Ohio Nonprofit Compliance Guide: Formation, Five-Year Continued Existence, Charity Registration, Taxes, Gaming, and Reporting

What the Ohio guide covers

The Ohio guide (/states/ohio/) documents the ordinary nonprofit lifecycle under Revised Code Chapter 1702: nonprofit corporate formation, public-benefit versus mutual-benefit classification, governance, the five-year Statement of Continued Existence, foreign qualification, Attorney General charitable-trust and solicitation registration, annual charity reporting, financial review and audit questions, professional fundraising, state and municipal taxes, sales and use tax, property tax, employment and workers' compensation, business and activity licensing, raffles, bingo and games of chance, alcohol events, lobbying and campaign finance, and dissolution with charitable-asset oversight.

It is built from 77 individually sourced facts citing 88 official Ohio sources — the Ohio General Assembly's own statute compilation, Secretary of State Business Services Division forms and instructions, the Attorney General's Charitable Law Section, the Department of Taxation, the Department of Job and Family Services, the Bureau of Workers' Compensation, the Division of Liquor Control, and other official state and local sources.

How SOURCE VERIFIED and VERIFICATION IN PROGRESS work

Every fact in the guide carries one of two labels. SOURCE VERIFIED means current official evidence directly supports the fact's applicability, agency, deadline or formula, fee, filing method, exceptions, and consequences. VERIFICATION IN PROGRESS means the official evidence is incomplete, conflicting, or does not yet resolve a modern question — those facts stay fully visible, with their safe, hedged wording preserved, rather than being hidden or silently resolved by assumption.

62 of Ohio's 77 facts are currently SOURCE VERIFIED and 15 are VERIFICATION IN PROGRESS. A fact's label is never upgraded just because neighboring facts are verified, and each unresolved item states plainly what official confirmation is still needed and from which agency.

Public-benefit versus mutual-benefit corporations

Ohio Revised Code Chapter 1702 expressly distinguishes a public-benefit corporation — generally a charitable organization or one recognized under IRC §501(c)(3) — from a mutual-benefit corporation, which is any nonprofit corporation that is not a public-benefit corporation. This state-law classification governs amendments, mergers, conversions, and asset distribution under Ohio law.

It is not the same question as federal public-charity versus private-foundation status. A mutual-benefit corporation can still hold federal tax exemption under a subsection other than 501(c)(3), and Ohio's "public-benefit corporation" label does not by itself make an organization a federal "public charity." The two classifications are evaluated separately, and this guide does not merge them.

Form 522 is a five-year Statement of Continued Existence, not an annual report

Ohio does not require most nonprofit corporations to file a routine annual or biennial report with the Secretary of State. Instead, Form 522 — the Statement of Continued Existence — is filed on a five-year cycle measured from incorporation or the corporation's last qualifying corporate filing under §1702.59, for a current $25 fee. The complete list of filings that restart that five-year clock is not conclusively published in current official guidance, so this guide keeps that specific question labeled Verification in Progress rather than publishing an exhaustive restart list.

If continued existence is not filed and the entity is canceled, reinstatement must occur within two years after cancellation. Separately, the former corporate name receives exclusive protection for only one year after cancellation — after that, a different available name may be required. These two periods (two years to reinstate, one year of exclusive name protection) are legally distinct and are never merged in this guide.

Charitable-trust registration and solicitation registration are two systems, one portal

Ohio charity compliance runs through two separate statutory systems that share a single Attorney General online portal. Charitable-trust registration is generally triggered within six months of an organization's formation or of holding charitable assets, and its annual fee is measured by gross assets. Solicitation-of-contributions registration is generally triggered before an organization solicits contributions in Ohio, and its annual fee is measured by contributions received from persons in Ohio — a different metric entirely.

Sharing one portal does not make the two systems interchangeable: an organization can be subject to one, the other, or both, and each has its own exemptions, its own fee table, and its own $200 statutory late fee. Ohio law does not allow both separate $200 late fees to be stacked for the same annual filing delinquency, but the portal's ordinary combined base-fee arithmetic when both statutes apply is not fully documented in current public guidance — that specific question stays Verification in Progress, while the general two-system structure itself is source-verified.

