Massachusetts Charity Fundraising: Registration, Certificate for Solicitation, and Form PC Are Different

Three filings, one agency, and the order they happen in

Nearly every Massachusetts fundraising problem we see starts with the same assumption: that registering the charity with the Attorney General settles the fundraising question. It does not. The Non-Profit Organizations/Public Charities Division runs three separate filings, and an organization can be fully current on one while being delinquent on another.

The first is registration itself. A public charity registers under M.G.L. c. 12, section 8E before it begins charitable work or raises funds in Massachusetts, submits its governing documents and the other information the statute requires, and pays a $100 registration fee.

The second is solicitation authority. Registration alone does not authorize soliciting contributions. A registered charity that will solicit and is not exempt under Chapter 68 completes the solicitation registration and Certificate for Solicitation process and pays a separate $50 fee, and that step comes before the first Form PC is due rather than with it.

The third is the annual report. Form PC is filed 4 months and 15 days after the charity's fiscal year ends. It is not the corporate annual report that goes to the Secretary of the Commonwealth on November 1, and it is not a substitute for either of the first two filings.

Why the Certificate for Solicitation keeps getting skipped

The certificate is easy to miss because it looks like part of registration and is priced like an afterthought. In practice it is the filing that decides whether the organization may ask the public for money at all, and its $50 fee is charged under Chapter 68 rather than under the registration statute.

It is also the filing people expect to renew and then cannot find a renewal for. Under current Attorney General guidance the ongoing authorization is renewed through the solicitation questions inside the annual Form PC filing, not by repeating the certificate application. Treating the original certificate as permanent and never answering those questions is the other half of the same mistake.

The practical sequence for a new charity that intends to fundraise is therefore: register and pay $100, complete the solicitation step and pay $50 before soliciting, then file Form PC on the fiscal-year clock and keep the solicitation answers current in it each year.

The Chapter 68 exemption is four conditions, not one number

Whether the second filing is needed at all turns on the Chapter 68 exemptions, and the small-charity exemption is the one most often reduced to a revenue figure it does not actually contain.

The statute describes an organization that does not actually raise or receive public contributions in excess of $5,000 during a calendar year, or does not receive contributions from more than 10 persons, provided that all of its functions including fundraising are carried on by persons who are unpaid, and provided that no part of its assets or income inures to the benefit of, or is paid to, any officer or member. Chapter 68 separately exempts specified religious organizations.

Read that as a set of conditions travelling together. An organization under $5,000 that pays anyone to fundraise has left the exemption. So has one whose unpaid volunteers do everything but which pays part of its income to an officer. A conclusion drawn from the dollar figure alone is not the statute's conclusion.

Losing the exemption has its own clock. An organization that was relying on it registers and reports within 30 days after receiving public contributions totaling more than $5,000, subject to the statute's full language and to the organization's own facts.

This article does not decide when an out-of-state charity with a donation-capable website becomes subject to Massachusetts registration. That boundary remains VERIFICATION IN PROGRESS in the Massachusetts guide, and the safe approach stated there is that targeted Massachusetts fundraising may trigger registration while website-only contact is fact-specific and worth confirming with the Attorney General.

What Form PC costs, and the figure the fee runs on

The Form PC fee is set by statute on seven tiers of gross support and revenue, with exact boundaries rather than rounded bands: $35 at $100,000 or less; $70 above $100,000 and up to $250,000; $125 above $250,000 and up to $500,000; $250 above $500,000 and up to $1,000,000; $500 above $1,000,000 and up to $10,000,000; $1,000 above $10,000,000 and up to $100,000,000; and $2,000 above $100,000,000.

Two things follow from that. A charity sitting exactly on a boundary pays the lower tier, because each upper limit is inclusive and each lower limit is not. And the fee is a different question from the financial statements the same figure may require, which is why an organization can move fee tiers without changing what its accountant has to do, and can cross a CPA threshold without changing its fee.

The fee is paid with the annual filing by its due date, through the Attorney General's online Charity Filing Portal, which is the operational channel for registrations and annual filings. Current portal guidance states that paper filings have not been accepted since September 1, 2023.

A checklist for keeping the three straight

Before any charitable work or fundraising begins, confirm the organization is registered under section 8E and that the $100 fee has been paid. This is the filing that establishes the charity with the Attorney General and nothing more.

Before the first solicitation, decide whether any Chapter 68 exemption applies, using all of its conditions rather than the dollar figure alone. If none applies, complete the solicitation registration and Certificate for Solicitation process and pay the separate $50 fee. Record which conclusion was reached and why.

If the organization is relying on the small-charity exemption, track public contributions against the $5,000 figure during the calendar year, and treat crossing it as starting a 30-day registration deadline rather than as a year-end question.

Each year, file Form PC 4 months and 15 days after the fiscal year ends, pay the tier that matches gross support and revenue, and answer the solicitation questions so the fundraising authorization stays current. Diary the date from the fiscal-year end rather than from a fixed calendar date, since it moves with the fiscal year.

Keep the corporate calendar separate from all of this. The Chapter 180 annual report to the Secretary of the Commonwealth is due November 1 and has no relationship to any of the three filings above. The full Massachusetts guide at /states/massachusetts/ carries each of these requirements with its own official sources.