Legislation

If you don't take the time to take action for the good of the sector, you are essentially condoning its deterioration. Heed Angel's advice. Do your part. Visit www.dmaaction.org and make your voice, your organization's voice, your beneficiaries' and donors' voices heard. Without your help, there will be organizations that suffer, people whose needs won't be met, and all the great work your organizations do will be weakened.

President Obama renewed his call to limit charitable deductions for the fifth time in his presidency Monday, seeking again to limit the percentage of income that wealthy donors can write off for gifts to charity and other purposes.

The proposal, included in the White House’s 2013 budget plan, quickly prompted criticism from many nonprofit leaders who say the proposal would stifle giving.

Senate Democrats have introduced legislation to require the richest Americans to pay a minimum share of their income in taxes, but allow them to continue claiming a deduction for charitable giving.

The bill, introduced by Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse of Rhode Island, aims to put into effect the so-called “Buffett Rule” that was championed by President Obama in his State of the Union address.

Does the live free or die philosophy of the New Hampshire Legislature pertain only to organizations making a profit? That's what officials at many of the state's nonprofit organizations are beginning to wonder after the Senate passed a bill mandating that state charitable organizations send at least one board member to a training session with a heavy focus on fiscal management and ethics.

The bill requires that one board member go through the training every other year, with penalties to be named later by the charitable trusts unit of the state Justice Department.

President Obama said that he wants to ensure that his efforts to force the richest Americans to pay more taxes do not hurt people who make big donations to charity.

In his State of the Union address, Obama said those making more than $1 million should be required to pay at least 30 percent of their income in taxes. But, he said in an accompanying document, “the administration will work to ensure that this rule is implemented in a way that is equitable, including not disadvantaging individuals who make large charitable contributions.”

If a nonprofit's site was cited under SOPA, it may also hurt visibility online. Content that could potentially be cited under SOPA includes infringing-looking links, according to AmericanCensorship.org. This would result in blocked Web traffic and ad revenue.

The real toll for nonprofits may come in the way of donations. SOPA would block suspicious sites' DNS servers, which translate .com names into IP addresses. But messing with DNS servers could directly affect a nonprofit's donation process, as interfering with these servers makes a site more vulnerable to identity theft, and cyberattacks, according to Public Knowledge.

Nonprofits that automatically lost their tax-exempt status last year face unnecessary obstacles if they attempt to get reinstated, the Internal Revenue Service’s internal monitor said this week, as part of her annual report to lawmakers.

More than 385,000 nonprofits were knocked off the tax-exempt rolls after they failed to file their tax returns with the IRS for three consecutive years. But while the IRS allows groups to regain their tax-exempt status, Nina E. Olson, the tax agency’s national taxpayer advocate, says the process is marred by bureaucracy.

Ted Hart speaks with South Carolina Secretary of State Mark Hammond about protections for charitable donors on his Nonprofit Coach radio show.

State Senator Wayne Fontana (D-Pittsburgh) said that legislative action needs to be taken to rein in nonprofit organizations that, he said, are clearly driven by profit.

Fontana introduced a bill that would require some larger nonprofits to pay real estate taxes on the assessed value of land owned by their organizations. A similar bill was introduced a couple of years ago, but didn’t go anywhere because of fears about how it would affect smaller nonprofits.

Gerald Steinberg, the London-born president of watchdog group NGO Monitor, is opposed to European governments bankrolling Israeli left-wing groups, but maintains that the two bills proposed by Israeli lawmakers to curtail that are misguided.

Steinberg, who grew up in California, says that instead of outlawing foreign funding for NGOs, Israel should engage in an internal discussion and a debate with European countries about the influence foreign governments should have on another state's policies via donations to NGOs, he said.