and has hired a program director, tour guides, and security. "My goal here is to get the entire setup to be self-sustaining in perpetuity and we will do this with ticket sales, gift-shop purchases, donations," said Bochetto, who's planning an annual black-tie dinner as a funding source. Admission prices are modest, $8 for adults, $5 for teens and seniors, children free.

Does this arrangement mean then that the basic governance difference between a for-profit "charity" and a nonprofit is that the former is owned and directed free and clear of community direction and the latter is directed by community members? Mr. Bochetto certainly appears to believe that a shared, community ownership can only mean he would not get his say about how Mr. Ali's legacy should be represented.

Too bad (although it doesn't seem to matter) in exchange for no shared governance, Mr. Bochetto must bear the possible tax burdens! There is no Lc3 tax structure in Kentucky to provide all the tax benefits of a nonprofit but the governance of an LLC. Oh well.