Tax, Legal & Compliance

Colorado’s attorney general and secretary of state are asking residents to do more to check out charities before they decide to give. "I encourage the many generous people in our state who make charitable contributions to take proper precautions before donating their hard-earned money," Colorado Attorney General Cynthia Coffman said in a news release. "Unfortunately,…

Lynn Hlatky has spent her career as a scientist studying the development of cancer, hoping in some way to improve understanding of an insidious disease. She took a path common in her field: won funding, established a lab, assembled a team of colleagues and got to work. But now, a decade of Hlatky’s work suddenly…

In 2005, Vanderbilt conceded defeat in its legal battle to remove the word "Confederate" from one of its residency halls, which was built as Confederate Memorial Hall, but which the university prefers to call just Memorial Hall. The university had announced plans to remove the word in 2002, but the Tennessee chapter of the United…

Crowdfunding has changed the face of disaster/emergency fundraising. It offers a way for people worldwide to offer monetary assistance to anyone, anywhere, anytime. It is hosted on platforms that the nonprofit does not have to own or run, thus taking away a lot of logistical details that can bog down an emergency response. But crowdfunding brings with it a new set of challenges to be addressed...

The nonprofit TD Beach to Beacon 10K has become wildly popular as Maine’s largest road race. Registration for Saturday’s event, which drew more than 6,300 runners, filled in less than four minutes. But while Beach to Beacon’s revenues have more than tripled over the past 15 years, its charitable contributions have declined as a percentage,…

Severance pay should be considered whenever an employee is laid off, is terminated with or without cause, or resigns from employment. Termination can result from a variety of circumstances, some of which may involve contentious people or situations, and difficult issues. Thus, severance pay may be a good risk-management tool for avoiding potential 
litigation, adverse publicity and other claims against a nonprofit employer...

If you work in nonprofit in the U.S., you have heard that new federal overtime laws/rules are coming. They affect how we categorize the professionals in our sector—“exempt” or “non-exempt”—and how we pay them, whether through set salaries or through hourly wages that include overtime for hours worked over 40. If reading that sentence makes…

A national clearinghouse for missing and exploited children should have gotten a warrant before going through the email attachments of a man suspected of trafficking in child pornography, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit ruled Aug. 5 (United States v. Ackerman, 2016 BL 253852, 10th Cir., No. 14-3265, 8/5/16). Although the National…

The former chief financial officer of an Alabama nonprofit clinic for the poor and homeless has received 17 years in prison for her role in a scheme to defraud the government. In a news release Tuesday, U.S. Attorney Joyce White Vance said 50-year-old Terri McGuire Mollica of Birmingham was sentenced to 15 years for an…

The Olympics are a money machine, not just for the International Olympic Committee (IOC), which runs the games, but for its corporate sponsors. So it's no surprise that the IOC goes out of its way to protect its trademarks. Rule 40, the IOC regulation governing who gets to use Olympic intellectual property and where, has been in place for awhile. But this year, it's been revised to include far-reaching restrictions on what brands, nonprofits included, can say on social media...