Highlights from 2020 Nonprofit Policy Conferences

A few major policy-oriented conferences followed the November elections. Here are some highlights from the sessions I had an opportunity to attend. Council on Foundations Public Policy Summit Unpacking the election. You can find some of speaker Charlie Cook’s talking points in these articles available on the Cook Political Report: Lots of Turnout, Little Ticket […]

Bernholz: Digital Civil Society and Democracy

Lucy Bernholz, Director of the Digital Civil Society Lab at Stanford University’s Center on Philanthropy and Civil Society, is the expert you need to listen to on matters of digital technology, the nonprofit sector and broader civil society, and democracy. I was fortunate enough to attend two of her presentations last week – first, at […]

Nonprofit Strategic Governance: Guest Lecture 2020

Earlier this week, I had the privilege of guest lecturing for Professor Louise Carroll‘s Nonprofit Strategic Governance class at the University of San Francisco. As a former graduate and adjunct faculty member of the Master of Nonprofit Administration (MNA) program, which may have been the first in the country, I’m always honored by an invitation […]

Charities: Prudent Investment Laws

Charitable nonprofits organizations must comply with state prudent investment laws that apply to their investment assets. In California, as is the case in 49 of the 50 states, the Uniform Prudent Management of Institutional Funds Act (UPMIFA) sets the rules. Note that there may be some (mostly minor) variation among state laws, but we’ll specifically […]

Grants to Individuals and Businesses – Part Four

Generally, 501(c)(3) organizations can make grants to individuals and to businesses if such grants are made in furtherance of their 501(c)(3) tax-exempt purposes and are not expended in a manner inconsistent with 501(c)(3). In Part One of this series, we focused on mission-consistency, charitable class, and prohibited private benefits. In Part Two, we looked more specifically at a […]

Grants to Individuals and Businesses – Part One

Many charities and foundations have sought to make grants to individuals and grants to businesses that have been severely impacted by the COVID-19 crisis. With close to 2.3 million confirmed cases of COVID-19 and about 45 million persons claiming unemployment in the U.S. over the past few months, the need is certainly there. But there […]

WCTEO 2019 Highlights

The following are some of the highlights from Day One of the WCTEO 2019. Washington Update Sunita Lough (IRS, Deputy Commissioner for Services and Enforcement and former commissioner of the Tax Exempt and Government Entities division) discussed the IRS’s shift to enforcement with better data analytics (to select the “right” cases). As an example, she […]

New Edition of Seminal Book on Fiscal Sponsorship

Earlier this month, at the American Bar Association Fall Tax Meeting, the San Francisco Study Center released the 3rd edition of Fiscal Sponsorship: Six Ways to Do It Right, authored by Greg Colvin and Stephanie Petit. This is a complete revision of the seminal book on relationships it coined fiscal sponsorship and should be available […]

Lawyers as Social Innovators: Guest Lecture 2019

Earlier this week, I had the privilege of guest lecturing to Scott Curran‘s  Lawyers as Social Innovators class at Chicago-Kent College of Law at the Illinois Institute of Technology. The following is an excerpt of my notes for the class: Nonprofit Scandals Heard any juicy stories this summer? MIT Media Lab and Jeffrey Epstein, Varsity Blues and […]