Archive for the ‘Finances’ Category

« Older Entries

Dear Nonprofiteer, If I want higher wages will you tell me what to do?*

April 17, 2012

Dear Nonprofiteer:

I work at a major environmental NGO.   I am well compensated, but I can’t help but think my colleagues and others in the sector (I did not always used to be so well compensated) would benefit from Unionization.

What unions exist for non-profit employees? How could we make more?

Signed, In Solidarity

Dear Solidarity:

It does you credit that you remain concerned about the poorly-paid even after you’ve left their number.  But the question you raise can only be answered with a frustrating, “It depends.”

Individual circumstances dictate whether any particular nonprofit would benefit from a union.  Certainly nonprofit employees are a resource for unions looking to grow—our institutions are rooted in the community and therefore unlikely to pick up and move to Dixie (or China) when the union comes to call.  But whether unions are a resource for nonprofit employees looking to grow is a separate question.

If the morale at an agency is poor, and a significant component of that morale is poor wages, hours, benefits and working conditions, then talking union only makes sense.  But if morale is poor because the Executive Director is a dingbat, then unionizing is pretty much beside the point.  And if morale at an agency is high, then there’s unlikely to be much support for the idea of bringing in a third party to mediate between the working and the worked-for—particularly as the organizing process can be so disruptive and embittering.  That’s not a rap on the unions: you’re going to have disruption in any context requiring the taking of sides, whether the subject is program expansion or relocation or mission creep—or union representation.

The issue is certainly not that there aren’t enough unions organizing in the sector, though they may not be organizing enough.  The Service Employees International Union, the American Federation of Teachers, the Association of Federal, State, County and Municipal Employees and even the Teamsters have taken their turns organizing nonprofits, often following jobs government agencies have chosen to outsource.  (See the Nonprofiteer’s earlier discussion of the “progress” from government employees [unionized] to nonprofit employees [non-union, at least at first] to faith-based employees [presumably too holy to strike].)  So we don’t need to “make more” unions; we need to encourage more nonprofits to adopt either significant improvements to compensation, benefits and work rules or a relationship with a union designed to provide those significant improvements.

If you can get from a nonprofit Board of Directors the improvement in wages and working conditions you want, there’s no need to go union.  But those Boards of Directors are apt to be resistant to your demands, because they regard it as their fiduciary duty to direct money to programs rather than to the salaries of the people who run those programs.  (If this strikes you as a distinction without a difference, you’re completely correct—but you’re also obviously unfamiliar with the rhetoric of charities and their funders.)  Or they might resist your demands just because they’re lazy and don’t want to raise money.

In either case of resistance, having a union organizer in your back pocket (or at least on speed dial) may be what’s necessary to get the Board’s genuine attention.  Just as the prospect of being hanged concentrates a man’s mind wonderfully, so the prospect of being unionized concentrates the minds of charity Boards.

(A rigorous research paper on the subject reported that nonprofit organizing drives succeed more often than those at for-profits.  But does that mean that nonprofit employees’ sense of social justice makes them/us more receptive to unions, or just that unions don’t bother to organize at nonprofits til they can see it’s going to be a slam-dunk?)

The Nonprofiteer always snorts when she hears employers talk about how it would be a shame to insert a stranger between them and their employees, who are just like family.  Especially at nonprofits, if a workplace is like a family, it’s generally like the family in Long Day’s Journey Into Night.  But small and medium-sized nonprofits do have a uniquely porous relationship between management and labor, as well as between management and governance; and a union, or even a failed organizing drive, will disrupt that once and for all.

Thus, unions make the most sense at the largest nonprofits (the hospitals and universities), which are practically indistinguishable from for-profits.  At smaller agencies they may make sense, but only if employees are already up in arms, and only if there’s blood left in the turnip.

Oh, and only if fresh employees will be hard to find.  It’s illegal to fire someone for union organizing but you can be made uncomfortable enough to quit, and that may be a higher price than you’re willing to pay to make sure your fellows can send their children to college.  Or perhaps not.

