Hungry Turtle Institute Inc

“Line 1b denotes 3 "independent Board members" in acknowledgement BOTH of the organization's landlord-renter relationship with Resilient Northern Habitats, an LLC owned by Kari Wenger and Peter Henry, and with respect to amounts for outstanding rent as well as amounts due to be reimbursed for supplies purchased for organization by said LLC (or by Wenger or Henry) at yearend (all due with -0-% interest) per disclosure reported on Schedule L, Part II. (Note: amounts paid or incurred in year for rents to Resilient Northern Habitats totaled $9,000, which is below the Schedule L, Part IV reporting threshold, but same is subsumed in loan amount shown on Schedule L, Part II which would moot Part IV disclosure in any case.)”

“Kari Wenger and Peter Henry are married as are Sylvia Burgos-Toftness and David Toftness.”

“Christina Midtling was an officer/employee of Bremer Bank's branch in Amery, WI when she served on the organization's Board. Kristin Lee-Charlson, the organization's Executive Director, is no longer involved with the organization. Both of these individuals' contact info is not available to the organization”

“The organization's outside tax counsel prepared this amended Form with the assistance of taxpayer's Vice President and 2017-contracted outside accountant; a draft was shared with the Board on November 8, 2017 and the final was reviewed with all Board members on April 18, 2018 just prior to filing.”

“The organization did not pay for any goods or services (aside from occupancy of offices and training center and exhibit hall space at a documented "less than fair market value" rate, which in this year amounted to total rents paid of $9,000) provided by the founding incorporators (and Board members), Peter Henry and Kari Wenger, or enterprises connected to them. Aside from the occupancy addressed in the prior sentence, no exchange of goods or services occurred with any Board members, their family members, or with 35%-controlled entities except in the case of these parties providing goods on a donated basis or volunteering their time.”

“Executive Director's received cash compensation but no benefits. Same was set by the Board after reviewing geographically-aligned nonprofit organization's salaries from the Minnesota Council of Nonprofits' annual salary survey. This was done when the then-Executive Director was in the process of being hired in 2015.”

“These documents are only available either through the exemption application or Form 990 public inspection copies OR via the State of WI's filings.”

“Specifically being amended are the following entries: **properly disclosing program service accomplishments at Part III Lines 4a and 4b **providing answers to Part V lines 7a, 7c-7f **correcting answers with respect to multiple Part VI lines: number of independent Board members (correcting line 1b); disclosing marital relationships amongst TDOKEs (correcting line 2); noting absence of voting membership (correcting lines 6a/7); noting here that the Board did not see complete copy of originally-filed Form 990 prior to filing (that filed return's Part VI, line 11a was answered incorrectly) BUT this amended return correctly answers yes (for this filing); and noting organization had a conflict of interest policy from inception (and same had been included with filer's exemption application; correcting line 12a) **disclosing as Officer individual who served as Executive Director in Part VII, Section A **correcting amount of contributions received (original filing's balance sheet misreported temporarily restricted contribution as "deferred revenue" in violation of generally accepted account principles) **making other corrections to financial statements at Parts VIII, IX and X **denoting financial statements were subject of CPA review (this re Part XII line 2a) **correcting Schedule A, Part II's 2015 entries **correcting scribing error on page 1 of Schedule B and contribution amount on Schedule B's Part I, line 2 **adding Schedule L (as required due to amendments to Part X, lines 5 and 22). ||||||||| The entirety of these changes were required to undo errors prior paid-preparer made due to misunderstanding of Form 990 reporting and nonprofit accounting conventions.”

“The organization's activities were initiated in November 2014, a month prior to the 501(c)(3) determination letter being received; accordingly, its first 7 full months of operations (reported on the 2014 Form 990) were focused largely on administrative tasks including program planning. In the year now reported upon, the organization initiated programming (workshops and other educational formats related to the planting, growing, and harvesting of locally-and sustainably- produced agricultural products, as well as preparation/cooking techniques for those products, especially for geographically indigenous heritage varieties whose production has been lost.”

“Program instructors and teachers ($5,650, 100% program); program entertainment ($500, 100% program); payroll processing ($929 program, $691 management); other outside contractors ($6,937 program, $5,576 management)”

“Rounding error”