Can you use fund raising money to pay expenses?

I belong to a group of women that are interested in running in a long distance relay race to help raise money for childhood obesity prevention. We would like to solicit sponsorships to help pay expenses for our race and then hold various fund raisers to raise money for a non-profit organization. What all do we need to know about any legal or tax implications? Can we open a bank account and/or bank account?|||If you do this with an organization, you can just raise the money and give it to them, and all checks would be made out to them, and then there are no problems.





If you want to create your own organization, then you'll find that the paperwork is a nightmare. You would submit papers and a fee to the IRS, and it would take six months. Then you'd have to register with your state as well, and there are more fees with that.





And any bank is going to ask you for these papers before you can open an account.





The best thing to do would be to find an organization first, and to negotiate with them about how to pay for your expenses out of funds raised.