Solidarity forever!

———————

See Talkin’ Union

Tags:, , , , , , , , ,
Posted in Boards of Directors, Executive Directors, Finances, Management Advice Day tip, Nonprofit management, Nonprofits--General, Personnel Issues | Leave a Comment »

Dear Nonprofiteer, Whose money is too filthy to take, and why?

April 6, 2012

Dear Nonprofiteer:

I’d be interested in your take on the Tucker Max/Planned Parenthood issue. That whole issue, which I’m sure you’ve touched on before, of NPOs making tough decisions about accepting donations is one that constantly comes up.

Signed, Hoping to Keep Clean Hands and Full Coffers

Dear Hoping:

So Tucker Max (a blogger the Nonprofiteer had never heard of until this letter) tries to give half a million dollars to Planned Parenthood, which has just lost funding from the Komen Foundation and is at risk of losing Federal funding, and PP turns the money down.

Under ordinary circumstances the Nonprofiteer would say, “WTF? So he’s a sexist piece of dog excrement! So he’s trying to whitewash his reputation! Why shouldn’t we help impoverish sexists by accepting their contributions? Why shouldn’t they pay restitution for their crimes and sins?”

But these aren’t ordinary circumstances, because the donor describes himself as follows:

My name is Tucker Max, and I am an asshole. I get excessively drunk at inappropriate times, disregard social norms, indulge every whim, ignore the consequences of my actions . . . sleep with more women than is safe or reasonable, and just generally act like a raging dickhead.

Years of public education about what Planned Parenthood actually does would go right down the drain if it permitted itself to be publicly tied to an advocate of reckless, consequence-free sex. The Republicans have clearly hit a responsive chord when they strive to outdo each other in demonizing PP, and that chord is that the very existence of Planned Parenthood represents an utter breakdown of sexual morals. Never mind that this isn’t true: Tucker Max actually DOES represent an utter breakdown of sexual morals, and Planned Parenthood can’t afford to be associated with him.

In general, though, the Nonprofiteer remains in favor of taking money from bad people: it’s not possible to eradicate them, and they ought to be good for something. If she still shudders (as she does) at entering the David H. Koch Theatre at Lincoln Center, she consoles herself that it represents millions of dollars the self-same Koch no longer has available to give to the Tea Party.

It’s fine if donating makes an evil donor look good. Just be sure that accepting doesn’t make you look bad.

Posted in Advocacy, Advocacy groups, Coverage of nonprofits, Current Affairs, Finances, Fundraising, Health care, Marketing, Mission, Nonprofit management, Nonprofits--General, Private Philanthropy, Relations with funders, Women's Issues | 5 Comments »

Dear Nonprofiteer, Who’s really to blame for bogus job descriptions and pathetic salaries?

April 5, 2012

Dear Nonprofiteer,

I was hoping you might be willing to follow up on your last post on your blog because I felt it was incredibly powerful. I hope it is being reblogged and reposted as much as it should.

What does a professional do when they see a job that sounds amazing but the salary is lowballed? Do you address it in a cover letter, if they gave an insultingly low number outright in the job description? What about when it sounds great and you get an interview and they make an offer and it is $15K less than what’s in line with the position? I know anyone can just simply decline, which I’ve done myself.

But I feel like leaders in the sector have a duty to say something, to help move towards realigning expectations of founders and staff who offer insultingly low pay, especially for organizations that offer critical services that honestly won’t select themselves out of the sector. What are your thoughts on this?

It doesn’t seem like we’re at a transparency point in the sector where we can say, “If you want the best candidate for the position you have to pay competitive wages, if you want the fourth or fifth best or most desperate candidate, you can get away with what you’re offering.”

Of course, I feel particularly stung after two painful lowball offers in the past four months that I’ve had to turn down, but that’s sort of beside the point. I never realized that this was such a pervasive problem. It seems especially bad in Chicago, for whatever reason, compared with my compatriots in DC, SF, and Seattle.

