Thursday, March 26th, 2015

Hello again, everyone!

Well, we don’t usually post two blogs in one day, but this is just a quick post to share with you some news that we are ecstatic about.

As of March 6th, our non-profit Integrated Living Opportunities has officially received 501c3 status!

We are so incredibly excited to reach this milestone and achieve this goal – thank you to all of the families of ILO. We could not have gotten this far without your support, and now there is no limit to what we can achieve!

Those of you who are new to the blog may be asking yourselves: What is Integrated Living Opportunities (ILO) is, and why is 501c3 status so important? Here is a brief explanation:

Integrated Living Opportunities is a non-profit created by Maedi Tanham Carney CFP™ CWIC and five founding families. Our mission is ILO will help families to create intentional communities to facilitate networks of support for adults with disabilities to enable them to live independently. We will do this by developing teams of paid and unpaid individuals for our self-advocates as they move out of their family houses and into their own homes and communities. These teams will help the individuals maintain their skills and develop new ones, maximize self-direction, and be full participants in the wider community.

ILO will act as a liaison between everyone involved in the special needs community development, specifically Center for Independent Futures™ and the ILO families. ILO will help to form and support the networks and partnerships that arise between them and community organizations that support them.

To answer the second part of the above question – 501c3 status means that the organization (usually a corporation) has been designated a charity. ILO, as a 501c3, has been recognized by the IRS as a nonprofit organization, and is tax-exempt by virtue of it charitable programs. As a 501c3, ILO can now fundraise and accept donations to enable the organization to offer the services so desperately needed by those individuals with disabilities who are searching for independent living and community options.

If you would like to learn more about ILO and our new non-profit status, please join us next week! We will be focusing on this non-profit, the progress we have made thus far, and our plans for the future.

See you then!