Tips, Strategies, and Guidance for Success: So Your Client Wants to Start a Non-Profit?

I am an estate planning and business law attorney serving individual clients, corporations, and churches and other nonprofit organizations. I work with my clients in the preparation, revision and updating of estate planning documents including powers of attorney, advance directives, wills, and trusts. I also provide counsel on matters related to corporate formations and governance, and employment discrimination and civil rights claims.

Following nearly a decade working at two international law firms, I founded Terry Legal Solutions to focus on a more personalized, client-centric approach to legal services. I wanted a legal practice that fostered an environment of comfortable, unrushed conversations.

A practice where clients are heard and understood, and where I provide tailored strategic counseling and solutions to address their unique needs.

I am dedicated to building stronger communities through volunteer leadership and service to nonprofit organizations that benefit Montgomery County. I serve on the executive committee of the Board of Trustees of BlackRock Center for the Arts. I am a past two, three-term Commissioner with Montgomery County’s Human Rights Commission and former board Chair of Friends of the Human Rights Commission, Inc. I am actively engaged in conversations and initiatives around human rights, diversity, and racial equity to help ensure a vital and successful Montgomery County.

David has been with the North Carolina Center for Nonprofits since 2007, leading the Center’s public policy and advocacy work and providing non-answers (and occasional useful information) about legal compliance, trends in the nonprofit sector, and advocacy to hundreds of nonprofits! Before returning to North Carolina to work for the Center, David spent seven years as an attorney with a Washington, D.C. law firm serving the nonprofit community. He lives in Raleigh with his wife and two young(ish) children.

Anderson T. Ellis is a principal in the Van Winkle Law Firm’s Business practice group, where he works with for-profit businesses and nonprofit organizations in all phases of corporate life, including entity choice, formation, operations, sale/purchase/merger, and reorganizations/dissolutions. Anderson’s litigation background allows him to assist businesses of all sizes with a wide variety of issues that may arise. Prior to joining Van Winkle, Anderson practiced in Hendersonville and Nashville (TN), handling primarily civil litigation matters.

Since 2014, Stephen Clarke has been a managing director of the Exempt Organization Tax Services division at Ernst & Young LLP, based in Washington, D.C. Steve provides tax advisory and compliance services to tax-exempt organizations across the country in various areas, including IRS examination and tax controversy support, exemption applications, public charity status, unrelated business income tax, private benefit/inurement and intermediate sanctions, private letter rulings, compliance with ACA 501(r) requirements for tax-exempt hospitals, and compliance with the tax requirements of the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act and the CARES Act.

Before joining Ernst & Young, Mr. Clarke was a tax law specialist, project manager and guidance group manager with IRS Tax Exempt and Government Entities (TEGE). He served as the project manager for the 2008 redesign, rollout, and ongoing revision of Form 990, the information return filed annually by charities and other exempt organizations. As guidance group manager, he managed a group of tax law specialists in drafting guidance for and responding to private letter ruling requests of tax-exempt organizations.

Prior to joining the IRS in 2005, Mr. Clarke worked as an attorney with Gammon & Grange, P.C., a law firm in northern Virginia, where he served tax-exempt organizations, radio broadcasters, and trust and estate clients since 1996.

Throughout his career he has worked with nonprofit organizations, helping them to understand and comply with tax and other regulatory requirements while also helping them to meet their charitable goals. He serves on the board of directors of Good Samaritan Advocates, a nonprofit organization providing pro bono legal services to low-income persons, since 2004. He also serves on the board of directors of the Tax Exempt and Government Entities Council, a group that facilitates dialogue between IRS TEGE and the tax-exempt sector.

He earned his Bachelor of Arts degree from Wheaton College in Illinois and his juris doctorate from the College of William and Mary School of Law, where he served as an editor of the Law Review. He is an active member of the Virginia bar.