Sincerely, Looking at the Bigger Picture

Dear Looking,

The Nonprofiteer understands there to be two parts to your question.  The first is, “What is a professional to do when faced with an unacceptably low salary offer?”   The answer to this is that you have nothing to lose (but your chains) by responding—in person or in writing—”I realize you may not be as familiar with the nonprofit job market as I am, given that your agency only looks for an Executive Director once every many years; but the amount you’re offering isn’t suitable to the position you’ve described.  The range is more like [and then cite the minimum you'd accept and the maximum you can really envision].”  There are only two possible answers to this: “Well, we don’t have that kind of money and don’t intend to get it,” in which case you know you’re dealing with a Board of Directors you wouldn’t be able to manage anyway; or “Oh, really?  Well, is there any way we can make this work?” in which case you’re suddenly negotiating.

There’s no need to say, or even think, that an offer is insulting: if you can’t assume good faith on the part of agencies, at least recall that they derive no benefit from insulting prospective employees.  Though it feels otherwise, no one is commenting on your qualifications by offering you a low salary.  They’re simply hoping they can get someone great for cheap, which if you think about it is the entire nonprofit model.  So consider yourself someone whose first task is to educate your prospective employer about how things ought to work.  Again, if the employer is uninterested in that education, good riddance to bad rubbish; whereas if it’s interested, you may actually be able to get to ‘yes.’

But your second question is of much broader application: What would it take for the sector to begin to offer wages that are appropriate to the skill level being sought?  And the answer to that, as to most questions about how to fix nonprofits, is ‘more money and more understanding from big institutional funders.’  As long as foundations and social venture capitalists pound the drum for a strict ceiling on administrative expenses, nonprofits will continue to skimp on paying for talent.  The people with money are the thought leaders in the sector (isn’t that always the way?), and they’ve made it acceptable to answer reasonable salary demands with the enraging, “Well, no one goes into nonprofit work to get rich.”

Take a look at Watkins Uiberall’s excellent comparative compensation survey from 2010.  Though it’s from Tennessee and from two years ago, it will provide a basis for conversation about what’s appropriate for many jobs in the sector.  As data like these are spread (including by prospective employees), employers will come to understand the way things really work, vs. their fantasy of hiring President Obama for a community organizer’s stipend.

Nonprofit Boards, meanwhile, should consider the non-trivial possibility that shorting their employees on salary and benefits will ultimately lead to a unionization drive.  The Nonprofiteer is a union girl herself, but most Boards of Directors and nonprofit managers don’t agree.  So somewhere in any conversation about salaries one might gently slide in the question, “If your pay scale is so low, how do you avoid the unions?”  You won’t get an answer but you’ll be providing food for thought, and the longer employers chew on it the less chintzy they’ll be.

Tags:, , , , , , , , , , ,
Posted in Executive Directors, Finances, Foundation Hall of Shame/Stupid Foundation Tricks, Nonprofit management, Nonprofits--General, Personnel Issues, Poverty, Succession planning | Leave a Comment »

Existing forever versus doing some good

March 28, 2012

An op-ed piece a few weeks ago in the Wall Street Journal (behind a paywall)  argued that donors should construct their foundations to spend down assets as rapidly as possible, lest the foundations end up supporting causes their donors would revile.  This familiar argument comes with a familiar whipping-boy: the Ford Foundation, whose enthusiasm for assisting the poor and marginalized was certainly not shared by its eponymous founder Henry.  The op-ed piece, like many of its kind, focuses on the question of donor intent, arguing that only a brief payout period can assure that the donor’s intent is served.

The Nonprofiteer has never cared particularly about the intent of dead donors.  First of all, they’re dead, and while death may not extinguish intent as a matter of law it certainly does as a matter of common sense.   Second, how much better off do we really think the world would be if Ford’s foundation had spent all its money on Ford’s enthusiasms, such as promoting publication of the scurrilous anti-Semitic tract The Learned Protocols of the Elders of Zion?   Third and most important, the  tax-free status of foundations is supposed to encourage philanthropy, not the accumulation of permanently idle tax-free money.

