We now mark the third anniversary of the start of the COVID-19 pandemic. Among the few silver linings of this catastrophe for the philanthropy community has been the flexibility of government and funders to clear the path for emergency money and other aid. In almost the blink of an eye, many items on the nonprofit sector’s long-time wish list were put into place with relative ease. Whether it be the long sought-after loosening of grant practices and procedures, the adoption of general operating support and multi-year grant packages, or the willingness to share power and decision-making more fu ..read more

The world’s aid organizations face enormous challenges. Among the most difficult in recent years has been coping with the complex sanctions regimes, imposed by the United Nations and its member states, to thwart financing and other support of terrorists groups and activities. “Whilst sanctions are not intended to have adverse humanitarian consequences for civilian populations, aid agencies have argued for years that they do just this….” according to a London aid expert. So it was big news a few months ago when the United Nations Security Council, on December 9, 2022, “adopted a cross-cutting e ..read more

For years, reform of the state’s grantmaking policies and procedures has been high on the wish list of California’s nonprofit community. The stage is now set for action in the California Legislature on major legislation including “a package of eight new bills” designed to do just that. The effort in the current legislative session springs from a collaboration of the California Association of Nonprofits (CalNonprofits) and an informal group calling itself the California Nonprofit Contracting Coalition. Last fall, they wrote an 8-page joint letter to Governor Gavin Newsom and all of the state’s ..read more

One in four nonprofits worldwide have experienced a cyber attack: email phishing, website hacking, ransomware, social media attacks, or a similar intrusion. That’s according to the just-released 2023 Nonprofit Tech for Good Report. There is a widespread and persistent misconception that nonprofits, especially smaller ones, hold little interest as potential targets to cyber criminals. But this risk is real and has been growing year by year. The hackers have become increasingly sophisticated in circumventing counter measures. And during the pandemic, the danger grew exponentially, as the chaos a ..read more

“It is one of the ideas with the greatest currency in philanthropy right now: More funders need to make large, unrestricted grants, and then trust nonprofits to use them well.” Earlier this month, there was “stunning” news from the San Diego Foundation about a mountain of money that landed on its doorstep just a few weeks earlier. A $100- million bequest from someone they had “never cultivated” was suddenly entrusted to its care and judgment. The area’s largest regional community foundation announced “… a historic, transformative unrestricted $100 million cash gift from the estate of a local e ..read more

“Why haven’t claims about the ‘theft, looting, and forced sale of hundreds of thousands of artworks’ long ago been barred by a statute of limitations or other time-related defense?” That’s how we ended Part One (February 2) of the latest episode of our “Charities in the Courtroom” series. It focuses on a new lawsuit filed on January 20, 2023, in a New York court: Thomas A. Bennigson et al. v. The Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation. The period from 1933 through 1945 has been called the “…greatest displacement of art in human history.” The sheer number of items lost by the legal owners amid persec ..read more

We have a long-running series here on the FPLG blog called Charities in the Courtroom. One of our aims is pushing back against the widespread misconception that the nation’s nonprofit organizations need be concerned and know only about federal tax-exemption law. To that end, we select (for this special series as well as for stand-alone blog posts) real-world examples that showcase the broad range of legal actions that are brought by the nation’s 501(c)(3)s or against them. America’s art museums, for instance, are certainly no strangers at their local courthouses. They regularly litigate many r ..read more

“There are a million and one reasons why charities — 501(c)(3) organizations specifically — don’t lobby,” according to an article yesterday in The NonProfit Times. See Local Lobbying Is Permitted And Financially Effective (January 26, 2023). But this is an unnecessarily missed opportunity to achieve these nonprofits’ charitable purposes in a legally permissible way. To illustrate how valuable lobbying at the local level can be, the NPT writers describe the recent success of San Diego-based Serving Seniors in getting help right now for low-income seniors on the brink of losing a place to l ..read more

Sadly, you don’t have to look very hard to find examples of illegal, improper, and unethical behavior in the nonprofit sector. There’s no need to create outrageous hypotheticals as instructional aids or “don’t do this” tutorials. There are more than enough true stories of wrongdoing so brazen and obvious that they can fairly be described as daring charity regulators to come after the perpetrators. And government offices like the Charitable Trusts section of the California Attorney General’s office are filled to the brim with them. Earlier Examples In blog posts of years past, we’ve selected a ..read more

It’s budget season again in California. Ordinarily, that would conjure up images of “officials and legislators perform[ing] the thankless task of divvying up far less revenue than needed…;  snooze fests of reviewing minutiae interrupted by periodic flare-ups of partisan temper tantrums.” But it’s different here in the Golden State. First, it’s a constitutionally mandated, several months’ long, high-stakes dance involving the governor and both chambers of the legislature. It starts each January 10th, when the chief executive issues a proposed budget for the next fiscal year beginning July ..read more