Last updated 2026-07-25
TL;DR
The "990 postcard" is Form 990-N, the free electronic form small nonprofits (gross receipts normally $50,000 or less) file every year to stay in IRS compliance. It's due by the 15th day of the 5th month after your fiscal year ends. Miss it three years running and the IRS automatically revokes your tax-exempt status.
What is Form 990 (and what is the "990 postcard")?
Form 990 is the annual information return that tax-exempt organizations file with the IRS. It's not an income tax return, most small booster clubs and PTOs owe no tax, it's a report that tells the IRS (and the public) what your group took in, spent, and holds. The "990 postcard" is the nickname for Form 990-N, officially the Electronic Notice (e-Postcard) for Tax-Exempt Organizations Not Required To File Form 990 or 990-EZ [1]. The postcard nickname is accurate in spirit. Form 990-N asks for eight data points: your EIN, tax year, legal name and address, any other names used, a website if you have one, the name and address of a principal officer, confirmation that gross receipts are $50,000 or less, and a statement that the organization hasn't terminated [1]. There's no financial detail, no balance sheet, no line items. You file it entirely online through the IRS's own portal. If your booster club or PTO brings in more than $50,000 in a year, you don't file the postcard. You step up to Form 990-EZ (gross receipts under $200,000 and total assets under $500,000) or the full Form 990 [1]. Those forms ask for real financial detail: revenue by source, functional expenses, compensation, and a balance sheet. For background on the family of 990 forms and which one fits your organization's size, see form 990 and 990 tax form.
What is the 990-N e-Postcard, exactly?
Form 990-N is a short annual electronic notice, not a paper form. Most small tax-exempt organizations with gross receipts normally $50,000 or less are required to file it every year to stay in good standing with the IRS [1]. You file it at the IRS's own site, not through tax software, and it's always free. The IRS description is direct: "Most small tax-exempt organizations whose annual gross receipts are normally $50,000 or less are required to electronically submit Form 990-N... unless they choose to file a complete Form 990 or Form 990-EZ instead" [1]. That word "normally" matters. The IRS looks at a rolling average, more than the current year, using specific rules for organizations under three years old, three to ten years old, and established groups. If your booster club had one unusually big fundraiser year, check the averaging method in the IRS instructions before assuming you've crossed the threshold [1]. There's no cost to file, no software to buy, and it usually takes ten minutes if you have your EIN and your fiscal year dates handy. That's the whole appeal of the postcard: it's the lightest-touch compliance option the IRS offers, and it exists specifically so tiny volunteer-run organizations don't need an accountant to stay compliant. For a plain walkthrough of the filing screens themselves, see 990-n and form 990-n.
Who has to file Form 990-N?
| $50,000 or less | Form 990-N (e-Postcard) | |
|---|---|---|
| Under $200,000, assets under $500,000 | Form 990-EZ (or full 990) | |
| $200,000 or more, or assets $500,000+ | Form 990 | Source: IRS, Annual Electronic Filing Requirement for Small Exempt Organizations [1]. |
Any organization recognized as tax-exempt under section 501(a) (which includes most 501(c)(3) booster clubs and PTOs) whose gross receipts are normally $50,000 or less must file the 990-N, unless it chooses to file the longer 990-EZ or full 990 instead [1]. A handful of organization types are excluded from the requirement, including churches and church-affiliated groups, and organizations already included in a group return [1]. Here's the part new treasurers miss most often: filing is required even in a year where your group did almost nothing. A booster club that took a year off, ran no fundraisers, and had $200 in the bank still owes a 990-N if it holds tax-exempt status. The IRS doesn't care that activity was low. It cares that you didn't file. Gross receipts, for this test, means total revenue for the year before subtracting any costs or expenses. Ticket sales, concession revenue, raffle proceeds, sponsorships, and membership dues all count toward that $50,000 line, gross, not net. | Gross receipts (normally) | Form required |
When is Form 990-N due?
Form 990-N is due every year by the 15th day of the 5th month after the close of your organization's fiscal year [1]. If your fiscal year runs on the calendar year (January through December), that means your 990-N is due by May 15 of the following year. If your booster club or PTO uses a school-year fiscal calendar, say July 1 to June 30, your due date shifts to November 15. Check your organization's governing documents or its original IRS exemption letter to confirm which fiscal year you're actually on; a lot of handoff chaos happens because nobody wrote down what fiscal year the last treasurer used. There's no extension available for Form 990-N itself. Unlike the full Form 990, which can get a 6-month extension via Form 8868, the e-Postcard has no extension mechanism [1]. If you miss the date, you just file it late, there's no formal late-filing penalty attached to a single missed 990-N, but missing it repeatedly is where the real danger starts.