The Nonprofiteer has long argued that the minimum expenditure required of foundations is way too minimum, and that setting up a structure to give away 5% of income shouldn’t entitle a donor to a 100% tax shelter–whatever his/her intent.  Most likely that intent was to escape from taxation, without too much more thought than that.

So let’s think about the issue not from the standpoint of donor intent but from the standpoint of social good.  Which is more useful for a philanthropy: remaining around in perpetuity, to grapple with issues that may arise a generation or three from now, or spending down in the present and relatively short-term future on issues the donor understands and cares about and which in any case are currently urgent?  From the phrasing you can tell the Nonprofiteer’s position: spend it down.

Julius Rosenwald saw the wisdom of this approach when he created a program of fellowships for African-American artists for their professional development.  Rather than keep the fellowships around in perpetuity, he ordered that the principal be awarded completely within 5 years of his death.  As a result, virtually every mid-20th-Century African-American artist you’ve ever heard of received a Rosenwald Fellowship: Ralph Ellison and Romare Beardon and Katherine Dunham and Gordon Parks and many others.   The value of what Rosenwald did, giving artists enough money so they could work without fear or distraction, is literally incalculable.

But also as a result, virtually no one remembers Julius Rosenwald, or at least not his fellowship program.  So that presents the question: are we in the business of fostering greatness, or memorializing it?  Is remembering a donor as important as creating work through a donor’s generosity?  Again, to the Nonprofiteer the answer is self-evident.  She’d rather be grateful for Ralph Ellison than to Julius Rosenwald.

Look, here’s the deal: people will make money in every generation, and in every generation some people will make a lot of money.  If we tax them properly they’ll look for the opportunity to shelter their money in philanthropy.  Why shouldn’t we tax them so that they’re motivated to spend it philanthropically, too?  Like the proverbial Fifth Avenue bus, another chunk of  money will be along any minute.

Sure, there’s a risk of spending too rapidly and with insufficient research (or “due diligence,” as people are fond of saying when they want to pretend that the nonprofit sector is really just like a business).  But the greater risk is the situation in which we find ourselves now, where philanthropies give out amounts insufficient to make any significant change.  No, philanthropy isn’t supposed to be society’s primary source of support, but while people are busy starving government so they can drown it in the bathtub, private wealth can and should step into the breach.

Consider the contributions of the Gates Foundations to the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, TB and Malaria. Can anyone really argue it would be better to hold back on eradicating those diseases, in case there’s some bigger plague later on?  If there is, as AIDS itself demonstrates, we’ll mobilize and raise money for it.  Meanwhile, in case of every ailment, time is our enemy: the later we provide resources, the harder it will be for those resources to have impact.  Thus wasting money is a less significant risk than failing to spend enough to make a difference.

Two things need to happen: philanthropists themselves need to organize their giving so that it ends within a reasonable time after their death, and Congress needs to modify the tax code to require philanthropies to pay out more each year to retain their tax-favored status.  A 10% annual payout–double the current rate–may end up causing philanthropies to dip into principal, maybe even until they’re empty.  But remember the words of Citizen Kane as he contemplated the financial difficulties of his newspaper empire: ” I did lose a million dollars last year. I expect to lose a million dollars this year. I expect to lose a million dollars *next* year. You know, Mr. Thatcher, at the rate of a million dollars a year, I’ll have to close this place in… 60 years. “  Let’s take a Kane-like risk of running out of money.

One more story: Some time in the ’90s Joan Kroc stood up at a Ronald McDonald House benefit to announce her annual gift.  Rumor had it she was actually going to make a five-year pledge, and the Nonprofiteer’s table indulged in the parlor game of trying to figure out just how much that would be.   We figured the previous year’s gift ($5M) plus a little bump (so $6M) for each of 5 years, and settled on $30 million.  And then she rose to speak, a little woman holding a torn-off piece of yellow legal paper in her hand.  And she said, “I was going to make a 5-year gift, but then I thought: ‘The need is now.’  So tonight I’m giving $50 million to Ronald McDonald Children’s Charities.”  Everyone at the table fell back in her seat, literally knocked over by her generosity, and also by her insight: The need is now.

