Politics

U.S. Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia was found dead on Saturday morning, apparently of a heart attack sustained while visiting a hunting ranch in Texas. He was 79. Scalia, the longest-serving Supreme Court justice in history, was nominated by Ronald Reagan and confirmed by the Senate in 1986. He earned a reputation as the intellectual…

Donors to the nonprofit group Crossroads GPS, founded by Republican strategist Karl Rove, no longer have to worry about their identities being disclosed. After a five-year wait, the IRS has approved the organization’s application for tax-exempt status. Crossroads had been the most active of the nonprofits that are funneling cash into politics—often called "dark money"…

San Francisco area charities surrounding Sunday’s Super Bowl host city, Santa Clara, Calif., benefited from 50 Fund, Super Bowl 50’s philanthropic arm, which raised more than $12 million, a record for the game’s host committee. But nonprofits near Levi’s Stadium weren’t the only ones to receive donations as a result of the big game. The competing cities also wagered charitable efforts based on the game’s outcome or conducted fundraising efforts to create secondary competitions off the field....

Donald Trump wanted a small veterans charity to be his political prop. It said "no." Liberty House—one of the 22 organizations chosen to benefit from Trump’s multimillion-dollar fundraiser for veterans—is a scrappy veterans group in New Hampshire, with a small, $300,000 annual budget. On Friday, Liberty House Executive Director Keith Howard received a call from…

Throughout the 2016 campaign, two candidates have lapped the field when it comes to throwing fundraisers—former Gov. Jeb Bush and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. And for two politicians with a complicated history of both distancing and embracing their family names, Clinton and Bush now are calling on kin to help them raise cash…

Here we go again. Another GOP debate, another Donald Trump demand for a donation to charities in exchange for his presence. We can’t say we were surprised. We had hoped this “strong-arm philanthropy,” as we called it, was done with. But, we knew better. This time was a little different, though. And other candidates played their own roles in the debacle...

A wealthy Republican wants to require unprecedented transparency in California by forcing state politicians to plaster their suits and dresses with the logos of their top 10 donors—and voters fed up with those politicians actually may get the chance to vote on the idea in November. The unusual dress code is offered in a proposed…

Charity Navigator, one of the nation's two largest watchdog groups for charities, has removed the Bill, Hillary and Chelsea Clinton Foundation from its "watch list," lifting a cloud from the global philanthropy. The organization had placed the foundation on its watch list in April. The foundation contested the ranking at the time, and Charity Navigator…

Clearly, there are some major differences between political fundraising and other nonprofit fundraising (for starters, charities don't have the benefit of super PACs raising and spending unlimited sums of money on their behalf). But there are some valuable lessons to be learned from the way political fundraisers are using email. Here, we break down three of the big ones...

Roughly 87 percent of fundraising emails from political candidates are ridiculous—ridiculous as in hugely melodramatic, making up random fundraising targets (we are only $1,538.32 away from our midnight goal!), and doing just about anything underhanded or gimmicky to get you to pony up a couple bucks. And yet, these candidates almost never get called out…