Tax, Legal & Compliance
November 5, 2015 at 10:42 am
The U.S. Supreme Court will consider this week whether to hear a potentially landmark First Amendment case on donations to nonprofit groups, marking a flashpoint in a battle over money and free speech increasingly taking place in courts instead of legislatures. At issue is a California regulation requiring all nonprofit groups that solicit donors in…
November 5, 2015 at 10:25 am
FOX23 learned the Oklahoma Jazz Hall of Fame’s nonprofit status was revoked by the Internal Revenue Service. FOX23 previously reported about ongoing financial problems at the Jazz Hall, like the nonprofit bouncing checks to Tulsa County for insurance payments, part of its lease agreement. The Jazz Hall of Fame also is behind on its Downtown…
November 5, 2015 at 10:19 am
The Arizona attorney general's office says it shut down a veterans-charity scam that bilked about $750,000 from seniors across the U.S. suffering from Alzheimer’s disease and other memory-related disorders. Attorney General Mark Brnovich and his office terminated three Phoenix telemarketing companies owned by Robert Foster—Happy Hands LLC, Standing Tree LLC and Action Point LLC—as part…
October 30, 2015 at 10:13 am
Minnesota Attorney General Lori Swanson is suing the man who organized this year’s “LoziLu” mud races as fundraisers to fight cancer, saying he has violated charity and consumer protection laws. The action targets Frederick Bradley Kellogg and a Minnesota company called Fresh New Taste LLC that were running women-only obstacle mud races around the country.…
October 30, 2015 at 10:08 am
How do you turn a charitable donation into a scam? Take the donated item and sell it for a profit, instead of giving it to the needy. New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman said his office has reached a settlement with a for-profit company accused of doing just that, by way of more than 1,100…
October 29, 2015 at 10:59 am
A nonprofit located near Ferguson, Mo., was awarded $1.6 million by the Department of Justice to promote child safety issues, but then neglected a multitude of federal grant laws and regulations. The nonprofit ignored federal stipulations intended to ensure that tax dollars are spent efficiently and ethically, including cost analyses, competitive bids for goods and…
October 29, 2015 at 10:35 am
NPQ has written many times about the fact that embezzlement thrives in informal situations, which is a good description of many small nonprofits. But in such organizations, the damage done to internal culture and external reputation may prove hard to heal. Nonprofits that take the issue on with transparency may avoid some of that damage;…
October 20, 2015 at 10:09 am
The chairman of a nonprofit mentoring program for at-risk boys, which has had contracts with two area school districts, has been accused of asking a teenage boy to send him an explicit photo. Paul Dean Jamison Jr., who founded Developing Boys To Men (DBTM) in 2009, was arrested Friday morning. Bail was set at $10,000.…
October 19, 2015 at 10:58 am
A federal jury in Madison, Wis., awarded The University of Wisconsin-Madison’s intellectual property arm more than $234 million Friday in its patent infringement lawsuit against computer- and gadget-maker Apple. The verdict on the award amount, reached after the jury deliberated for about three hours, was about $165 million less than the Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation…
October 19, 2015 at 10:39 am
Mark Noltner, who lives in suburban Chicago, heard about McTeacher's Nights when he found a flier in his daughter's backpack last year. "There was a picture of Ronald McDonald [on the flier]," he says, and it was promoting the school fundraiser at a local McDonald's. During McTeacher's Nights, teachers stand behind the counter at McDonald's,…
