▍ Property
A growing congregation purchases its first permanent home.
Negotiated the purchase agreement, secured financing on church-friendly terms, and worked with the city on a conditional-use permit. Closing aligned with the campaign calendar.
Churches, ministries, and nonprofit organizations carry a mission and a business at the same time. The financial discipline of a company, the public accountability of a regulator, and the volunteer energy of a community, all under one tax ID. We’ve counseled Pacific Northwest congregations, denominational bodies, parachurch ministries, faith-based schools, and secular nonprofits for decades. The work is quiet by design.
Talk to a nonprofit attorneyOseran Hahn has served Pacific Northwest nonprofits, congregations, and faith-based organizations for decades. Our clients include churches, synagogues, parachurch ministries, denominational and rabbinic bodies, social-service nonprofits, foundations, and faith-based schools. We handle formation and 501(c)(3) status, governance and polity, employment and safe-sanctuaries policy, real estate and capital projects, mergers and affiliations, and the transitions that come up across decades: clergy succession, denominational or jurisdictional realignment, dissolution, and the legacy planning that follows.
Formation, polity, First Amendment protections, denominational realignments, and pastoral succession for churches, synagogues, parachurch ministries, and religious orders across the Pacific Northwest.
Acquisition, financing, leasing, and tax-exempt-status protection for sanctuary, school, cemetery, and ministry property across King and Snohomish counties.
501(c)(3) formation, board governance, contracts, employment, IRS reporting, and the disputes that arise in mission-driven organizations.
Tax-exempt status, Form 990 filings, charitable solicitation registration, planned-giving vehicles, mergers, and the wind-up work at the end of an organization's chapter.
Board structure, committees, fiduciary-duty training, executive compensation review, and the everyday questions between meetings.
Mission-driven clients return for the same three reasons. None of them is the matter at hand. It’s the next decade.
We work with boards and pastors who’d rather not be in our office at all. We bring the discipline of the file and the patience the work deserves.
We read the tradition the church or ministry belongs to and write documents that honor it, not generic nonprofit boilerplate that misses the polity.
Formation, governance, real estate, employment, succession, dissolution. The same lawyers see the organization through its entire life.
A working conversation about the mission, the people, and the questions the board hasn’t yet been able to answer alone.
We read the founding documents, the polity (if applicable), the recent minutes, and the financial statements. A short written memo follows.
We propose the structure, document set, or amendment plan in plain language, with the trade-offs and the realistic timeline.
Bylaws, IRS filings, employment documents, real-estate work, or whatever the matter requires. Senior attorney drafting from the first version.
Board or membership adoption, denominational notice where applicable, and the staff-and-volunteer rollout that makes a policy real.
Boards turn over. Pastors transition. We stay available year after year so the organization’s legal life is continuous, not episodic.
Articles of incorporation, IRS Form 1023, bylaws, and the polity or governance documents that match how the organization will actually operate. Charity in good standing from day one.
Departure agreement, sabbatical structure, transition-pastor engagement, and the document set the next pastor walks into. Pastoral care alongside the legal work.
Governance update, employment counsel, real-estate work, and the IRS questions that come up when a nonprofit’s footprint expands. Mission stays central; structure scales with it.
Due diligence, governance integration, brand transition, donor communications, and the IRS notice that goes along with it. Programmatic continuity is the priority.
Negotiated the purchase agreement, secured financing on church-friendly terms, and worked with the city on a conditional-use permit. Closing aligned with the campaign calendar.
Modernized the governance documents while preserving the congregation’s polity and theological identity. Membership ratified the changes after a long season of teaching.
Counseled a long-tenured senior pastor and elder board through a multi-year succession plan: departure agreement, sabbatical structure, transition-pastor engagement, and the document set the next pastor walked into.
Quiet, careful counsel for the work that has a calling.
Oseran Hahn P.S. · 11225 SE 6th St, Suite 100 · Bellevue, WA 98004
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