NY charity registration: EPTL vs Article 7-A

The Two-Track Trap: How New York Runs Charity Oversight

Most of us learned that the hard way — usually around deadline season, staring at a CHAR500 like it's a dialect nobody taught us at the 501(c)(3) celebration.

If you're a board chair, executive director, or founder reading this with a deadline creeping up, here's the short version: the NYS Attorney General's Charities Bureau administers two separate statutes, and depending on what your organization actually does, you may owe filings under one, the other, or both. Picking the wrong lane — or worse, assuming you're in just one — is how nonprofit leaders end up in the delinquency pile. And the delinquency pile in Albany is not a forgiving place.

In New York, asking "am I registered?" is the wrong question. The right question is "under which statute, and what deadline is actually breathing down my neck right now?"

Statutory Foundations: Solicitation vs Asset Holding

Start with the architecture, because once you see it the rest falls into place.

Article 7-A of the Executive Law governs the solicitation of contributions in New York. If you're asking New York residents for money — donations, grants from individuals, online fundraising campaigns aimed at the state — Article 7-A is in play. It's the public-facing statute: the one tied to your donor letters, your crowdfunding page, your gala invitations.

Section 8-1.4 of the Estates, Powers and Trusts Law (EPTL) governs the holding and administration of property for charitable purposes in New York. If your organization receives any property — cash, stock, real estate, bequests — designated for charitable use, EPTL is in play regardless of whether you actively solicit anyone. Passive holding still triggers registration. A bequest from a deceased donor counts. An endowment contribution counts. Even if the only "fundraising" you do is open a bank account for charitable proceeds, EPTL says hello.

Both statutes live under the same roof — the Charities Bureau of the New York State Office of the Attorney General. Different staff desks, same building, same enforcement arm. Don't make the mistake of thinking you can navigate around one by filing the other. The Bureau cross-checks.

Registration Pathways: Three NY Charities Bureau Registration Categories

Based on those two statutes, every organization registered in New York falls into one of three buckets. The Bureau assigns you a category — you don't get to pick.

• Article 7-A only. You solicit in New York but don't hold charitable assets subject to EPTL registration (rare in practice; most organizations collecting money will trip the EPTL wire too).
• EPTL only. You hold or administer charitable property in New York but don't actively solicit. Think private foundations that disburse from an endowment, or recipient organizations funded entirely by a single institutional grantor with no public fundraising.
• Dual Registrant. You do both — you solicit contributions and hold charitable assets. This is where the vast majority of NYC-based 501(c)(3)s land. Dual is not a punishment; it's the default reality for working charities.

The exemption carve-out under Article 7-A: if your gross contributions in the prior fiscal year are under $25,000 and you didn't use a professional fundraiser or fundraising counsel, you may not need to register under that statute. EPTL has its own narrower exemptions. Run the numbers before assuming you're exempt — the Bureau does.

Initial registration runs through Form CHAR410, filed online through the Charities Bureau portal. The fee schedule is brutal in its simplicity:

Timing matters. Article 7-A registration must be completed before you start soliciting. EPTL registration must be completed within six months of receiving property for charitable purposes. The clock on EPTL starts the moment money lands in your account designated for charitable use — not when you "decide" to register. Plan accordingly.

Annual Compliance: Deadlines and the Fee Curve

Here's where the fire department shows up. You've registered. Now you have to stay registered, on a schedule that isn't the IRS schedule, with fee tiers that scale with what you hold, not what you spend.

Annual filings all run through Form CHAR500, but the deadline depends on which bucket you're in:

Yes, EPTL-only registrants get roughly six weeks of additional runway. Don't bank on that forever — once your organization starts soliciting, you slide into Dual territory and the deadline tightens.

