Dear Nathaniel,

You asked me to explain in writing, why I advise a charitable trust
rather than a non-profit corporation to receive 501(c)(3) income tax
exempt donations to your orchestras (and proceeds from ticket sales). 
The reasons are simplicity and administrative economy.

a) for a non-profit corporation you need to recruit members who hold
meetings at least annually, and elect a Board Directors which must meet
with sufficient frequency to discharge its legal obligations. The
members and the Directors must be in communication with each other;
such communication is likely to generate issues which are spurious
and or misunderstood, and absorb time and energy which you need for
your musical activities.

b) a charitable trust requires only two trustees who can communicate
informally as frequently as necessary; and far more efficiently than
the more numerous members of the corporation and its Board of Directors.

Attached is a Charitable Trust Template published by the IRS. Read it.
If there's anything you don't understand, ask me. Identify a potential 
Donor with ten dollars to spare, and find two congenial and cooperative
Trustees. As soon as they date and sign the document and appoint you as 
musical director, you're off and running in the non-profit orchestra 
business. The IRS doesn't even require notarized signatures, although if 
not too inconvenient for the signatories, notarization seems desirable.

The trust's name can be anything, provided it includes the words: "Charitable
Trust." The Trust can serve as umbrella for as many orchestras as you wish.
Let Harvard be your role model. Harvard is umbrella for a College, a Graduate
School of Arts and Sciences, a Law School, a Medical School, a Business
School, a School of Design, a School of Education, a Dental School, an
Art Museum ... And as for fund-raising, Harvard would make Midas turn green 
with envy. It's a model of what St Paul meant when he wrote: The greatest 
of these is Charity.