Your Questions About Business Online Services Group

Jere answers:

You have to be an adult to file LEGAL forms.
There’s much more to it than you think.

You need education in the fields of business, nonprofit management, psychology, and social services.
You also need life experience to teach you to deal with all of the types of people you’ll encounter.

There are thousands of organizations already doing the work that you want to do.
And they’re already competing for VERY scarce dollars.
Find a good one and volunteer.
Http://serve.gov/

Take relevant classes in high school and college.
Eventually, you can get a paid job with a nonprofit.
You could get a degree in nonprofit management.

A nonprofit is a corporation, just like General Motors, or Sears, or McDonald’s.
You file the incorporation documents with your home state the same way.
There must be an official address and place of business, by laws, a board of directors, board meetings, and minutes of those meetings.
They are required to file formal reports on their financial activities with the state AND the feds.

Now here is where the differences start.

The difference is that a nonprofit has no owner and no stock.
When the corporation brings in more money than it spends, the excess is called a “fund balance”, instead of a “profit”.
That fund balance can be re-invested in the corporation or held in savings for future projects or for lean times.
The board of directors makes those decisions.

Once the org incorporates, it must apply to the IRS for a tax exempt status.
Those rules are under section 501(c) of the IRS code.
Most charities are under (c)(3).
Labor unions are under c5.
There are about two dozen different categories.

That means that the ORGANIZATION does not pay taxes on its income.
The EMPLOYEES of the organization pay their personal taxes under the same rules as everyone else.

Individuals who donate money to c3 orgs can deduct it from their income taxes, if they itemize.
Donations to other categories – c4, c5, etc. Are not deductible.

There are thousands of state and federal rules governing activities, finances, and reporting.

For example, c3 orgs CAN NOT endorse political candidates and there are strict limits on the lobbying that they can do.
That’s why labor unions can endorse candidates and churches can’t.

State laws on soliciting donations from the public vary, but all states have them.

C3 and C4 orgs can be eligible for government grants for their work.
They can also solicit money from charitable foundations.

But then the foundations will come to their offices and tell them they’re doing everything wrong and refuse to give them any money unless they change everything they do.
And even then they might not give the money.

I hate foundations.

Look at http://www.irs.gov/charities/index.html
There is more info at www.foundationcenter.org
Source(s):
27 years as volunteer, staff, manager, board member, board president, and consultant to nonprofit corporations.

Jere answers:

First the bad news:
There is just no such thing as online jobs that you can do from home. These are all scams and the people that encourage you to do them and tell you how much money they have made, are all a part of the scam. The scam may be building a network of people, telemarketing, online sales, filling out surveys, gifting businesses, data entry, travel writing, transcription services or other similar ploys. Remember that data entry has been made obsolete by Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software which can read that characters in a document and translate those into text for you. Re-typing information is completely outdated and unneeded. Cut and paste jobs fall into the same category.

Multi-level marketing (also called network marketing) is a fine line away from an illegal pyramid scheme where the emphasis is on involving more people and not on selling products. If the emphasis is on building a marketing group but no product is being sold then that is a red flag. Also, if they are trying to get you to buy motivational materials, etc. Then you can cross them off too.

A word about Ponzi schemes – A Ponzi scheme is where you are asked to invest and the returns are usually paid for by the new incoming investors in the system. I friend of mine was involved in one of these. He was an innocent party but eventually when it all fell apart the investigators showed up at his door asking them to pay back all they had made and to testify against the original person who was running the scam. Bottom line was they lost thousands of dollars and they lost all their friends who had likewise been caught up in the scam.

I honestly wished that there were options for home online employment. Recently I went out to one of the web sites that people will post here as an online jobs site and their web site tried to install malware on my computer. Fortunately my anti-malware program detected and stopped that. I often find that the same one company will have several web sites that all eventually refer you into the same company and other strange stuff like web addresses that are not descriptive of the actual company name. Other web sites pay pennies per transaction (or whatever they assign you to do) that you do so we are talking about making so little money it is ridiculous.

Many of these ploys require some kind of up front registration fee. They are all designed to take your money or to take your personal information. With that information they can steal your personal identity and empty your bank account. I can’t think of any more diabolical scam than to give people, like single parents hope that they are going to make some money and then dash those hopes by giving them nothing but empty promises. Also, scamming single moms who are trying to keep their heads above water or teenagers who are trying to help their families or trying to earn a few dollars of spending money is about as low as you can go, in my book.

Now the good news:
Your best bet is to look for legitimate jobs with known local companies. Some of those local companies will allow you to work as a virtual employee for a part or all of your hours but that is usually only after you have worked there for a while and proven yourself as a trusted employee. On the simpler side of things many local small service businesses like Heater/AC service, plumbers, pool maint, landscaping and others may not have a physical office and still may need to have an phone answering/scheduling provider to handle their appointment scheduling and phone answering duties. One of my friends does this from home while caring for kids. They gave her a company cell phone and she answers the calls and makes appointments. These are communicated to the service staff by phone, walkie talkie or text.

