Organizations which operate a school1 even if they are not required to file Form 990 or Form 990 E-Z must annually publish a public notice of non-discrimination in a newspaper of general circulation and file “Form 5578- Annual Certification of Racial Non-Discrimination” with the Internal Revenue Service.
The suggested language for such notice is as follows:
The (name) school admits students of any race, color, national, and ethnic origin to all the rights, privileges, programs, and activities generally accorded or made available to students at the school. It does not discriminate on the basis of race, color, national and ethnic origin in administration of its educational policies, admissions policies, scholarship and loan programs, and athletic and other school-administered programs.2
In lieu of publication, the IRS has provided an additional method for the school to satisfy the publicity requirement by publicizing its racially non-discriminatory policy on its primary publicly accessible home page at all times during the taxable year in a manner reasonably expected to be noticed by visitors to the home page.
Form 5578 must be filed by May 15th of every calendar year (or the equivalent date in its fiscal year.). Since these organization are generally not required to file Form 990 or Form 990-EZ, no time extension for filing is provided.3
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1The definition of School is quite broad. It includes colleges, universities and pre-schools where the operations are separate legal entities or are an activity of a religious organization.
2Note that discrimination on the basis of religion, religious belief or gender are permitted to religious organizations.
3An authorized officer of a central organization may file the form to certify the schools operated by subordinate organizations, if the central organization has enough control over the schools listed on the form to ensure that the schools maintain a racially non-discriminatory policy.