A common misconception among nonprofits is that they can’t lobby. In reality, this restriction applies only to private foundations, not public charities. Public charities are explicitly permitted to lobby so long as they adhere to limits.
Daily Dose of Nonprofit Law
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L3C – What’s All the Excitement About?
The L3C, or Low Profit Limited Liability Company, is a new legal entity that can be legally formed in six jurisdictions. The concept started in Vermont and is quickly catching on in other states across the U.S. including Illinois.
How is it different from an LLC?
The L3C’s primary purpose is to conduct activities that further a charitable or educational purpose. Earning a profit is its secondary purpose. Traditional corporate law requires that the owners’ interests are exclusively economic. This has been interpreted to mean that corporate directors have a duty to maximize profits for the company’s owners to the exclusion of virtually any other consideration. The statutory framework of the L3C turns the traditional view of the fiduciary duty to maximize the economic return for a company’s owners on its head. Instead, the L3C statutes require the managers to pursue the accomplishment of a charitable or educational purpose. They can earn a profit while pursuing their mission, but earning a profit can’t be a significant purpose of the company.
Three Reasons Better Contracts Can Help Nonprofits – by Lindsey Harris
From protecting your brand to purchasing the goods needed to deliver your mission, contracts are an essential part any nonprofit business. Without solid contracts–the kind you can understand and actually use to protect your organization from broken promises and even litigation–meeting your mission can be an uphill battle. If you’re tired of having the same arguments with vendors and service providers or if you’re unsure of how to protect your brand, here are a few reasons why you should add “getting good contracts in place” to the top of your to-do list:
Small is Beautiful – Economics as if People Mattered
Fritz Schumacher published “Small is Beautiful – Economics as if People Mattered” in 1973. According to The Times Literary Supplement, it is among the 100 most influential books published since World War II and rightfully so.
For the last 60 years or so our way of life has been based on the premise that so long as there is demand there will always be supply. Schumacher wisely challenges these assumptions when he writes that sustainability is an impossibility when we are, “assuming all the time that a man who consumes more is ‘better off’ than a man who consumes less”, in an environment with finite resources.
E. F. Schumacher is clear about what economics can do and what it can’t do. Mainstream economists divide humans into producers and consumers. As consumers, consuming more will always be in our self-interest. As producers, efficiency is to be desired above all else. This breaks down, Schumacher says, as soon as we realize that producers and consumers are the same people with the same desires.
IRS’ 2009-2010 Priority Guidance Plan Items Impacting Tax-exempt Organizations
The joint Department of Treasury/Internal Revenue Service priority guidance plan for 2009-2010 contains the following items of interest to tax-exempt organizations:Revenue procedure to provide terms for hosts of Cyber Assistant software (used to generate Form 1023 exemption applications eligible for reduced user fee).
Nonprofit Law Jargon Buster – Private Inurement v. Private Benefit
The private inurement rule and private benefit rules exist to ensure that charitable assets are preserved for the benefit of the public and not diverted to private use. This is a fundamental concept that distinguishes tax-exempt organizations from for-profits.
The rules originate in the language of Code Section 501(c)(3). Code Section 501(c)(3) contains the specific requirement that:
[N]o part of the net earnings of [the exempt organization] inures to the benefit of any private shareholder or individual . . . .
In addition, under the regulations, an organization is not treated as organized and operated for exclusively exempt purposes “unless it serves a public rather than a private interest,” Based on this provision, tax exempt status is not available to any organization if its net earnings inure to the benefit of private individuals “in whole or in part.”
In practice, the law distinguishes between different degrees of inurement depending upon who is being benefitted. The two types of inurement are referred to as “private inurement” and “public benefit.”
The Long Arm of Charitable Solicitation Law
Thirty-eight U.S. states as well as the District of Columbia and many local jurisdictions require some type of registration for charities trying to solicit funds. These laws create a patchwork of largely inconsistent laws that nonprofits must contend with. To add to the confusion, the jurisdictions that require registration have different definitions and standards regarding who must register, which documents are required, whether nonprofits must renew their registrations, and which government agencies process the registrations.
