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Name change approved by the IRS


After nine months of twiddling their thumbs, the US IRS has finally approved our name change.

Dead: Teach North Korean Refugees Global Education Center.
Alive: Freedom Speakers International.

Thanks in advance for the congratulations, but the best way to help us celebrate is by setting up a fundraiser. The slowness of the IRS has caused our organization financial harm, we have had some grant money and opportunities on hold because we had changed our name but it still wasn't recognized by the IRS.
https://www.facebook.com/FreedomSpeakersIntl/fundraisers

If you are in one of the countries where Facebook or GoFundMe have approved fundraising (South Korea isn't one of them), then you can set up a fundraiser. At last, because the IRS has finally approved this name change, it means that the fundraisers will say Freedom Speakers International instead of TNKR.

We won't completely kill the TNKR name, we have a campaign to bring back private tutoring for North Korean refugees, but with a paid staffer rather than with volunteer coordinators.

As I recall the timeline for all of this:

* December 30, 2020, the state of Virginia approved our name change from TNKR to FSI.

* I began the process of changing our name with the IRS, but oops! The IRS had a note on the website saying the website would be shut down until January 9, 2021. No problem!

* January 10th, I faxed in the information to the IRS to begin the process of changing our name. According to the website, it takes 30 to 60 days for a name change to be processed. After 30 days, they said for me to check later, that they were probably still processing it. And they said the processing for many things were slower than usual because of the change in administrations.

* March 11th, two months after starting the process, I called the IRS, they said they had no record of my request in January. So we faxed and mailed the name change to the IRS.

* May 11th, I checked again, the IRS said they had no record of the name change request from January or March. I began calling regularly, finally one day an agent told me that they had a record of me making the request on March 11th. They said it would probably take another 30 to 60 days.

* At this point, I had the phone number of the IRS memorized. Some nights I would stay at the office, to make calls at 10 pm, or 1 am, or other random times. The hold was usually 30 to 60 minutes, but I finally started finding times to call with just a 15 to 30 minute wait.

* Around July 11th, an IRS agent told me that there were some "internal" problems, that many things were going slowly. Agents coudn't access a lot of information from home.

* I don't recall the exact date, but frustrated with the US IRS, we began the process of changing our name in South Korea. It took less than a week to have the name changed in South Korea. Whatever problems the US IRS is having, the Korean equivalent was able to handle the name change in a week.

* By August, I was on a first-name basis with some of the IRS agents. One lady who had been really unfriendly at the beginning of the call got some feistiness in return from me. It was 2 am Korea time, oh yeah, you can definitely get honesty from me at that time, especially when I am calling a government agency.

* With new strategy, I was after the IRS every week. Finally, our case was assigned to an agent, but in our phone call, she said that they had assigned the case to the wrong agent, that she couldn't help.

* I was then assigned to a different agent. Haha! I called her a few times, the call went to her voice mail every time, with the message that she was handling many cases.

Then, damn! She called me one day but I missed the call. I was on a 2 a.m. Zoom call, and didn't see the notification. That probably pushed things back by a week.

* Finally, I got the agent on the phone. Yes, she was authorized to handle our case. Yes, she would try to push it through, after I told her that the IRS was causing us financial hardship.

Should someone have to be so tenacious to get the name of an organization changed? The IRS is the only place that recognizes the name change of an organization, I can't just call up another government agency like I am ordering pizza.

* Finally, in early September, right around my birthday, the IRS agent told me that it looked like the name change would be approved, I would need to send the request again, I could choose which way. I did all of them--fax, email, letter. After she received the email, she said she would be in contact on or before October 27th. Yes, almost two months later, I guess it was the standard 30 to 60 days.

* Two weeks early, I received a call at about 2 am. That time, I wasn't on a Zoom call. She let me know that the IRS would be approving the name change soon.

* A few days later, she called me at about 5 a.m. Korea time. The name change had been approved, they would be sending the letter soon.

A few days ago, we finally received the letter from the IRS. Shamelessly, they say in October 2021 that they had received my request on January 10, 2021, the same request they could find no record of for months.

Now, the hard work begins, we must change many things associated with our name. Anyway, at least we won't have the barrier of the IRS there.

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