Greater involvement by nonprofit groups in advocacy and lobbying work will require support from organizations' boards of directors, according to nonprofit leaders in a new report.

Participants in a "roundtable" held by the Johns Hopkins Listening Post Project "broadly agreed that they often saw board reluctance to get involved in advocacy," the report said.

"Board members may be reluctant to engage in advocacy efforts because of perceived conflicts of interest, a misunderstanding of the laws and regulations governing advocacy involvement of nonprofits, political pressures and inclinations, or a desire not to alienate funders," said the report.

Peter Goldberg, chief executive of the Alliance for Children and Families, in Milwaukee, and chair of the Listening Post Steering Committee, told participants that the composition of boards has dramatically changed in the past 15 years.

"There ...

The House of Representatives has passed a controversial bill that is intended to lift the veil on who is paying for advertisements and other communications that could influence elections -- including nonprofit advocacy groups.

The measure was passed in response to a Supreme Court ruling earlier this year.

The bill would require corporations that issue political communications, including many advocacy groups organized under Section 501(c)(4) of the Internal Revenue Code, to reveal information about their donors.

Many liberal nonprofit advocacy groups opposed the bill because of an exemption from its requirements that would benefit large membership organizations like the National Rifle Association.

Exemptions would be provided to advocacy groups that have more than 500,000 members, are more than a decade old, have a presence in all states, and raise 15 percent or less of their funds...

President Obama announced Thursday he plans to nominate seven people to the Corporation for National and Community Service board -- a move to fill seats that have been vacant for many months, some for more than a year.

The highest-profile name on the president's list is John Podesta, president of the Center for American Progress, a prominent Democrat who was President Bill Clinton's chief of staff and co-chair of Mr. Obama's transition team.

The 15-member bipartisan board oversees the federal agency that operates AmeriCorps, Senior Corps, and other volunteer and national-service programs, along with the new $50-million Social Innovation Fund, the federal grants program designed to expand successful nonprofit programs.

President Obama said he also intends to nominate:

* Rick Christman, chief executive of Employment Solutions, a nonprofit group in Lexington, Ky., that helps people...

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Philanthropy and the federal government are still working out the kinks in their relationship as they try to work together to help proven programs grow.

Teach for America has learned the hard way that government money can be as difficult to count on as private donations, David Gergen, a professor at Harvard's Kennedy School of Government, told participants at the 2010 Inaugural Conference on Scaling.

The organization received $18-million in this year's federal budget. Mr. Gergen, who is a Teach for America board member, said that the group was talking to officials at the Department of Education about a $50-million allocation for 2011 but that the money got caught up in the political backlash against earmarks.

So the budget request President Obama sent to Congress earlier this year eliminated the money designated for Teach for America and added it to a larger pool of...

More than 50 liberal nonprofit advocacy groups have joined forces to fight a proposed exemption to a campaign-finance bill that would benefit large membership organizations like the National Rifle Association.

"It is inappropriate and inequitable to create a two-tiered system of campaign finance laws and First Amendment protections, one for the most powerful and influential and another for everyone else," says a letter sent yesterday to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. It was signed by groups including the Alliance for Justice, the Campaign for Community Change, the Planned Parenthood Federation of America, a variety of anti-gun-violence groups, and the Sierra Club and several other environmental organizations.

However, some good-government groups -- including Common Cause, Democracy 21, and the League of Women Voters -- support the bill despite the exemption as a way to achieve what they...

Nonprofit leaders and experts gathered on Capitol Hill today to praise newly unveiled legislation that aims to raise the profile of the charitable world in Washington.

"We have a government that counts iceberg-lettuce heads and can tell us how many iceberg-lettuce heads were put on the ground last year," Tim Delaney, president of the National Council of Nonprofits, said at a press conference. "Yet it cannot tell us how many heads of individuals were employed by nonprofits. Why are iceberg-lettuce heads more valuable than the people who take care of America's communities?"

The new bill, the Nonprofit Sector and Community Solutions Act, H.R. 5533, was introduced Tuesday evening by Rep. Betty McCollum, Democrat of Minnesota. It would create two new bodies to make recommendations about federal policy affecting charities and require federal agencies to step up their collection of data...

A new feature of a Web site devoted to tracking government subsidies allows the public to search a database for detailed information about federal grants to -- and contracts with -- nonprofit organizations.

The Web site, created by Subsidyscope, also provides information and analysis on federal loans and tax expenditures.

Subsidyscope, a project of Pew Charitable Trusts and the Sunlight Foundation, says it aims to make government subsidies "more transparent" to the public and policymakers.

"By aggregating information across sectors of the economy, Subsidyscope hopes to inform the debate over the creation of new subsidies and the efficacy of existing ones in a nonpartisan manner," said a statement from the project, which has previously posted data on federal transportation spending and bailout money for the financial industry.

The federal government gave $38-billion in grants to...

Sen. Charles E. Grassley, senior Republican on the Senate Finance Committee, is asking the Council on Foundations for information about the need for a proposed change in the way foundations pay excise tax on their net investment income.

Supporters of the proposal, which Mr. Grassley said is pending in the Senate as an amendment to a tax bill, say such a change would simplify the tax code for foundations and encourage grant makers to give more during the current economic hard times.

Foundations currently are subject to a 2-percent or a 1-percent tax. They can qualify for the lower rate in any year in which the percentage of assets they directed toward charitable distributions is larger than the average percentage of their distributions during the previous five years.

While the two-tier tax was intended as an incentive for foundations to give more, some lawmakers and foundation...

A legal organization has unveiled a new Web site, LawForChange, that offers information and resources about legal issues affecting nonprofit groups in areas including fund raising, lobbying, governance, and taxation.

The site, created by the Lex Mundi Pro Bono Foundation, allows people to search for laws and policies at the federal level and in all 50 states, the District of Columbia, and Puerto Rico.

It also features blogs, commentary, a discussion forum, and guides for starting a "social sector organization." The Lex Mundi Pro Bono Foundation is the nonprofit affiliate of an international network of commercial law firms, Lex Mundi. Its members offer pro bono legal advice to social entrepreneurs.

A committee of nonprofit experts that advises the Internal Revenue Service has developed a prototype of an "online tutorial" that the IRS could use to help managers and board members of charities "better understand the tax rules that govern executive compensation and their role in setting that compensation."

The proposed Webinar instructional guide would provide "step-by-step, plain-language advice" for charities in a wide range of areas, including "developing internal procedures and compensation comparables, reporting salary information in their IRS Form 990 filings, and maintaining appropriate records necessary" to follow the law and IRS regulations, according to a report from the Advisory Committee on Tax Exempt and Government Entities.

"The country has been engaged in an ongoing dialogue over what constitutes appropriate levels of compensation for all levels of society, both in the...