May 15, 2012, 2:02 pm
By Suzanne Perry
A House subcommittee has announced that five nonprofit experts will testify at a hearing it has scheduled for Wednesday to examine several issues related to the Internal Revenue Service’s oversight of tax-exempt organizations.
They are Diana Aviv, president of Independent Sector; Roger Colinvaux, an associate law professor at the Catholic University of America;Â Joanne DeStefano, vice president for finance at Cornell University, who will be testifying on behalf of the National Association of College and University Business Officers (NACUBO); Bruce Hopkins, a nonprofit lawyer; and Michael Regier, a senior vice president at VHA, a nonprofit hospital cooperative.
Rep. Charles Boustany called the hearing. The Louisiana Republican heads the oversight subcommittee of the House Ways and Means Committee.
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May 9, 2012, 9:55 pm
By Suzanne Perry
A Congressional hearing has been scheduled next week to examine various tax issues affecting nonprofits, including Internal Revenue Service oversight of universities and nonprofit hospitals.
Rep. Charles Boustany Jr., a Louisiana Republican, called the hearing. He told The Chronicle this winter he was concerned the tax agency had not been aggressive enough in monitoring charity abuses.
The event, which will take place May 16 at 10 a.m., will be the first in a series of hearings on tax-exempt organizations planned by the oversight subcommittee of the powerful House Ways and Means Committee.
Mr. Boustany, the subcommittee chairman, said in a statement that the hearing would allow nonprofits to weigh in on certain questions he had raised in a letter he sent to the IRS last October.
They include IRS audits of universities in areas including excessive compensation and unrelated …
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February 13, 2012, 1:50 pm
By Suzanne Perry
President Obama today proposed increasing the budget for the Corporation for National and Community Service by 1.3 percent next year, to almost $1.1-billion—providing enough money to keep the number of AmeriCorps members at current levels.
In his budget for the 2013 fiscal year, the president said he would also increase spending on the Social Innovation Fund, a grants program to expand effective nonprofit social projects, to $50-million, up from just under $45-million in 2012.
However, the president wants to eliminate two “lower priority” programs that the agency operates—the Volunteer Generation Fund, which provides money for projects to help charities recruit and manage volunteers, and the Nonprofit Capacity Building Fund, which provides grants to organizations to provide training and management help to small and medium-sized charities.
Both of those programs were created …
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February 9, 2012, 8:48 am
By Suzanne Perry
President Obama has withdrawn the nomination of a high-profile pick for a seat on the Corporation for National and Community Service board—John Podesta, a prominent Democrat who was President Clinton’s chief of staff and co-chair of Mr. Obama’s transition team.
Mr. Podesta, founder of the Center for American Progress, a liberal think tank with close ties to the White House, was among seven people that the president nominated in June 2010 to fill vacancies on the national-service board. The nominations were approved by a Senate committee in July but have still not been confirmed by the full Senate.
Andrea Purse, vice president for communications at the Center for American Progress, said in a statement: “Like many of Mr. Obama’s other nominees, Mr. Podesta got tired of waiting for the Senate to act and got busy with other projects and asked for his nomination to be withdrawn. 
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February 7, 2012, 5:48 pm
By Suzanne Perry
Independent Sector, a coalition of nonprofits and foundations that has waged a vigorous campaign against proposals to limit the charitable deduction for wealthy people, has now decided to devote more attention to other aspects of budget and tax policy that could harm poor people.
Critics have accused Independent Sector and other nonprofit advocates of spending a disproportionate amount of energy protecting the charitable tax break, given other critical issues facing the nation, especially those affecting vulnerable people.
Diana Aviv, the group’s chief executive, said Independent Sector’s board “sympathized with that point of view.” It adopted a series of “guiding principles” last week, saying it plans to promote policies to cut the nation’s deficit and overhaul the tax code that do not “exacerbate income inequality or increase poverty.”
The principles, which were sent to the or…
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February 3, 2012, 10:48 am
By Suzanne Perry
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.
It would require taxpayers with adjusted gross incomes of more than $2-million, including capital gains and dividends, to pay at least 30 percent in federal taxes. The minimum tax would be phased in for people earning more than $1-million but less than $2-million under a formula that is spelled out in the legislation.
Donors would be able to deduct their charitable gifts from their adjusted gross incomes to lower their tax bills, thus preserving a giving incentive that has been fiercely defended …
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January 20, 2012, 11:11 am
By Suzanne Perry
Newt Gingrich, the Republican presidential contender, and his wife, Callista, contributed $81,133 to charity in 2010, while the couple’s foundation made $120,000 in grants, according to tax returns Mr. Gingrich released last night.
The Gingriches, who reported adjusted gross income of about $3.1-million, said they donated $9,540 to the Basilica of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception, $3,100 to miscellaneous causes, and $68,493 in unspecified cash contributions through their business operations.
The Gingrich Foundation reported revenue of $152,609 in 2010, all from one of the candidate’s companies, Gingrich Holdings—which shares the same address as the foundation in Washington. The grant maker gave money to 14 cultural, educational, and health charities, including the Alzheimer’s Association, the Atlanta Ballet, and Luther College.
The tax form said Ms. Gingrich is…
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January 18, 2012, 8:57 am
By Suzanne Perry
A raft of health charities and patient-advocacy groups have filed briefs urging the U.S. Supreme Court to uphold the new health-care overhaul law, which has been challenged as unconstitutional for requiring most Americans to buy health insurance or face a penalty.
The groups told the court, which is set to hear oral arguments on the case in March, that the health-insurance provision, known as the “individual mandate,” is critical to making the new law work effectively.
“Without that requirement, healthy people tend to avoid buying insurance until they need it, leaving insurance plans to cover a sicker population and driving up costs for everyone in the health care system,” said the American Cancer Society, the American Cancer Society Cancer Action Network, the American Diabetes Association, and American Heart Association, which filed a “friend of the court” brief last week.
They…
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January 12, 2012, 8:32 am
By Suzanne Perry
The inspector general’s office at the Corporation for National and Community Service has warned Congress it will have to lay off at least three-fourths of its 33 staff members and sharply curtail its activities because of a “severe and damaging” budget cut.
Congress cut the office’s budget from $7.7-million to $4-million in the 2012 spending bill it approved last month.
“This budget reduction caught me and my executive staff by surprise,” Kenneth C. Bach, the corporation’s deputy inspector general, wrote in a letter this week to more than a dozen House and Senate members.
He said the 48-percent cut was in “stark contrast” to the 3-percent reduction in the corporation’s overall budget—and “will substantially inhibit me from performing my duties.”
The inspector general’s office monitors federal volunteer and national-service programs, including AmeriCorps, Senior Corps, and…
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January 10, 2012, 4:12 pm
By Suzanne Perry
President Obama today appointed a former nonprofit leader, Cecilia Muñoz, to be his top domestic-policy adviser.
Ms. Muñoz, who replaces Melody Barnes as director of the Domestic Policy Council, is an immigration expert who worked for 20 years at the National Council of La Raza, a Latino advocacy group, most recently as senior vice president of research, advocacy, and legislation. She left that position in 2009 to become Mr. Obama’s director for intergovernmental affairs.
In her new position, Ms. Muñoz will oversee the Office of Social Innovation and Civic Participation, the White House unit that has the most contact with nonprofit leaders. It works with the Corporation for National and Community Service to promote volunteerism, national service, and the Social Innovation Fund, a grants program to help nonprofits expand effective programs.
The office also operates the White…
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