By NEO Law Group
A few weeks ago, the Board of Directors of Pearson Charitable Foundation, the Section 501(c)(3) organization affiliated with the educational publishing company Pearson PLC, announced that it will be closing the Foundation at the end of the year after a decade of operations. According to the Foundation’s website, the decision to close the Foundation comes […]
An organization devoted to the promotion of art may qualify for tax exemption under Section 501(c)(3) of the Internal Revenue Code (the “Code”) by emphasizing its educational exempt purpose and goal of educating the public about the arts. The difficult part of determining whether the organization would be exempt under 501(c)(3) is deciphering whether it serves […]
On Friday, I had the privilege of attending the Stronger Together conference, organized by Nonprofits Insurance Alliance Group (NIAC), CompassPoint, and CalNonprofits. The sessions aimed to empower nonprofit leaders, with topics such as the overhead challenge, the economics of the nonprofit sector, legal issues for nonprofits, and other ideas for innovation and collaboration within the […]
Yesterday, I had the honor of participating on a panel discussing fiscal sponsorship at the 2014 Grantmakers in the Arts 2014 Conference in Houston. Frances Phillips (Walter and Elise Haas Fund), Melanie Beene (consultant, former CEO of Community Initiatives), and Ian David Moss (Fractured Atlas) were my co-panelists, and we were joined by a very vocal group […]
Advocacy is a broad term that covers a range of activities that seek to bring about change. One form of advocacy is lobbying, defined as activities that attempt to influence specific legislation. Charities are permitted to engage in lobbying activities, so long as those activities represent an “insubstantial” part of their overall activities. Another form […]
Advocacy is a powerful tool underutilized by public charities to advance their mission. And although the terms advocacy and lobbying are often used interchangeably, as lobbying is a form of advocacy, there are federal law limitations related to lobbying activities that do not extend to non-lobbying advocacy activities. Lobbying is defined as activities that attempt […]
The IRS recently proposed Form 1023-EZ, a simplified version of Form 1023 for recognition of federal exemption under 501(c)(3) of the Internal Revenue Code. The new form converts Form 1023’s 25-pages into merely 3, creating a less burdensome exemption process for certain qualifying organizations. The goal of the streamlined application is to help small charities […]
I started the past week at the BoardSource Leadership Forum and ended it at the CalNonprofits Convention. And Monday was Veterans Day. Have a listen to Lee Greenwood's God Bless the U.S.A. while perusing this week's tweets: on nonprofits, philanthropy, governance and social enterprises: National Council of Nonprofits: Bad actors may divert assets from missions. […]
A San Francisco group, United Libations, recently announced that it was looking to create the city’s first nonprofit bar. It sounds like such a great idea – who wouldn’t want a portion of the price of their cocktail going to a charitable cause? But before you rush out to form a nonprofit bar yourself, there […]
On June 17, 2013, the CEOs of GuideStar, Charity Navigator, and BBB Wise Giving Alliance signed a letter to the Donors of America denouncing the “overhead ratio” as a valid indicator of nonprofit performance. Leading commentators applauded the move even while some noted that charity ratings organizations, like some of the signatories to the […]