Agreed that obtaining the IRS acceptance of your purpose as a 501 (c) 3 is the most difficult part. Having a mission statement can help, but is not required. A mission statement and/or a vision statement are optional. Articles of incorporation, if a corporation, and by-laws are not optional.
ORIGINAL: STLPilot
Not sure of the form numbers, they are at my other office. I know one was 21-22 pages and the other was about 10.
I did want to add and I can tell you first hand model.flyer I know what your talking about in regards to the structure. But the structure of the corporation is the other piece of the NFP which is done well before the 501C3 process begins. When I filled out the paper work the easy parts were to fill in the blanks, check marks and boxes all based on what was already achieved by the completion of the corporation. But what the IRS really wanted to know on these forms and to extrapolate on seperate accompanying documents was what we are going to achieve with this NFP. What really took the longest and needed to be overseen more by the lawyer was the documented portions of the application. Most of that information, if not all of it, was many pages long of written and re-written narrative of what we were going to do, how we were going to do it and to whom we were going to serve. This was by far the most complex part of the process so far. About half of that information came from the bylaws of the corporation.