Aside from Ronald McDonald, Mrs. Kroc mostly supported causes her late husband disapproved of.  If only he’d given more in the present, he wouldn’t have had to contemplate a future in which his money went to places he despised.  So the donor’s intention and the sector’s need are in sync:

Spend it now.

Tags:, , , , , , , , , , ,
Posted in Benefit events, Endowment, Finances, Foundation Hall of Shame/Stupid Foundation Tricks, Health care, Mission, Nonprofit management, Nonprofits--General, Philanthropy and Taxation, Private Philanthropy, Relations with funders, Women's Issues | Leave a Comment »

Dear Nonprofiteer, Why do nonprofits ask for the moon?

March 23, 2012

Dear Nonprofiteer,

I am a nonprofit professional “in transition” otherwise known as job hunting.  In the course of my job search I have come across two  job postings that have left me incredulous and I was curious as to your opinion.
  1. An executive director position listed for $32K/year. Granted this was described as a half time gig but is there any such thing as a half time ED? Maybe it means you can take weekends off. The job description/requirements were just as detailed as any full time description.
  2. A director of development position for $20-25K.   Again this is listed as 3/4 time. It comes with a very detailed laundry list of expectations but again is this really a job that can be done well with less than full attention?

Something seems really off here. My gut (and review of their 990′s) tells me that these are marginal organizations to be avoided.  Do I seem unrealistically fussy in today’s job market?

Signed, Born At Night But Not Last Night

Dear Born:

You are not unrealistically fussy, especially when “today’s job market” in the nonprofit sector seems to include a number of jobs that are going begging for want of the right candidate.  And you’ve put your finger on why that should be the case: because the job descriptions (and presumably the jobs that accompany them) are a pile of unrealistic expectations held together with the glue of employer entitlement.  This glue is particularly thick in the nonprofit sector, where hiring managers presume that their poverty entitles them to your services for less than they’re worth.  But, as the workplace sign has it, Bad planning on your part doesn’t necessarily constitute an emergency on my part.

And you’ve identified a favorite gambit of those self-entitled managers/agencies: pretending that a full-time job can be done part-time because they know the proposed salary is an insult.  (For what it’s worth, the Nonprofiteer was paid $25K as an Executive Director of a small organization in 1987; if salaries haven’t increased 20% in the past 25 years, they should have!)  As you say, it is virtually impossible for anyone to be a part-time Executive Director, and the length of the list of responsibilities demonstrates that the agency knows this as well as you do.  You could do it simply by specifying the number of hours you’re prepared to work (e.g., 30), but sure as death and taxes would come a grant application deadline which must be met, and your self-imposed part-time-ness (part-time-itude?) would go out the window.

The Nonprofiteer just had occasion to help a client work on a job description for a part-time professional position. The original description had two problems.  First, it specified more than 40 hours’ worth of work for a 20-hour position.  Second, its qualifications included both items that couldn’t be expected from someone willing to work part-time for $20 an hour (such as a roster of contacts in high-profile media) and items that shouldn’t be expected from a professional (such as facility with word processing programs).  If you’re hiring a professional, don’t ask for secretarial skills.  And if you’re hiring a professional, be reasonable about how much professional service you can get for $20 an hour and/or 20 hours per week.

By contrast, another client has recently shifted its budgeting from “How much can we spend based on how much we raised last year?” to “How much do we need to raise to support what we need to do?”  Moreover, one of the things the agency realized it needed to do was steadily increase the salary of the Executive Director so that when the current martyr departs, the group will be in a position to offer a living wage to the next group of candidates.

(Consider, by the way, that the people offering such meager salaries are Board members who probably chafe at being asked to give $1000 a year.  They don’t hesitate, though, to ask you to forego $25,000 or so of income.  This is why the Nonprofiteer doesn’t advocate asking staff members to donate to their agencies: they’re already doing so at a level no other donor is likely to match.)