Collaboration Case Study – Failed Merger
Sometimes no good deed goes unpunished. In this case, the board and staff of both nonprofits did a great job of putting their mission and beneficiaries first, only to be ambushed by their lack of stakeholder communication and buy-in.
Collaboration Case Study – Acquisition Converted to Management Agreement
Often, in an effort to save money, clients come to their attorneys with a plan and simply ask them to “draft X.” Frequently, X isn’t the most appropriate solution. This case was one of those. The deal started out as an acquisition with the lawyer (me!) being kept at arm’s length when in fact more involvment early on would have quickly identified that this program was not a candidate for an acquisition, but rather a simple management arrangement.
Collaboration Case Study – Acquisition of Failing Organization
Sometimes collaborations do not go smoothly. This post summarizes some of the pitfalls and lessons learned when a nonprofit tried to acquire a struggling nonprofit for all the right reasons, but the effort ended up being more trouble than it was worth.
Collaboration Case Study – Successful Merger
Case study of successes, disappointments and lessons learned from a successful merger of two human service organizations.
Nonprofit Law Jargon Buster – 501(c)(3) Organizations and the Commerciality Doctrine
The well-meaning have been advising exempt organizations to “operate like a business” for years. If the organization is a Section 501(c)(3) organization, operating too much like a business can cost it its tax-exempt status due to the “Commerciality Doctrine.” Practically, the issue of commerciality usually arises when a tax-exempt organization engages in any endeavor for which a clear for-profit counterpart exists in the marketplace. Typical examples include publishing, consulting and sales of arts and crafts. Today, the Commerciality Doctrine is a threat to the increasingly popular movement toward social enterprises. Those that choose to organize as Section 501(c)(3) organizations should only do so after a thorough review of the Commerciality Doctrine.
Ripples from the Zambezi – Economic Development from the Bottom Up
In Ripples from Zambezi, the author, Ernesto Sirolli, turns the top down model of grand economic development on its head. Instead, his focus is on nurturing the passion and creativity of individuals.
The title comes from Sirolli’s early experiments in economic development in rural Africa, where he worked as a foreign aid worker for the Italian government. The beginning of the book details his experiences in Africa and the ideas that those failed experiments planted in his mind.
From that experience, he learned firsthand the damage traditional top down development models could do and made it his life’s work to find a better way to build local economies. He later discovered that the ideas that germinated in Africa applied to Western economies, too.
Sirolli’s approach builds on the theories of E.F. Schumacher, A.H. Maslow, Carl Rogers and others. The fundamental concepts underpinning Sirolli’s work include:
- A belief in the intrinsic goodness of human nature.
- If people don’t ask for help, leave them alone.
- There is no good or bad technology to carry out a task – only an appropriate or inappropriate one. Something big, modern, and expensive is not necessarily best; it all depends on the circumstances.
Top 10 Smart Moves Great Nonprofit CEOs Make (From a Lawyer’s Perspective)
In addition to the governance and tax issues we deal with on a daily basis, there are a number of governance and legal distractions we tend to see repeated over and over again in the nonprofit community. The following list of smart moves are traits that CEOs of clients who successfully avoid these distractions tend [...]
Top 15 Non-profit Board Governance Mistakes (From a Legal Perspective)
This list was started as the inaugural post to CharityLawyer Blog. The post struck a nerve, was mentioned by the Chronicle of Philanthropy, the Nonprofit Quarterly, and numerous bloggers and twitter users. San Francisco tax-exempt organizations lawyer and publisher of the Nonprofit Law Blog, Gene Takagi, reviewed the list and added five more governance mistakes [...]
In Honor of the Weekend – Recommended Foreign Film List
In honor of the weekend, I thought I would post a list of foreign films of the last few years recommended to me by my friend Claudia Work. Claudia is a fellow lawyer and an organizer of the Scottsdale International Film Festival, so she knows what she’s talking about. The festival is October 2-6. Hope [...]
IRS Issues Guidelines for Processing Exemption Applications
The I.R.S. has made the guidelines it provides to its exempt organization determination specialists for processing tax exemption applications publicly available.
