Journey of a non-profit - names/trademarks

I'm kind of stuck before I get started. Using resources on Google (God bless the Internet...how did anyone ever get anything done 10 years ago??) I find out that I now need to navigate through choosing a name. Sigh!

At this juncture I must admit that we reserved a name with the ACC already. There is a fee for this. I think paying the fee may have been a tish unwarranted but all of this happened before I volunteered.

Anyway, we have a name. Kids Klub Foundation. We will operate For the Benefit of Phoenix Children's' Hospital. But registering a name with the ACC isn't all that there is to it. After doing some research on Google, I actually go to the US Patent and Trademark website and use their program, TESS, to look for trademark infringements. Good news. There are 13 records for Kids Klub, or variations thereof, and they're all marked DEAD. Yeah!

This seems kind of remarkable to me...or providential. First our name is available with the ACC and there is nothing else similar to it registered in the State (how did that happen??) Now it looks like the Federal trade mark office is clear too.

NOLO suggests the following other places to check: Google, phone directories, industry resources, State trademark registries and County fictitious name databases.

The good news is that all of these resources should be easy for me to check right from my laptop. Besides, once you Google something, isn't everything else pretty irrelevant?

Gulp. I Google "kids klub+phoenix" and "kids klub+arizona" and find three potential conflicts. One is a family owned daycare in Coolidge. The good news is that the legal test surrounding name conflicts appears to be consumer confusion. I don't think that consumers who want to donate to our organization are going to confuse us with a family owned daycare.

On the other hand, we have a boys and girls club for inner city kids that meets weekly from September to June. Hmmm. This may be a problem. Then there is the Kids Klub attached to LA Fitness. Are "they" going to care? Big corporation in several states. They might. Last, but certainly not least, is a program associated with the Laveen school district.

Finally, without leaving the comfort of my couch, I can check http://www.dexonline.com/ for telephone listings and http://www.godaddy.com/ for a domain name.

Dex tells me that only the aforementioned day care is listed in the phone book. I check with http://www.godaddy.com/ and am momentarily bummed to see that the name has been taken only to find out that it is by us. WE ARE AWESOME. Thank you, Lisa, for thinking of this. Whew!

I think we're pretty much ready to go. More reading on the subject tonight and I feel comfortable that 1) I'll have a good report for my fellow Board members on Wednesday and 2) we'll be filed in time for our kick-off dinner in August.