Utah charitable solicitation after Chapter 95: what charities, fundraisers, and consultants must file

Direct answer: registration changed, obligations did not disappear

As of May 6, 2026, an ordinary Utah charity does not renew the former general charity-registration certificate that the Division of Consumer Protection used to issue. In its place, the organization files its most recently filed IRS Form 990-series return with the Division of Corporations and Commercial Code every year. Professional fundraisers, fundraising consultants, and commercial co-venturers are separate roles with their own rules that Chapter 95 did not remove, and solicitation-conduct and fiduciary duties continue to apply across the board. Nothing here should be read as Utah stepping back from regulating charitable solicitation — the compliance path changed, the underlying accountability did not.

What Chapter 95 actually repealed

2026 Utah Laws Chapter 95 restructured the Charitable Solicitations Act effective May 6, 2026. Before that date, an ordinary charitable organization soliciting in Utah generally registered and renewed a general charity certificate with the Division of Consumer Protection. Chapter 95 removed that general ordinary-charity registration workflow as the current general rule.

That means an organization should not treat the old "-CHAR" registration as something to keep renewing simply because it continues to solicit contributions in Utah. It also does not mean the filing obligation vanished — it was replaced by a different one, discussed below — and it does not mean every other charitable-solicitation control disappeared. Professional-fundraiser and consultant registration, the commercial co-venturer disclosure duty, and the fiduciary and conduct rules discussed later in this article all survive Chapter 95 unchanged in substance.

One practical loose end remains genuinely open rather than resolved for convenience: current official sources do not state whether an organization with a pre-May-6 registration needs to take any affirmative step to cancel it, whether it simply expires on its own, or whether any previously paid fee is refunded. Some old certificates may also remain visible in historical records. This guide flags that closeout question as unresolved rather than telling an organization to file a cancellation that no agency has actually asked for.

The annual Form 990-series filing that replaced it

Current §13-22-110, effective May 6, 2026, requires a charitable organization that is a domestic or foreign nonprofit corporation doing business in Utah to annually file with the Division an unredacted copy of its most recently filed IRS Form 990, Form 990-EZ, Form 990-N, or Form 990-PF. This is a state filing built around the organization's own federal return rather than a separate state-specific charity application.

The statute also builds in two narrower paths. First, an organization that is not required to file any of those listed federal returns at all is not required to make this state filing either — the exception is tied to the actual absence of a federal filing obligation, not to being a church or being small, so it has to be confirmed on the organization's own federal facts rather than assumed from category. Second, a newly organized charitable nonprofit that has not yet filed a first Form 990-series return may rely instead on its IRS determination letter to satisfy the incorporation-related information requirement, provided the letter is recent enough to fall within the statute's age limit.

What this article will not do is invent the mechanics current official sources have not yet published. The substantive duty to file is source-verified, but the numeric day the filing is due each year, the live submission portal, whether and how an extension is handled, what happens to a rejected upload, and how an amended federal return should be reflected are not fully and consistently stated in current public materials. Treat this filing as a real, annual obligation, and confirm the operational specifics directly with the Division before your filing window rather than relying on an assumed date.

Professional fundraisers and fundraising consultants stay separate roles

Current §13-22-104, also effective May 6, 2026, keeps professional fundraisers and professional fundraising consultants as two distinct, separately registered roles, both apart from charity employees, officers, volunteers, and commercial co-venturers. A professional fundraiser — broadly, someone paid to solicit contributions, direct solicitation activity, or take custody or control of contributions, with the required Utah nexus — must register before engaging in that covered activity, whether the solicitation is directed at Utah, originates in Utah, or runs through a Utah place of business or Utah employee.

A professional fundraising consultant is someone paid to plan, manage, advise on, or prepare a fundraising campaign without soliciting contributions or taking custody of them. A consultant with the required Utah nexus registers separately, before providing covered consulting services — but a consultant who starts soliciting or handling contributions directly can cross the line into fundraiser status and the fundraiser's own registration and bonding duties.

Registered fundraisers and consultants also have to use the contracts, campaign notices, custody controls, records, and reports current Chapter 22 requires, and a registered professional fundraiser must maintain the statutory surety bond. That much is source-verified. What is not fully and consistently confirmed in current post-May-6 public materials is the exact application, fee, registration term, current bond amount and acceptable surety form, and renewal workflow — those operational specifics should be confirmed against the current agency filing system before registering or renewing, not assumed from an older pre-transition form.

Commercial co-venturers: a narrow disclosure, not a general registration

A commercial co-venturer — a business running a charitable sales promotion together with a charitable organization — has one verified statutory duty under current §13-22-114: state, in every advertisement for the promotion, either the dollar amount or the percentage per unit of the goods or services purchased or used that will benefit the charitable organization or purpose. That disclosure has to appear in the advertisement itself, before it is published or used.

Current law does not itself establish a general co-venturer registration certificate, a state-filed written agreement, a state-filed final accounting report, or a fixed transfer deadline for the funds raised. A charity or co-venturer that wants a written agreement, an accounting schedule, or a transfer timeline is free to build those into its own contract as a matter of prudent practice — but that is a recommended contractual control, not a statutory filing mandate, and this article does not present it as one.

Solicitation-conduct and fiduciary rules keep applying

Chapter 95 did not touch the underlying conduct rules that apply to anyone who solicits, collects, or spends charitable contributions in Utah — the charity itself, its officers, directors, and employees, and any professional fundraising actor. Contributions have to be used consistently with how they were represented to the donor, records have to be kept accurately, and the law prohibits material misrepresentation, misleading omissions, implying state endorsement of a solicitation, and using another person's name or endorsement without consent.

Those duties sit alongside, not instead of, the registration and filing changes described above. An organization that gets its Form 990 filing and its fundraiser or consultant registration exactly right can still face civil, administrative, or criminal exposure under the state's solicitation-conduct and consumer-protection statutes if the underlying solicitation itself is deceptive or the funds are diverted from their represented purpose.

How to use this alongside the full guide

This article focuses on the charitable-solicitation transition; it does not restate Utah's corporate annual report, the October 1, 2026 business-entity transition, taxes, employment, or the other systems the full guide covers. For those, and for the complete source-linked entry behind every claim above, see the Utah nonprofit compliance guide at 501c3.help/states/utah/ and the companion overview article. Where this article says a mechanic is unconfirmed, the guide's own fact card names the specific agency confirmation still needed — check there before treating any operational detail here as final.