What happens if you miss the deadline or forget to file for years?
One missed year isn't the crisis. Three missed years in a row is. The IRS states plainly: "Federal law automatically revokes the tax-exempt status of any organization that fails to file required Form 990-series returns or notices for three consecutive years" [2]. There's no notice-and-cure period before that happens; the revocation is automatic by statute once the third year lapses. This is the single most common way small booster clubs and PTOs lose their exempt status: not fraud, not a big financial mess, just three years of a volunteer board not knowing the postcard existed. It happens constantly during treasurer handoffs, when nobody tells the incoming volunteer that a filing is even required. Once revoked, your organization shows up on the IRS Auto-Revocation List, a public database anyone can search [3]. Donors lose their ability to deduct gifts to your group. Your state may separately flag your charitable registration. Getting back on track means applying for reinstatement, sometimes retroactively, using Form 1023 (or 1023-EZ if you qualify) and the streamlined retroactive reinstatement procedure the IRS laid out in Revenue Procedure 2014-11 [4]. If you've just discovered your organization is on that list, don't panic and don't guess. Confirm your status directly on the IRS's Tax Exempt Organization Search and read the current reinstatement procedures before filing anything [3][4].
What does a treasurer do?
A treasurer is the volunteer (or occasionally paid) officer responsible for a club or nonprofit's money: tracking income and expenses, keeping bank accounts reconciled, reporting balances to the board, and making sure required filings like Form 990-N get done on time. In a booster club or PTO, the treasurer is usually the only person who touches the books day to day, which is exactly why clear handoff records matter so much. Day to day, the treasurer's job breaks into a few concrete buckets. First, bookkeeping: recording deposits from fundraisers, concessions, and dues, and recording payments for uniforms, equipment, tournament fees, and the like. Second, banking: making sure two people (never just one) can access the account, and that statements get reconciled monthly, not once a year in a panic. Third, reporting: giving the board a simple monthly snapshot, income versus expenses, so nobody is surprised in June. Fourth, compliance: filing the 990-N or 990-EZ on time, renewing any state charitable registration, and keeping the group's raffle or gaming license current if it runs raffles. What a treasurer does NOT do, at least not alone, is make spending decisions unilaterally. Good practice is a two-signature rule on checks above a set dollar threshold, and board approval for anything outside the normal budget. A treasurer who's also the sole signer on the account and the only person who ever sees a bank statement is a financial-controls problem waiting to happen, not a compliment to how organized they are.
What does a treasurer do in a club or booster organization specifically?
In a school booster club or youth-sports organization, the treasurer's job looks a little different from a corporate finance role, mostly because the money is small and the volunteers change every year or two. The core tasks stay the same: track every dollar in and out, reconcile the bank statement monthly, and keep receipts organized enough that next year's treasurer (or an auditor, or the IRS) can follow the trail. Season-specific tasks pile up on top of that baseline. A concession stand needs a cash count sheet at open and close, with two people signing off, not one volunteer alone with a cash box. A raffle needs a state gaming or charitable license before a single ticket is sold, confirm the specific rules with your state charity office, since raffle licensing is handled at the state (sometimes county) level, not federally. Uniform or equipment fundraisers need a simple ledger showing what each family paid in and what was spent on their behalf, especially if any of it counts as a restricted or designated fund. At year-end, the club treasurer's job converges back to the IRS calendar: gather the year's gross receipts, confirm whether the group falls under the $50,000 threshold, and file the 990-N (or hand off the numbers to whoever prepares the 990-EZ) by the deadline. That single filing is often the only interaction a small booster club has with the federal government all year, which is exactly why it gets forgotten, and exactly why forgetting it three years running is so costly.
What does a treasurer of a club do differently from a PTO or nonprofit treasurer?
The core job is nearly identical: bookkeeping, banking controls, and compliance filings. The differences are mostly about scale and audience. A small hobby club with no tax-exempt status doesn't file Form 990-N at all; that requirement only kicks in once an organization has been recognized as tax-exempt under section 501(a) [1]. A PTO or booster club that has applied for and received 501(c)(3) status does have that obligation, every year, regardless of how quiet the year was. A PTO treasurer typically answers to a principal or school administration in addition to the parent board, which sometimes means extra reporting layers or district-level financial policies stacked on top of the IRS requirements. A stand-alone booster club, incorporated separately from the school, usually answers only to its own board and to the IRS and state charity regulators, which can mean more autonomy but also more responsibility for getting the filings right without a district finance office backstopping mistakes. Either way, the practical checklist is the same: know your EIN, know your fiscal year, know your gross receipts threshold, and know your due date. Nothing about being a "club" treasurer versus a "nonprofit" treasurer changes those four facts.