(Consider also that the sums offered make clear that the agencies are expecting women, and only women, to apply for these jobs.  No one would dare offer such a pittance to a man.  The nonprofit sector operated for years on the unwaged labor of women, but there’s no reason we have to continue to provide this subsidy.)

Thus, your incredulity at the nerve of some agencies is perfectly well-founded.  That won’t help you get a job with them: but hey, why would you want to?  You’re a star, and you’ll find a place that won’t also ask for the moon.*

————–

“Oh Jerry, don’t let’s ask for the moon. We have the stars.”–Bette Davis to Paul Henreid, Now Voyager

Tags:, , , , , , , , ,
Posted in Benefit events, Boards of Directors, Charity scandals, Current Affairs, Executive Directors, Finances, Nonprofit management, Nonprofits--General, Personnel Issues, Succession planning, Women's Issues | 3 Comments »

The Nonprofiteer has been wondering what to write about . . .

February 1, 2012

but she’d really have preferred not to have this as an inspiration.  There is no excuse for the decision of Susan G. Komen for the Cure, until now a respected source of information and funding in the fight against breast cancer, to defund Planned Parenthood‘s program of providing breast exams to poor women.

In fact, the decision doesn’t even make sense–unless you consider that a recent addition to the Board of Komen is an anti-choice ex-politician from Georgia.  As another commentator has wisely noted, Planned Parenthood will survive this latest injury–the Nonprofiteer’s determination to support the agency has just been redoubled, and probably her gift will be, too–but Komen may not.

Please join the Nonprofiteer in notifying Komen of your distress at its decision to let irrelevant politics endanger the lives and health of poor women, and of your decision to redirect to Planned Parenthood any support you may have been giving to Komen.

Tags:, , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
Posted in Advocacy, Advocacy groups, Boards of Directors, Current Affairs, Disease charities, Finances, Foundation Hall of Shame/Stupid Foundation Tricks, Fundraising, Health care, Mission, Nonprofits--General, Poverty, Private Philanthropy, Social Service Agencies, Women's Issues | 4 Comments »

The billionaire vs. the free riders

January 13, 2012

The Nonprofiteer’s readers might enjoy this account of a pissing match between Warren Buffett and Mitch McConnell.  The Senator from Kentucky has been urging the Sage of Omaha to make voluntary contributions to the Treasury if he felt he was undertaxed.  Buffett has now responded that he’ll match any such contributions made by Republican Senators.

This dialogue makes in a different form Milton Friedman’s point as recounted by the Nonprofiteer yesterday.  Voluntary contributions to reduce poverty (or do any of the other things we rely on the government to do) are insufficient, because everyone would be willing to pay his/her share only if s/he could be sure that everyone else would be willing to pay his/her share.  Otherwise, no dice.

Doubtless McConnell will ignore Buffett’s challenge and continue his nonsensical bluster about Buffett’s freedom to pay extra if he feels “guilty” about his low tax rate.  But the point isn’t, of course, how Buffett feels, or even what he does—it’s what everyone else does.  And if McConnell and his buddies don’t donate to the Treasury, then they are poster children for the free-rider problem—thereby proving Buffett right: philanthropy is not sufficient and taxation is necessary.

H/T the indispensable Rick Cohen at The Nonprofit Quarterly.

Tags:, , , , , , , ,
Posted in Coverage of nonprofits, Current Affairs, Finances, Government grants, Nonprofits--General, Philanthropy and Taxation, Poverty, Private Philanthropy | Leave a Comment »

Taxes vs. philanthropy: the view of a raving lefty

January 11, 2012

I am distressed by the sight of poverty; I am benefited by its alleviation; but I am benefited equally whether I or someone else pays for its alleviation; the benefits of other people’s charity therefore partly accrue to me.  To put it differently, we might all of us be willing to contribute to the relief of poverty, provided everyone else did.  We might not be willing to contribute the same amount without such assurance.

Therefore, this wild-eyed radical continues, the government must step in.  If poverty is to be alleviated, everyone must be taxed so that no one gets a free ride to the benefits of poverty eradication.

