2026-07-07T19:26:23-07:00 2025-01-31 990 2024-02-01 881471614 PROJECT TO DECOLONIZE COFFEE PROJ 9515257056 1724 I Street NW Suite 300 Washington DC 20006 Luis Mojica Perez Founder & CEO 9515257056 2026-07-07 1 2024 2025-03-06 01:10:19Z X Luis Mojica Perez 1725 I Street NW Suite 300 Washington DC 20006 60104 0 X www.decolonizecoffee.org X 2022 DC Project to Decolonize Coffee's mission is to educate and support low-income coffee farmers in Colombia and Africa. We aim to support low income people develop their farm business and obtain financial independence. Project to Decolonize Coffee will supply coffee growers with the materials and expertise they need to improve their harvest and to roast their beans at origin. We will offer in person training events, educational conferences, and educational kits to support low-income farmers. Project to Decolonize Coffee will also partner with influencers, celebrities, creatives, farmers, innovators, artisans, activists and charitable organizations to educate the public and increase awareness for low-income farmers. 5 5 0 4 0 0 37972 60104 0 0 0 0 560 0 38532 60104 13713 17770 8043 0 6316 28041 0 0 0 9460 12693 37532 58504 1000 1600 1000 2600 0 0 1000 2600 Project to Decolonize Coffee's mission is to educate and support low-income coffee farmers in Colombia and Africa. We aim to support low income people develop their farm business and obtain financial independence. Project to Decolonize Coffee will supply coffee growers with the materials and expertise they need to improve their harvest and to roast their beans at origin. We will offer in person training events, educational conferences, and educational kits to support low-income farmers. Project to Decolonize Coffee will also partner with influencers, celebrities, creatives, farmers, innovators, artisans, activists and charitable organizations to educate the public and increase awareness for low-income farmers. 0 0 11447 0 0 La Casa de la Caficultura: Opened the region's first community coffee center in Tierralta, Córdoba, Colombia - a hub where emerging growers access training, technical assistance, and processing facilities. Restored and inaugurated December 2024. 4774 0 0 Proyecto B - El Diamante: Supported seven first-time grower families in El Diamante through their first specialty harvest, financing a despulpadora (pulping) house and drying marquesina, with farm assessments and in-field advisory sessions. Culminated in the community's first-ever coffee launch. 1549 0 0 Nuevos Recolectores de Café: Trained two community leaders in Colombia's coffee axis during the May-June 2024 harvest, who returned to Tierralta as community-rooted instructors in harvesting and processing. 0 0 0 17770 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 1 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 X 5 5 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 1 1 0 0 1 1 1 1 1 1 0 0 0 DC X X Luis Mojica Perez 9515257056 1724 I Street NW Suite 300 Washington DC 20006 X Luis Mojica Perez CEO & FOUNDER 25 10 X X X X 0 0 0 Lucia Vives Gomez COO & Member of the Board 5 5 X X 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 60104 0 60104 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 60104 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 17770 17770 0 0 0 0 0 0 22890 22890 0 0 5151 0 5151 0 0 1000 0 1000 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 5000 5000 0 0 0 0 0 0 6693 6693 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 58504 17770 40734 0 1000 2600 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 1000 2600 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 X 1000 2600 0 0 1000 2600 1000 2600 1600 0 0 0 0 0 X 0 0 0 X 29877 37532 60104 127513 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 29877 37532 60104 127513 127513 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 127513 0 X 1 South America 1 5 Program Services The Organization's principal program is a rural economic development and coffee-sector equity initiative serving smallholder coffee-farming communities in the Department of Córdoba, Colombia. During the tax year, the Organization worked with more than 60 partner farming communities, with the goal of increasing the share of coffee value retained by producers and strengthening the economic autonomy of rural farming families. Program activities during the year included: (a) direct partnership and capacity-building with smallholder coffee farmers, including technical assistance in cultivation, harvesting, and post-harvest processing / quality improvement training designed to help producers command higher prices for their coffee; (b) market access and trade equity work connecting partner farms to specialty coffee buyers / direct trade relationships on terms more favorable than conventional commodity channels; (c) community-level economic development support in partner communities. 