How do you actually file Form 990-N step by step?
You'll need your organization's EIN (not the treasurer's personal Social Security number), your legal name and mailing address, the tax year you're filing for, and the name and address of a principal officer [1]. Filing happens directly through the IRS website; there's no paper alternative and no fee. A few practical notes that trip people up. First, if your organization changed its name or address since the last filing, note that on the form; mismatches are the most common reason a 990-N gets rejected or flagged for follow-up. Second, the system will ask you to confirm your organization's gross receipts are normally $50,000 or less; if you're not sure, run the averaging calculation from the IRS instructions before checking that box, since checking it incorrectly can create headaches later [1]. Third, print or save the confirmation the IRS system gives you after you submit; it's often the only proof you have that the filing actually went through. If your organization is bigger than the $50,000 threshold, or you're not sure which form applies, get the comparison straight before you file anything: see irs form 990 for how the three main versions (990-N, 990-EZ, full 990) differ in what they require.
What if your organization has never applied for tax-exempt status at all?
Form 990-N (and the whole family of 990 filings) only applies to organizations that already have federal tax-exempt recognition. If your booster club has been operating for years on an EIN alone, collecting dues and running fundraisers, but never actually applied for 501(c)(3) status, you don't file a 990-N, because there's no exempt status to maintain. That's a separate and bigger project: applying for exemption in the first place, usually via Form 1023 or the streamlined Form 1023-EZ for smaller organizations, filed with the IRS along with the user fee currently listed on the IRS's exempt organizations user fee schedule in the Instructions for Form 1023-EZ [5]. Confirm current fees and eligibility for the EZ version directly with the IRS before starting, since eligibility and fee amounts are the kind of detail that changes and shouldn't be guessed at. A lot of booster clubs discover this gap the hard way, usually when a bank or a school district asks for proof of tax-exempt status and there isn't any. If that's you, the 990-N conversation is premature; get the exemption application sorted first. For general orientation on where 990-N fits into the bigger compliance picture, see [990](https://boosterledger.com/articles/treasurer-basics/990).
How does this connect to state charity registration and raffle licensing?
Form 990-N satisfies your federal filing obligation. It does nothing for your state requirements, which are usually separate and separately enforced. Most states with charitable solicitation laws require nonprofits soliciting donations to register with the state attorney general's office or a dedicated charities bureau, and many require an annual renewal alongside (or referencing) your federal 990 filing. Raffles add another layer entirely. Running a raffle, even a small one at a single game, typically requires a state (and sometimes local) gaming or charitable gaming license, separate from both your federal exemption and your state charity registration. Requirements, fees, and even whether raffles are legal at all vary enormously by state; confirm the specific rules with your state charity office or attorney general before selling a single ticket. The practical order of operations for a new booster club: get federal 501(c)(3) recognition, file your 990-N (or larger form) every year on the federal calendar, register with your state charity office if required, and separately obtain a raffle or gaming license before any raffle fundraiser. Skipping any one of these doesn't make the others unnecessary; they're tracked by different agencies with different deadlines.
A simple annual compliance checklist for booster club and PTO treasurers
Most small-organization compliance failures aren't complicated, they're just forgotten. A short annual checklist, taped inside the treasurer's binder or saved in the handoff folder, prevents most of them. Every year: confirm your fiscal year-end date and calculate your 990-N (or 990-EZ) due date, the 15th day of the 5th month after year-end [1]. Total your gross receipts for the year and check them against the $50,000 threshold using the IRS's averaging method if you're close to the line. File the 990-N through the IRS site, or hand off complete financial records to whoever prepares a 990-EZ if you're above the threshold. Save the confirmation. Check your state charity registration renewal date separately, it rarely lines up neatly with the federal deadline. If you ran a raffle, confirm your state gaming license is current before the next one. A one-time $99 State-Personalized Treasurer Kit exists for exactly this problem: a pre-built binder with your state's specific charity registration and raffle licensing steps laid out alongside the federal 990-N calendar, so a brand-new volunteer treasurer isn't reconstructing all of this from scratch during their first busy season. None of this is tax or legal advice, and nothing here guarantees a particular filing outcome or that your organization will retain or regain tax-exempt status. Rules change and vary by state; always confirm current requirements directly with the IRS and your state charity office before filing.
