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This is the smartest, ballsiest response I’ve seen to the omnipresent nonsense about how what’s wrong with philanthropy and charity is that they’re too soft-hearted and how all the problems of the world could be solved if they were just more rigorous and did their “due diligence” and brought other failed concepts and consultant buzzwords [...]
Posts Tagged ‘charity’
January 26th, 2013
October 9th, 2012
Here’s a new wrinkle in the ever-popular saga “Taxation of the Tax Exempt”: members of the Scranton City Council threaten to withhold zoning changes from owners of tax-exempt property unless they make “voluntary” PILOTS (Payments In Lieu Of Taxation). I’m certainly open to the notion that non-charitable tax-exempt organizations should have to pay property taxes, [...]
December 20th, 2011
The most powerful argument in this LA Times op-ed piece opposing the charitable tax deduction is that it’s a poor trade-off. Retired foundation executive Jack Shakely points out that charities have permitted themselves to be shorn of their ability to influence policy and politics in return for a mess of pottage. Of course the restrictions [...]
November 8th, 2011
Category: 501(c)(3), charity, Income distribution, Moral philosophy, NonProfits, Philanthropy, Rhetoric and Framing, Uncategorized
. . . wrote Andy Rooney in this long-ago essay. This makes as much sense as anything else Andy Rooney ever said, which is to say, not much. What does it mean to “deserve” charity, beyond needing it? As George Bernard Shaw’s Alfred Doolittle memorably explained in Pygmalion, If theres anything going, and I put [...]
November 2nd, 2011
Ellen Alberding’s interview with the Chicago Tribune in advance of the Independent Sector‘s meeting in Chicago earlier this week was not her, or philanthropy’s, finest hour. Ms. Alberding, head of the Joyce Foundation, described the Foundation’s approach to what even she characterizes as a perfect storm of increased need and reduced resources in the nonprofit [...]
October 27th, 2011
Category: 501(c)(3), charity, Income distribution, Most interesting thing I learned today, NonProfits, Policy Analysis, Taxation
Kudos to my nonprofit consulting colleagues Campbell and Co. for sponsoring a study by the Indiana University Center on Philanthropy to determine the impact on giving of increased marginal tax rates and a cap the charitable-giving deduction. While some of us have been arguing that both of these moves toward social justice should be supported [...]
August 26th, 2011
Category: Arts and Cultural Policy, Built Environment, Health Care, Higher education, Illinois, Law Notes, NonProfits, Supreme Court, Taxation, Urban policy
When Harold Pollack wrote about the recent Illinois Department of Revenue decision to withdraw property tax exemptions from three hospitals, he naturally focused on the impact of the decision on health care. But those of us who work in other areas of the nonprofit sector are worried by the decision as well–or, if we aren’t, [...]