How appalling!  How socialistic!  Of course, what else could one expect from an ivory-tower academic complete with Nobel prize?

No, not that one (or even that one): Milton Friedman.

When the man said “There ain’t no such thing as a free lunch,” he meant it.

H/t Allen R. Sanderson.

Tags:, , , , , , , ,
Posted in Coverage of nonprofits, Finances, Nonprofit management, Nonprofits--General, Philanthropy and Taxation, Poverty, Private Philanthropy | 1 Comment »

At war with oneself over the charitable deduction

January 10, 2012

From an article in the New York Times whose date the Nonprofiteer neglected to notice:

“It’s admirable when people back their charitable impulses up with donations,” said Scott Klinger, tax policy director of the group Business for Shared Prosperity.  “But the tax code shouldn’t allow the wealthy the kind of loopholes that let them, essentially, force other taxpayers to underwrite donations to their pet causes.”

“The kind of loopholes . . . “  Is there some other kind?  That is, can we have the tax code encourage individual generosity without delegating to private individuals decisions about what constitutes the public good?  The Nonprofiteer doesn’t see how.  Either you have a tax subsidy—which means by definition that other taxpayers bear a bigger burden—or you don’t. 

Without the subsidy, current donors might give less but the government would have more to give out to public causes (health, education, welfare) now privately supported.  And perhaps without the subsidy, current donors would be replaced by those less-burdened other taxpayers in a burst of their own generosity.  And maybe this would mean fewer snow-globe museums and more attention to human services in the nonprofit sector.

Or maybe it would just mean a reduction in charity and an increase in the government’s resources, which could then be used on public education and public housing.  Or missiles and drones.

This is why the Nonprofiteer remains at war with herself over the charitable deduction.  She wants a thousand flowers to bloom.  She believes any free society requires a counter-balance to whatever the current government has decided about anything.  And she believes this counter-balance requires money.  The whole point of the nonprofit sector is that it permits people to identify and respond to their own needs in their own communities, producing a closer fit between service and community than is possible with centralized programs.

But she also believes that society-wide priorities should be funded society-wide, which means limiting the number of pots of money exempted from inclusion in the public fisc.  And she doesn’t want society-wide priorities to be determined by people who have so much money they can buy entire public school systems and experiment on them.

To quote the great Yul Brenner: Is a puzzlement.

Tags:, , , , , , , , ,
Posted in Finances, Government grants, Mission, Nonprofit management, Nonprofits--General, Philanthropy and Taxation, Private Philanthropy, Relations with funders, Social Service Agencies | Leave a Comment »

Dear Nonprofiteer, Does an alumni association chapter have to file tax returns?

January 5, 2012

Dear Nonprofiteer,

I am the president of my local alumni chapter for a large university located in another state. The National Alumni Association is a 501(c)(3) organization with by-laws that state it can create various chapters around the country.   When our local chapter was created, the founding president filed the paperwork for an EIN so we could open a checking account. That is all he did; we are not incorporated as a 501-anything.   When he filled out the EIN paperwork, for “type of entity,” he clicked the “other” box and wrote “social club” in the blank. Our little chapter brings in less than $10,000 per year. We then funnel most of that back to the university’s scholarship fund.

My question is: are we supposed to be paying federal income taxes? State of Illinois income taxes?

My university is being remarkably unhelpful.   They did definitively say that they strongly advise their chapters against incorporating as their own 501(c)(3).

I have done some research and seen that other universities structure their alumni associations so that the national association is a 501(c)(3) and the local chapters are 501(c)(4)s. The local chapters then file what is called a “IRS-990 postcard.” This seems a reasonable solution, but it also requires that my chapter incorporate as a 501(c)(4), and I am hesitant to do that without official word from my university. I have a fellow board member who is breathing down my neck, convinced we are breaking all kinds of laws.  What should I do?