The fee structure on the annual filing is where the Bureau's pricing model shows its teeth. Article 7-A charges a flat tier based on prior-year support and revenue:

EPTL charges based on net worth at the end of the reporting period — a different yardstick entirely. This is the one that punishes foundations and endowments:

Dual Registrants pay the sum of the applicable Article 7-A fee and the EPTL fee on a single CHAR500. For a Dual organization with $5 million in net worth and $800,000 in support and revenue, that's $25 (Article 7-A tier) plus $250 (EPTL tier) = $275 for the annual filing. Scale up to a major foundation with $60 million in net worth and you're writing a $1,525 check. Annually. Forever.

The Charities Bureau doesn't grade on a curve. It charges on a net-worth curve, and the curve goes steep.

Financial Reporting: CPA Thresholds and the Audit Cliff

Registration is the front door. Behind it sits a financial reporting regime with its own thresholds, and confusing them with the federal numbers is one of the most expensive mistakes NYC nonprofits make.

The Charities Bureau requires:

• Independent CPA review report when gross annual revenue and support is between $250,000 and $1,000,000.
• Full independent CPA audit when gross annual revenue and support exceeds $1,000,000.

That audit threshold moved on July 1, 2021. Before that date, the lower band sat at $750,000. If your bylaws or board resolutions still reference the old number, fix them — and fix them in writing, not in some dusty shared drive nobody opens.

Do not confuse this with the federal Single Audit threshold under Uniform Guidance — that's a separate calculation tied to federal expenditures, not the same gross-revenue figure, and it sits at a different dollar level. The last federal adjustment landed on October 1, 2024. Mixing the two is the kind of error auditors flag in their management letter, which is then forwarded to the Bureau, which is then a problem for you.

If you're a small organization under $250,000 in revenue, no CPA report is required — but you still file the CHAR500 with whatever internal financials you maintain. Skipping the filing because the CPA letter isn't required is a fast lane to delinquency.

Remediation: What Happens When You Miss

Let's talk about delinquency, because this is where careers end and boards have emergency meetings.

If you miss your filing deadline or fail to pay the fee, the Bureau marks your registration delinquent. After extended delinquency, the registration is cancelled. Cancellation isn't a soft warning — once cancelled, you're back to square one on registration, plus penalties.

Re-registration after cancellation requires Form CHAR410-R, which carries a $150 re-registration fee in addition to filing all delinquent reports and paying all delinquent fees. That's the tax for letting the calendar win.

In practice, the cash flow hemorrhage of a cancelled registration usually outweighs the $150. Donors conducting due diligence see the cancelled status in the Bureau's public registry. Grant applications with "good standing" representations become false on the spot. Some institutional funders require a clean Bureau record before releasing committed funds. A board that let registration lapse for two years is now explaining to funders why the charity isn't in good standing — and that conversation rarely ends well, no matter how practiced the boardroom theater has been.

If you've just discovered you're delinquent, the move is simple: file the missing CHAR500s, pay the cumulative fees, contact the Bureau directly to discuss re-registration, and expect to write the $150 check. Don't wait. The longer the gap, the more compounding fees and the more visible the delinquency becomes to anyone running a search on your EIN.

The Reality Check

The New York charity registration system isn't a bureaucratic afterthought — it's the operational tax on doing charitable work in the most regulatorily active state in the country. The dual-track structure of Article 7-A and EPTL exists because the legislature wanted to capture both the public solicitation side and the private asset side of the charitable economy. That architecture isn't going away, and it's not going to be softened by a friendly phone call.

The charities we've seen implode weren't brought down by IRS audits or by federal investigations. They were brought down by missed CHAR500 deadlines, by boards that didn't realize they were Dual Registrants, by founders who confused EPTL thresholds with federal Single Audit thresholds. The Bureau doesn't need to come after you. You walk into the cancellation pile by ignoring the calendar.

So here's the litmus test, the one we run on every nonprofit we triage: pull your CHAR500 history, confirm your registrant category, confirm your deadline against your fiscal year-end, confirm your CPA reporting tier against last year's gross revenue. If any one of those three answers is a guess — if you're nodding along right now and quietly realizing you don't actually know — that's your fire.

The Bureau isn't burning you down. Your paperwork is.