Jere answers:

Many of the hotels in Orlando actually have a nominally priced check-in service at the hotel which allows you to check in for your flight and check your baggage on the flight right at the hotel. If your hotel offers this, it’s probably the best solution.

If you need to take your bag to the Magic Kingdom with you, and it does not fit into a locker, you can check the item for a nominal fee at Guest Relations inside City Hall, just inside the main entrance.

Mears Transportation Group offers scheduled service to the airport from Walt Disney World. You can make reservations online.

Jere answers:

There are many IT majors and IT jobs that involve little to no Programming. The classes that you listed will probably contain little to no programming. Networking will involve being able to remember and type in commands but that is as close to Programming that you will get. System Administration and Computing would be other fields you could look at.

If you are not good at Programming here are just a few possible jobs.

Computer Technician – Works on computer hardware at user location or in service center. (entry level IT Job)
Service Center Coordinator – Schedules the repair of user community computers, orders spare parts, schedules staff, establishes priorities, maintains loaner laptops and non-US laptops for travel outside of US.
Help Desk Staff – answer questions and resolve problems for the user community. (entry level IT Job – Tier 1 support)
Storage Administrator – in charge of mass storage servers and devices.
Network Administrator – Works on routers, switches, hubs, cables, load balancers and all the other hardware that handles LAN and WAN network traffic. Also, may be responsible for IP phone service.
Systems Administrator or Systems Engineer- Works with servers, laptops and desktop computers to keep them free of problems and secure the data they contain. Responsible for Security group creation and memberships, server patching, anti-virus protection updates, password changes and any automated mechanisms that make these changes. These positions may be divided into server and desktop teams. Tier 2 support.
Enterprise Administrator – Handles Enterprise support and design issues. Tier 3 support.
Active Directory Administrator – Designs and administers Active Directory infrastructure, AD policies, access permissions, roles, group policies, separation of duties.
Exchange and Messaging Administrator – maintains mail systems servers, other mail related devices and the company messaging infrastructure.
Backup Administrator – Maintains backup devices and determines backup strategies so data that was deleted accidentally or intentionally can be recovered. Design and control how and when data is backed up, where the backups are stored and how long the backups are retained. They will test to be sure backups are valid and usable.
Disaster Recovery Specialist – Plans for disaster events so the company data and infrastructure can be brought back online as quickly as possible after a fire, flood, earthquake, terrorism or other disaster event. Plans for failover of services to alternate locations, if the primary location is not available.
Database Administrator – Maintains the company databases which may include customer and sales records, billing information, inventory and other data.
Computing Security Specialist – A company’s biggest asset is its data and the Computing Security Specialist will work to try to keep that data protected from loss. They may be dealing with and defending against viruses, hoaxes, malware, keyloggers, phishing attacks, internal attacks and domestic and foreign intrusion. Develops monitoring and interception systems, filters and strategies and works with appropriate government agencies.
Ethical Hacker – performs intrusion and vulnerability testing of systems. Works with Computing Security to insure intrusion prevention systems are working correctly.
Corporate IT Acquisition Specialist – Works with acquired outside companies to establish migration into the corporate computing infrastructure.
Data Center Administrator – Maintains the data center facilities where the company’s servers and other devices reside. They are responsible for physical security and may review badge reader and camera information to be sure that only individuals with proper access are getting close to the company’s servers and other critical devices. Also, maintain backup power devices (UPS or generators).

In a small business the list of jobs above might be performed by one or two people doing all these jobs. In a large Enterprise environment this could be hundreds of people.

Best wishes!

Jere answers:

You start by targeting the customization type you want to build. Gamers are most likely your target as they are the main group of individuals that normally use customized PCs. If you know the hardware and building of the hardware in and out, then all you will basically be doing is assembling the stuff together. Selling online is pretty much the same as selling anywhere else, it takes a while to get onto google’s first page rank, even though some trollers have probably crammed up there already. Ebay is an ok option, so is craigslist. The decision on ‘where’ or ‘how’ to sell is not a single unique answer. You could combine a simple website, with a twitter account, an ebay account and craigslist listings and sell through all these multiple channels for free. Apart from online(which involves shipping and delivery charges) you can also put up posters, advertise on school and university boards and sell locally within your community.

I think efficiency here is in the strategy, you can start with multiple forms of marketing and advertising and gradually diminish marketing strategies that aren’t helping you. You do this by asking clients where they heard about your service, if more people say “through a university ad” and only 1 in 300 people say on twitter, you simply focus more on advertising on university boards and give less time to twitter. I further recommend that if you’re going to sell something tangible, then it must be a long-term business, cause nobody likes to buy things from a company that doesn’t exist after 2 months.