By NEO Law Group
An engaged board can be one of the most important organizational assets of a nonprofit. But nonprofit boards are often underutilized and are not always effective in significantly advancing an organization’s mission. Educating boards and executives about their legal duties, practical steps to take to effectively meet those duties, and best practices in mitigating exposure to organizational and personal liability/harm is key to establishing board engagement and effectiveness.
A board member of a charitable nonprofit organization may find themselves in an awkward position where the board is voting on a matter in which the board member has a conflict of interest. Perhaps the matter has to do with contracting the board member or their company, paying the...
This post follows up on our previously published post Nonprofit Law 101 for Journalists and is intended to provide additional information to journalists and news organizations about federal tax laws applicable to 501(c)(3) organizations and common state corporate and charitable trust laws applicable to charitable nonprofits. The brief answers...
A nonprofit corporation’s board composition is a critical part of its governance. And many nonprofits devote substantial resources (including time) to development of a skills and background matrix, recruitment, and orientation. But a great many nonprofits do not. Too often, board members are simply asked to think of good...
The following are some of the highlights from the 2022 Western Conference on Tax Exempt Organizations (WCTEO). After a two-year hiatus from in-person meetings, It was great seeing and speaking with new and old friends and colleagues practicing, teaching, and writing in the area of nonprofit and exempt organizations...
The ALI Restatement of the Law, Charitable Nonprofit Organizations (the “Restatement”) provides: “A fiduciary of a charity has a duty to: … ct in good faith and in a manner the fiduciary believes to be in the best interests of the charity in light of its purposes ….” The...
The 26th Annual Western Conference on Tax-Exempt Organizations (WCTEO), my #1 go-to conference every year for the past 17 years, will be held at the Omni Hotel in downtown Los Angeles on Thursday, December 1, and Friday, December 2. You can register for this in-person conference jointly hosted by...
Nonprofit leadership is old. Literally. In age and in thinking. And the world is changing faster than these leaders can respond or get ahead of in part because they lack diverse perspectives and aren’t prioritizing the engagement of younger generations. When I suggested the engagement of younger persons (my...
On July 28, 2022, the Nonprofit Quarterly presented an intriguing and highly insightful webinar, Changing the Subject: Boards As Social Movement Spaces. It featured Dr. Carmen Rojas, President and CEO of the Marguerite Casey Foundation, Makiyah Moody, Founder and President of Kairos & Heart LLC, and Jenifer Gager Holland,...
Multiple Vehicles for Individual Philanthropy Anyone can dream … but I’m not convinced this is necessarily a dream scenario. Aspiring to be a billionaire appears to come with difficult concessions, serious risks, and major changes to relationships and activities. But at first blush, it sounds cool to be able...
In 2021, Anne Wallestad, the widely respected former CEO of BoardSource, wrote one of the most important articles on nonprofit governance I’ve ever read, The Four Principles of Purpose-Driven Board Leadership (Stanford Social Innovation Review). We’ve previously written about the article’s proposed governance model here and here. The article emphasized that...