Non-Profit Organizations

Devine Millimet provides a wide range of services to a significant number of charitable and other tax-exempt organizations throughout New England. We represent tax-exempt organizations in all aspects of operations and management. The legal needs of our exempt organization clients benefit from the full spectrum of the firm’s practice areas. We have a diverse group of lawyers with experience in taxation, business/corporate law, charitable law, planned giving, pensions and benefits, healthcare, education and litigation, who tailor that experience to the unique needs of our non-profit clients.

Our varied clients include hospitals and healthcare organizations, churches and religious organizations, colleges and universities, municipalities, museums and arts organizations, behavioral health and developmental disability organizations, social welfare and affordable housing organizations, business, trade and economic development associations, and private foundations of all types, including family foundations and corporate foundations.

Our work on behalf of our clients spans the following areas:

Organizational Structure and Applications for Tax Exempt Status
Maintenance of Exempt Status and Charitable Trust Administration
Charitable Giving and Philanthropy
Governance and Corporate Structure
Mergers, Acquisitions, Joint Ventures and Financing
Retirement and Health Benefit Plans
Executive Compensation
Intermediate Sanctions
Conflict of Interest Transactions
Exempt Organization Regulation and Policy
Cy Pres Matters and Non-Judicial Settlements

Devine Millimet's Non-Profit Organization Practice and its Tax Practice Group coordinate to provide our clients with advice on all aspects of tax-exempt qualification, operation and fund raising, tax-exempt and conventional financing, unrelated business tax matters, structuring and documenting charitable giving arrangements and the structure of joint ventures or other investments involving taxable entities.

Representative Matters

Represented a private, four-year liberal arts college with an enrollment of approximately 2,000 undergraduate and graduate students, with the transition of students, faculty, endowment, and certain assets of a dissolving college in financial trouble
Represented University System of New Hampshire with the complete restructuring of the state's public broadcasting organization resulting in an independent organization involving significant asset transfers and the transfer of numerous Federal Communication Commission licenses
Assisted the University System of New Hampshire with restructuring the state's 4-H program by forming a central organization to provide a general exemption for almost 200 4-H clubs and affiliates throughout the State of New Hampshire
General counsel to hospital and its affiliated healthcare organizations
General counsel to large religious denominations
General counsel to secondary schools and colleges
General counsel to developmental disability agencies
Formation and obtaining tax exempt status for educational women’s immigrant group
Effecting the sale of a private non-profit college to a for-profit institution
Spin-off of a division of a large educational organization into a new tax-exempt charitable organization
Representing developmental disability organizations in their merger into other agencies
Divestiture of a non-profit affiliate from a corporate structure to be affiliated with another tax exempt entity
Guiding ninety year old non-profit in transitioning the use of its assets in accordance with its charitable purpose through merger with cy pres approval
Re-organizing the corporate structure of multiple, affiliated non-profits
Structuring a joint venture of a tax exempt organization with a for profit healthcare organization
Representing a developmental disability organization in the acquisition of a geographically similar behavioral health agency
Establishing and advising employee benefit programs including 403(b) plans and 457(b) plans
Structuring executive compensation arrangements for exempt and governmental employees