Frequently asked questions
What is Form 990?
Form 990 is the annual information return tax-exempt organizations file with the IRS, reporting revenue, expenses, and activities. It's not an income tax bill for most nonprofits. Small organizations (gross receipts normally $50,000 or less) file the short e-Postcard version, Form 990-N, instead of the full form [1].
What is the 990 tax form used for?
It lets the IRS and the public see what a tax-exempt organization took in, spent, and holds each year. It also keeps the IRS informed that the organization is still active, which is why failing to file it (in any version) for three straight years triggers automatic revocation of tax-exempt status [2].
What is a treasurer?
A treasurer is the officer of a club, PTO, or nonprofit responsible for handling money: recording income and expenses, reconciling bank accounts, reporting financial status to the board, and making sure required filings like Form 990-N happen on schedule. Most booster club treasurers are volunteers serving one to two year terms.
What do treasurers do day to day?
They record deposits and payments, reconcile bank statements monthly, give the board a simple income-versus-expense report, and keep receipts organized for the annual 990-N or 990-EZ filing. During fundraiser season that expands to cash-handling controls like two-person counts at concession stands and raffles.
What does a club treasurer do that's different from other officers?
Other officers vote on decisions and represent the club; the treasurer is the one who actually touches the money and the paperwork. That includes bank access, expense approvals under board policy, and the yearly IRS and state compliance filings, which is why treasurer handoffs need real documentation, more than a verbal briefing.
Who has to file Form 990-N?
Tax-exempt organizations under section 501(a) with gross receipts normally $50,000 or less, unless they choose to file the longer 990-EZ or full 990 instead [1]. Churches and organizations included in a group return are generally excluded from this requirement [1].
When is Form 990-N due?
By the 15th day of the 5th month after your organization's fiscal year ends [1]. Calendar-year organizations (January to December) file by May 15. School-year organizations (July to June) file by November 15. There is no extension available for the 990-N itself.
What happens if you never file the 990 postcard?
One missed year has no formal penalty attached to it directly, but the IRS automatically revokes tax-exempt status after three consecutive years of not filing any required 990-series return or notice [2]. Reinstatement then requires a new exemption application and, often, a separate retroactive reinstatement request under Revenue Procedure 2014-11 [4].
How do I check if my organization is already revoked?
Search the IRS Tax Exempt Organization Search tool directly on irs.gov, which includes the Auto-Revocation List of organizations that lost exempt status for not filing three years running [3]. Don't rely on assumptions; confirm your organization's exact status before deciding on next steps.
Does filing the 990-N cost anything?
No. Form 990-N is free to file, filed directly through the IRS's own online system, with no user fee and no required paid preparer [1]. If your organization is applying for exemption in the first place, that's a separate process (Form 1023 or 1023-EZ) that does carry an IRS user fee [5].
What's the difference between the 990-N, 990-EZ, and full 990?
Gross receipts normally $50,000 or less files the 990-N (no financial detail required). Under $200,000 in receipts and under $500,000 in assets can file the 990-EZ. Larger organizations file the full Form 990, which requires detailed revenue, expense, and compensation reporting [1].
Do state raffle licenses replace the need to file the 990 postcard?
No. A state raffle or charitable gaming license is a completely separate requirement from the federal Form 990-N filing. You may need both: the federal 990-N to maintain IRS tax-exempt status, and a separate state license before running any raffle. Confirm raffle rules with your state charity office.
Sources
- IRS, Annual Electronic Filing Requirement for Small Exempt Organizations (Form 990-N): Form 990-N eligibility ($50,000 gross receipts threshold), required data fields, due date formula, and filing exclusions
- IRS, Automatic Revocation of Exemption: Federal law automatically revokes tax-exempt status after three consecutive years of not filing required Form 990-series returns
- IRS, Tax Exempt Organization Search: Public database to check auto-revocation status and current exempt status
- IRS Revenue Procedure 2014-11 (streamlined retroactive reinstatement after automatic revocation): Reinstatement process and retroactive reinstatement procedures after automatic revocation
- IRS, Instructions for Form 1023-EZ: User fee and eligibility requirements for the streamlined Form 1023-EZ exemption application
- 26 U.S.C. Section 6033(j), Internal Revenue Code: Statutory basis for the three-year automatic revocation rule for organizations failing to file required annual returns or notices