47353 1 5 47353 0 0 0 0 0 0 Schedule F, Part I, Line 2 The Organization maintains oversight procedures reasonably designed to ensure that funds used outside the United States are applied exclusively to their intended charitable purposes. Before any funds are committed, partner farming communities and in-country personnel are vetted by the Organization's leadership, and the intended use of funds is documented in advance, including the purpose, amount, and expected outcomes of each expenditure or program activity. Funds are disbursed in controlled amounts tied to specific program activities rather than as unrestricted transfers. The Organization's in-country program team in Córdoba, Colombia, which operates under the direct supervision of the Chief Executive Officer, oversees day-to-day implementation and maintains regular communication with partner communities. Recipients and program staff are required to substantiate expenditures with supporting documentation, including receipts, invoices, photographs, and written or verbal activity reports, which are reviewed by the Chief Executive Officer. The Chief Executive Officer, who is bilingual in English and Spanish and maintains direct relationships with partner communities, conducts periodic site visits to partner farms to verify program implementation and the use of funds firsthand. Program expenditures and activities are reported to the Board of Directors, which reviews the Organization's foreign activities and financial results at regular board meetings . Any discrepancy between reported and documented use of funds would result in suspension of further disbursements pending resolution. Through these procedures - advance documentation of intended use, controlled disbursement, expenditure substantiation, direct in-country supervision, periodic site visits, and board-level review - the Organization monitors the use of its funds outside the United States to ensure they further its exempt purposes. Form 990, Part VI, Section B, Line 11b The Form 990 was prepared by the Organization's Chief Executive Officer using the records of the Organization, including its financial statements and program documentation, through an IRS-authorized e-file provider. Prior to filing, a complete copy of the Form 990 was provided to all members of the Board of Directors for review. Board members were given the opportunity to ask questions and propose corrections, and the return was filed only after this review was completed and any comments were addressed. The Board of Directors will follow this same review process for all future annual returns. Form 990, Part VI, Section B, Line 12c The Organization monitors and enforces compliance with its conflict of interest policy as follows. Each officer and director is required to complete an annual written disclosure statement identifying any actual or potential conflicts of interest, including any financial interest in, or family or business relationship with, any entity with which the Organization does business or proposes to do business, including its partner farms and vendors in Colombia. Disclosures are reviewed by the Board of Directors. In addition, at each board meeting, any member with an actual or potential conflict with respect to a matter under consideration is required to disclose the conflict, and the interested member recuses from deliberation and voting on that matter; such disclosures and recusals are recorded in the meeting minutes. Before the Organization enters into any transaction in which an officer or director has a financial interest, the disinterested members of the Board review the transaction to determine whether it is fair, reasonable, and in the Organization's best interest. Violations of the policy are addressed by the Board and may result in corrective action up to and including removal. Form 990, Part VI, Section C, Line 19 The Organization makes its governing documents, conflict of interest policy, and financial statements available to the public upon request. During the tax year, the Organization also made its financial information publicly available through its annual report, which includes the Organization's full-year financial results, program expenditures, and year-over-year comparisons, and which is distributed to donors, partners, and other stakeholders and published on the Organization's website. The Organization's annual information returns are additionally available to the public through the IRS Tax Exempt Organization Search and third-party repositories such as GuideStar/Candid. Project to Decolonize Coffee (PDC or the Organization) respectfully requests abatement of any penalty assessed under IRC § 6652(c)(1) for the late filing of its Form 990 for the tax year ending January 31, 2025, on the grounds of reasonable cause pursuant to IRC § 6652(c)(5) and Treas. Reg. § 301.6652-1(f). The Organization exercised ordinary business care and prudence but was nevertheless unable to file by the prescribed deadline for the reasons set forth below, and it acted promptly to correct the failure upon discovering it. 1. Background of the Organization. PDC is a § 501(c)(3) public charity founded in 2022 whose mission is to advance economic equity and rural development for smallholder coffee-farming communities, currently working with more than 60 partner farming communities in Córdoba, Colombia. The Organization is volunteer-led. Its Founder and Chief Executive Officer serves on an entirely uncompensated basis while maintaining separate full-time employment, and the Organization has no compensated administrative, accounting, or compliance staff. All governance, program, and administrative functions - including tax compliance - are performed by volunteers. Substantially all of the Organization's resources are directed to its charitable programs rather than administrative overhead. 