PROVEN and TESTED: Step-by-step guide to Register Alumni Association with SEC Philippines

Registering and Incorporating your High School or College Alumni Association with the Securities and Exchanges Commission (SEC) is a straightforward process now especially that SEC already have an online process.

Here is how we registered our Non-stock and non-profit alumni organization with the SEC in less than a month process.

Prepare the personal information of your incorporators

Before going to the SEC website, you will the the following information of your incorporators prepared:

• Complete name such as their first name, middle name, last name
• Birth date
• Address, and 
• TIN number

Use the SEC eSPARC Online Company Registration

Go to the SEC website and look for the Online Services and select SEC eSPARC and click on the Regular Processing. Alumni associations are non stock corporation so you won't be able to avail of the OneSEC Processing. Remember the following important step:

Select the nearest SEC office from your area, you will need to bring the signed and printed copy later on to the SEC office that you selected during the online filing.

Fill up the information of the person who will process it and bring to the SEC office after approval like the screenshot below. Remember to input the email address that you have access because the system will be sending the OTP to that email address

Select this specific information under the Company Type Section if you are registering an Alumni Association because they will have the same information from ours

• Company type: Non-stock corporation
• Company sub-type: Either Corporation with less than 5 incorporators or corporation with more than five incorporators, depending on how many incorporators you will be listing, make sure all of them already have the TIN number from the BIR.
• Company classification: All Filipino
• Company subclass: Non stock/Non profit
• Major industry classification: Other Service Activities
• Industry classification group: Activities of other membership organization
• Input company name and select the suffix INC. or Inc.

Please note that if your company name have abbreviation, it is very important that you define the meaning of the abbreviation under the acronym meaning as based on my experience, they will reject your application if you do not provide it.

Input your desired company name and make sure it is unique

The company name will undergo verification with the SEC and if there is already a name exactly the same or somewhat the same with what you are registering, they will reject your application and will required you to change it. The process of rejection and changing the name will just delay your registration so better make it unique in the first filing.

Thoroughly define the Company purpose

This section is also important because SEC will be reviewing this part, if they see in your purpose some words that is not aligned with your company and industry classification, they will be rejecting your application and advised you to change your industry and refile again. You can refer to the following sample for alumni association purpose, this sample is the actual purpose of our organization and was approved by the SEC. We also based it from articles of incorporation we saw online. 

Proceed to fill up address and other company information.

Contribution and other details

• Total contribution in PHP: We put 100 for each incorporator so just multiply it by the number of incorporator or put whatever amount you like.
• For easier fiscal year, just tick the Calendar year to use January 1 and ends on 31st of December as your financial year.
• Term of existence: We selected perpetual
• Annual/Regular meeting: Any day of a specific month. We choose the month of our school's foundation day so that in the future we can just collaborate with the school to hold the alumni homecoming on the foundation day. 

Proceed to fill out your Treasurer's Information and Company Officers Information

You will need to input all officers here if they are also your incorporators. This is where you will be needing the information you have prepared such as their TIN number and their address.

Save and Proceed. The next section is optional so you can just click the Save and Proceed again

Draft Document such as Articles of Incorporation and By-Laws are generated

You can now download it but no need to print yet as this is still in draft mode. There is no QR code provided by the SEC yet on your document. Just ready the by laws and other files. This will be the same files you will be submitting once your application is approved.

The following documents can be downloaded:

• Application Summary Form
• Cover Sheet
• Articles of Incorporation - Non-stock Corporation
• Certificate of Authentication (Optional)
• By-laws

SEC Company Online Registrtation Fee total is 2,245 pesos

• By Laws: 1,000.00
• Registration of Corporation: 1,000.00
• Registration of Membership Book: 75.00
• Name Verification: 100.00
• Legal Research Fee (A0823): 20.00
• Documentary Stamp Tax: 30.00
• Miscellaneous Income - Handling Fee: 20.00

Click on the button Click Here to Reserve Company Name to submit the application

You will need to wait a maximum of 7 working days for your application to be Pre-Approved Status. Here are the important steps to remember after approval in order:

1. Wait for 7 days for your application to be Pre-Approved
2. Within 30 days upon pre-approval, you will need to print at least 2 copies of the Articles of Incorporation and By-Laws and have your incorporators signed it. Remember to make the signing date uniform even if the incorporators signed on different dates.
3. There is an attached page for Notary Public but that is not necessary as long as all incorporators signed the Certificate of Authentication. This is very helpful as some notary public will charge ridiculous amounts to notarized the company registration, we were asked to pay 20,000 pesos, 50% discounted so we need to pay 10,000 pesos for the notary, good thing that we read the SEC instructions, there is no need for notarization as long as everyone signed the Certificate of Authentication.
4. Upload the signed scanned Articles and By Laws to the SEC website. The link should be provided via the email notification sent to your email when they Pre-Approved it.
5. Wait for maximum 7 days again for the approval and review
6. Pay the fee online and print the receipt
7. Bring 4 copies of all the files to the SEC office after payment, you can produce 2 photo copy the original, and you have 2 original copies, a total of 4 hard copies you need to bring and put in a folder.
8. Go to the SEC office early so you can just wait for your documents, the Certificate of Incorporation will be given immediately.
9. You can then buy the Membership Book for 400 pesos and the process is done.