mjk--welcome to the boards!
What state are you in? Here in NJ it's not bad at all! If I'd paid a lawyer that much to do what I did I'd never stop kicking myself. The tax ID number is the easiest part--you can do that online in about 3 minutes!
Going for your 501(c)3 is much worse--especially if you don't set up the articles of incorpration up correctly. I got the tax ID first--it turned out getting incorporated first was what I should have done. In New Jersey the "Incorporated" or "A Nonprofit Corporation" gets "officially" added to the name, slightly changing it. Luckily the IRS didn't give me a hard time about the slight difference in name. Then I wrote the bylaws with the officers (it was a Catch 22--you need bylaws to tell you how you get your officers but the officers have to write the bylaws! We skirted around that by self-appointing ourselves for the first term). Then we registered as a charitable institution with the state (you should be able to do this all on line).
When you file the actual paperwork (or do it online) for the articles of incorpration (NOT the bylaws) you HAVE to include several paragraphs
word for word from the IRS booklet 557 (I think it was paragraphs 3, 5 and 7 from their sample articles of incorporation). When I filed online in NJ, I screwed up and checked the box "as set forth in bylaws" (dispersal of funds, what the funds would be used for and soemething else) rather than typing them in the box that was under "Or As Follows." I had to later amend our articles of incorporation with the state (a pain in the as@)so that the actual cerificate of incorporation had those paragraphs
word for word in print on them so that the IRS would accept them when we went for our 501(c)3.
Hope this helps!