2. Facts and Circumstances of the Late Filing. For each prior tax year, PDC satisfied its annual filing obligation by timely submitting Form 990-N (e-Postcard) through the IRS's online filing system. The 990-N is a brief electronic submission requiring only basic identifying information, and the Organization's volunteer leadership was able to complete it in a matter of minutes each year. Tax year 2024 was the first year in which the Organization's gross receipts required it to prepare and file the full Form 990 - a materially more complex return requiring detailed financial statements, balance sheet reporting, governance and policy disclosures, program service accomplishment narratives, and accompanying schedules that the Organization had never before been required to assemble. The Organization's volunteer leadership, having no formal training in exempt-organization tax compliance and no paid preparer engaged at the time, did not correctly understand the filing deadline applicable to the full Form 990 or the procedure for obtaining an automatic extension via Form 8868. Because the annual filing process had in every prior year been a simple same-day online submission, leadership did not appreciate that the transition to the full Form 990 required a fundamentally different preparation timeline and deadline management. This misunderstanding was not the product of neglect or disregard of a known obligation; the Organization has consistently sought to comply with all IRS requirements and has timely filed all prior annual returns. 3. Ordinary Business Care and Prudence. Notwithstanding the failure, the Organization exercised the care that a reasonably prudent volunteer-run charity of its size would exercise. It maintained complete and accurate financial records throughout 2024; it timely filed its Form 990-N in all prior years; and upon recognizing that its filing category had changed, it undertook to gather records and prepare the more complex return. The failure arose from an honest misapprehension of unfamiliar procedural requirements during the Organization's first transition from the e-Postcard to the full Form 990 - circumstances relevant to reasonable cause where, as here, the taxpayer's experience, knowledge, and education in tax matters are limited and the obligation at issue was new to the taxpayer (see IRM 20.1.1.3.2.2). Discovery and Prompt Corrective Action. The Organization discovered the missed deadline on or about July 01 2026, when the CEO and Founder was preparing to submit a Report for a Grant Proposal. Upon discovery, the Organization acted immediately: completed preparation of the return, and filed the Form 990 on July 07, 2026, 5 days after discovery. The interval between discovery and filing reflects only the time reasonably necessary to prepare a complete and accurate first-time full Form 990. 5. Compliance History. PDC has a clean compliance record. It timely filed its Form 990-N for tax years 2022 and 2023 and has no history of late filings, penalties, or other compliance failures. This is the Organization's first and only instance of noncompliance. 6. Remedial Measures. To ensure this failure is never repeated, the Organization has implemented the following measures: (a) it has established an account with an IRS-authorized e-file provider, Form 990 Online, through which all future annual returns will be prepared and electronically filed, providing structured deadline tracking and confirmation of timely submission; (b) it has established a compliance calendar, reviewed by the Board of Directors, that tracks all federal and state filing deadlines, including extension deadlines under Form 8868; (c) it has designated its Chief Executive Officer with express responsibility for monitoring annual filing obligations; and (d) filing status is now a standing item reviewed at board meetings in advance of each deadline. 7. Conclusion. The late filing resulted from an honest misunderstanding of newly applicable filing requirements by an all-volunteer charity transitioning for the first time from the Form 990-N e-Postcard to the full Form 990, with an otherwise unblemished compliance record - not from willful neglect. The Organization exercised ordinary business care and prudence, corrected the failure promptly upon discovery, and has adopted concrete safeguards against recurrence. Penalizing the Organization would divert charitable funds from smallholder farming communities without serving the deterrent purpose of § 6652(c). PDC therefore respectfully requests that any late-filing penalty be abated in full for reasonable cause.