The exact classification of a charitable trust with precisely $25,000 in gross receipts or gross assets — whether it must submit the full annual report — is also unresolved: the exemption statute and the administrative rule use different thresholds and neither one assigns exactly $25,000 to either side of the line. This guide does not create a synthetic operator to resolve that boundary.

Taxes: CAT, municipal net-profits tax, and sales/use tax stay separate

Qualifying nonprofit organizations are excluded persons for Ohio's Commercial Activity Tax (CAT) — a distinct rule from the separate $6 million taxable-gross-receipts exclusion that applies to taxable persons generally. Municipal net-profits tax is a separate system administered locally (directly or through an agency such as the Regional Income Tax Agency or Central Collection Agency), and it is analyzed independently rather than folded into the state CAT analysis.

For purchases, Ohio uses certificate-based exemptions — qualifying organizations generally complete Form STEC-U for a single unit exemption or STEC-B for a blanket exemption — rather than one universal nonprofit exemption number. Sales by a nonprofit are not automatically tax-exempt just because purchases can be: the limited occasional-sales exception generally covers no more than six days per calendar year when statutory conditions are met, and taxable sales outside that exception require the organization to obtain a vendor's license.

Raffles, bingo, and other charitable gaming are separate systems

A raffle conducted under Revised Code §2915.092 by a qualifying organization does not require a bingo license. Bingo, instant bingo, electronic instant bingo, and festival games are each their own statutory systems with their own licensing and eligibility rules — a license or authorization under one system does not extend to another, and this guide keeps them on separate tracks rather than treating "charitable gaming" as one undifferentiated authorization.

Electronic and online raffle-ticket sales remain Verification in Progress: current Ohio raffle statutes and official guidance do not yet provide a sufficiently clear rule covering every form of electronic ticket sale, payment method, geographic access, or platform use, so this guide does not publish a categorical conclusion either permitting or prohibiting electronic raffle sales generally.

A charitable-gaming authorization never authorizes alcohol activity at the same event. An F-2 permit — the ordinary temporary liquor permit for a qualifying nonprofit event, currently $150 — and any required local event approvals are entirely separate from gaming permission and must be obtained independently.

Dissolution takes more than filing Form 560

Voluntary dissolution begins with board/member authorization and filing Form 560, the Certificate of Dissolution, with the Secretary of State. But the certificate filing is only the first step: after it is filed, Ohio law requires written notice to known creditors and claimants, plus publication of notice once weekly, on the same day of the week, for two consecutive weeks in a newspaper of general circulation in the county of the principal office.

Winding up also requires analyzing how public-benefit and restricted charitable assets may be distributed under the corporation's own governing documents and any applicable donor restrictions, and separately closing every agency account that applies — charity registration, tax, payroll, workers' compensation, gaming, liquor, and local accounts each have their own closure process, and Form 560 alone does not close any of them.

What remains under verification

15 of the guide's 77 facts are currently labeled Verification in Progress, including: the complete list of Secretary of State filings that restart the five-year continued-existence period; whether one person may sign a single instrument in two required officer capacities; whether Ohio has any universal governance-policy mandate; fact-specific "conducting affairs" and solicitation-only foreign-qualification questions; internet-solicitation nexus for passive websites, targeted appeals, crowdfunding, and platforms; the exact $25,000 charitable-trust full-report boundary; ordinary dual-system Attorney General base-fee arithmetic; whether Ohio has a universal charity CPA-review or audit threshold; the current commercial-co-venture filing workflow; the statewide unrelated-business-income return question; county-specific property-tax affidavit and workflow procedures; whether Ohio has any single universal business license; electronic and online raffle-ticket sales; and how state campaign-finance filings interact with federal 501(c)(3) restrictions.

Every other fact in the guide — including the Chapter 1702 entity type, the public-benefit/mutual-benefit distinction, the Form 522 five-year cycle and its $25 fee, the two-year reinstatement and one-year name-protection periods, the dual charitable-trust/solicitation registration triggers and fee metrics, the CAT exclusion, the sales-tax purchase-exemption certificates, the §2915.092 raffle authorization, and the core dissolution filing sequence — is source-verified against current official Ohio materials. The guide keeps every Verification in Progress item visibly labeled rather than resolving it by assumption.