Non Profit Status in Nicaragua

[Kathy Adams]

I am curious as to who has NGO status in Nicaragua? If so, what did it take? What are the advantages? Kaija, I know PRONAT has this status or pending status. Donna? Pauline? Others? Sherry, Atraves has it right/

[Kathy Adams]

So, I would like to respond to my own question....sharing what we have learned. We started to apply for full fledged NGO status from the ground up in Nicaragua, the kind that needs to go through the Assemblia, and that takes a notoriously long time. Well, it got held back during elections (after paying $400 to file). Then I found out from Marcel who is a founder of Hotel con Corazon, that it is possible to create a subsidiary branch if you have NGO status in another country. This turns out to be much simpler, the steps are fewer and it does not have to go through the Assemblia. We are in this process now and I will share with others how it goes. Has anyone else heard of this approach? It seems to be a relatively unknown method from what I can tell.

Advantages for having this status from what I can see are:
1. We can have a bank account in the organizations name
2. We can give our employees benefits such as insurance and pay into their pension plan
3. We can fundraise in Nicaragua (yes..I believe it is possible to get fund IN Nicaragua as well as outside of the country...there are wealthy Nicaraguans that may be interested if we are legit in their country)
4. It seems, though I don't know for sure yet, that having this status would potentially allow us to get government assistance in the future. This and number three are important to me as my goal for our organization is to have it run by Nicaraguans including their own fundraising...

[Maggie]

Kathy,

What is the status of your NGO process? I am looking into starting my own non-profit and will have help from several of my mother's friends back in Nicaragua. I want to gather up as much information as I possibly can. I look forward to hearing from you.

[Kathy Adams]

Hi Maggie,

We are working on getting a subsidiary since we are currently a 501c3 in the USA. We are lucky to have found an attorney to donate his time to us. I am in the states getting all of our docs notarized, then stamped by our sec of state and then the Nica consulate. It is not a simple process but simpler than if we had to create an NGO from scratch in Nicaragua.

Kathy

[Donna Wright]

Hi Kathy, Is a subsidiary the same as an International NGO? That is the way you want to go. We became an International NGO almost 8 years ago and we didn't know at the time but that was the best way to proceed. You can do more with that status. I do not know if it is harder today than then, but we did not have any problems.