Signed, Clueless in Chicago

Dear Clueless:

The Nonprofiteer knows even less about tax law than you do, so she turned to her Association of Consultants to Nonprofits colleague Kathryn Vanden Berk, whose nonprofit law practice makes the Internal Revenue Code her constant companion.  Kathryn characterized your question as “easy but in multiple parts,” and her answer appears below.  Many thanks to her for her guidance, and for demonstrating that the author of Good Counsel isn’t the only nonprofit lawyer the Nonprofiteer knows!

There are four ways to handle this.  (1) ask the national association to take you on as a fiscal agent, (2) ask the national to file as a group exemption so that each chapter may get its exemption from the central organization of the group; (3) incorporate and go through the exemption application; and (4) do nothing.

Of these, the easiest is to be sponsored by the national (or any other already-existing) 501(c)(3).  The exempt entity confers the local chapter with its exempt status automatically and no paperwork needs to be filed.  However, the fiscal agent must report to the IRS on what happens within the local chapter.

The easiest for the locals, but harder for the national, is for the national to seek a group exemption.  It can then manage each of the local chapters as subsidiaries.  As above, the national is responsible for reporting to the IRS.

If the local decides to incorporate and seek its own exemption, it should identify its purpose as “educational and charitable”.  Generally, a scholarship organization must file a Schedule H with its exemption application, but it appears that this local forwards its funds to the national, and the national makes the selection.  In that case, it is not necessary for the local to go through the scholarship preparation.

An organization that identifies itself as a “social club” is exempt under 501(c)(6) of the Code.  However, I would not suggest that in this case.  The money collected is used for scholarships, and that is clearly a charitable purpose.  Since the national was able to get a 501(c)(3) ruling, it would be foolish for the locals to seek a different, less valuable exemption.  If the IRS balks at the (c)(3) classification, I would suggest that the national seek a group exemption.

Doing nothing is maybe not a crazy approach, but it risks exposure and the protections of the IRS Code and IL law are not available to the chapter leadership and members.  The reason I say it’s not crazy is the small amount of $$ that flows through the organization.  No one is going to come after them unless (and this is the big risk) something happens.  Then I can predict that there will be a great deal of embarrassment and perhaps even personal liability.

Bottom line: if you have not filed for a tax exemption, you must file as if you are a for-profit business, using Form 1120.  If you give your funds to the national at year’s end, then it is unlikely you will have to pay taxes.  However, your members cannot take deductions for the gifts they make to the local, even if they go to the national’s scholarship fund.  Same with Illinois: if the chapter is not tax exempt, then it is taxable and must file as such.

I should note that if you collect charitable funds in Illinois, you really need to be registered with the IL Attorney General, even if you are not exempt via the IRS.  The AG’s office is very strict about this.  You will have to pay a late filing penalty because you have been soliciting without being registered.  You might be exempt if you can convince the AG that $$ was raised only from members, but they are not as flexible on this as they once were.

I don’t know why the university advises against incorporation.  It’s a fairly inexpensive thing to do, and it gives liability protection to every member.  It’s a small price to pay for the protection it gives.  You need to have someone agree to be your Registered Agent, and to have his/her office or residence registered as the Registered Office.  You need to file annual reports (in Illinois and most states) to stay in good standing.  In Illinois, this costs $10.00 per year.

I don’t know why the (c)(3) and (c)(4) approach is used.  You would want every part of the organization to be classified as 501(c)(3) so that all gifts, grants and contributions are tax exempt and deductible to the donor.  I’d want to explore this further before acting.

So, Clueless, the answer is that no good deed goes unpunished.  Having investigated the question, you’ve now unearthed a series of obligations, decisions and tasks which I’m sure you’d rather not have known about.  You’re not about to go to jail but to protect yourselves it seems that getting your university to agree to serve as your fiscal agent, and then registering to raise funds in the state of Illinois, is the bare minimum you should do.

Posted in Finances, Fundraising, Higher education, legal services, Management Advice Day tip, Nonprofit management, Nonprofits--General, Philanthropy and Taxation, Volunteers/Volunteerism | 1 Comment »

« Older Entries
Follow

Get every new post delivered to your Inbox.

Join 41 other followers