For the Lenox (MA) Contra Dance we're operating pretty much under the radar. The only "official" thing we have going is our checking account (for which we needed to get a dba - "Doing Business As"). Otherwise it's money in, most of the money out, with some carry over for lower attendance dances. We're functioning as a non-profit activity without the specific tax credentials, or the reporting requirement. I don't know how we'd ever get tripped up by this structure. As I've written before, we do carry liability insurance through CDSS as protection for our "unofficial" board. Something that would really inform this discussion about structure would be to know how many dances per month various organizations are trying to promote. We only do a 3rd Saturday. Some organizations described recently have seemed very "structured" with multiple officers, etc., but this might be due to managing several events per month. This past spring I was contacted for participation in a survey of dance organizations from around the country and it included some of these questions. I'll attach it below so others can read this. I've also passed it along to Chris W. with the suggestion that perhaps something like this could be done right through SharedWeight.net. Here's the survey: (in Excel) Stephen Moore Lenox (MA) Contra Dance On Feb 11, 2008, at 12:45 PM, George Fowler wrote: