In the past few weeks, one or the other may have wondered when there will finally be something new. However, before we can start with the next step, the financing of the film project, we first had to do some basic work and work on the carrier for our film project.
As you know, [W]holehearted is a film project that we as a producing team do entirely on a voluntary basis. We intend to finance it largely through donations (mainly through crowdfunding) and then make it available to the general public for free. It is important to us that 100% of the donations really flow exclusively into the realization of the film. We do have an existing production company, but if we were to handle the project and the crowdfunding campaign through them, a significant part of the donations would simply be swallowed up for taxes, even though we don't make any profits with the project and don't want to make any profits either. It is a non-profit project and therefore needs a non-profit organization.
After we dealt with the possible legal forms and prayed about them, we quickly realized that the most suitable and simplest legal form for our project is the non-profit association. As a non-profit association, we are exempt from corporate and trade tax and, to a large extent, from sales tax, so we can use everything we donate to the project 1:1 to make the film.
So we set about getting the necessary number of members to found an association, which we did very quickly. We drew up the association's statutes and held an inaugural meeting, in which we once again presented the history and vision of the association to all members in detail, decided on the statutes and voted on the association's name and board. We then had the statutes checked by the tax office for non-profit status and after we adjusted a few more formulations, the non-profit status was confirmed by the tax office. A visit to the notary later, our certified application for entry in the register of associations finally made its way to the district court of Ulm.
A few weeks later we received the confirmation: We are now a non-profit association registered in the Ulm register of associations with the name “Wholehearted Pictures e.V.” A few more steps as a new legal entity then followed, such as opening the association account. But now we can finally say that the basic legal framework for the project (and possibly also for other future projects like this) has been laid. We have a solid support for [W]holehearted and can start the next phase of the project: crowdfunding.
A few final changes and adjustments and fine-tuning on the website and we're ready to go.