posted on: Thursday, August 25, 2005

Several darlings of the conservative philanthropic world gathered in Washington, DC yesterday to defend Supreme Court nominee John Roberts’s record on women’s rights (http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/08/24/AR2005082402017.html). Women for Roberts—established recently with help from the same PR firm that worked with the anti-John Kerry group Swift Boat Veterans for Truth—includes groups such as the right-wing Judicial Confirmation Network and Independent Women’s Forum.

Considering IWF’s rather intriguing interpretation of women’s rights (see the article on its website that suggests women just aren’t cut out to be firefighters or police officers http://www.iwf.org/issues/issues_detail.asp?ArticleID=226), Roberts might want to find some new feminist friends, fast.

posted on: Friday, August 19, 2005

NCRP congratulates former member of Congress Steve Gunderson (R-WI) on his appointment to President and CEO of the Council on Foundations. We at NCRP see his appointment as an opportunity for a pragmatic former member of Congress to educate foundations about the demands and realities they now face from the political sphere and from the public at large, due to changing social and economic needs. For us, his appointment isn’t about foundations finding a better way to lobby Congress and avoid oversight and accountability, but rather it’s an opportunity for foundations to understand why they need to change the ways in which they operate, as well as improve and advance the common good.

posted on: Thursday, August 18, 2005

The Urban Institute’s Center on Nonprofits and Philanthropy, along with Guidestar and the Foundation Center, recently released an interim report on foundation administrative expenses, a hot button issue in the foundation sector and Congress since the summer of 2003, when the House took up H.R. 7, The Charitable Giving Act of 2003. This bill would have removed foundation operating and administrative costs from the 5 percent foundation payout requirement, essentially creating an all-grants payout rate. NCRP supported this legislation for a variety of reasons, and conducted three studies on its impact, which can be found at http://www.ncrp.org/publications/index.asp#Closing. H.R. 7 died in conference when the 108th Congress ended.

The report, Foundation Expenses and Compensation, is available at http://www.urban.org/UploadedPDF/411195_expenses_compensation.pdf, and precedes a larger and more in-depth study set to come out later this year. If readers can make it through the sea of densely packed tables, charts, and figures that make up the bulk of the report, they will find some thoughtful recommendations at its end. The suggestions for improving IRS Forms 990 and 990-PF are especially relevant, and could help the Senate Finance Committee as it crafts legislation to improve foundation and nonprofit accountability.

Ideally, a report of this nature wouldn’t have the close involvement of two of the nation’s largest foundations, which would be impacted by any legislation related to changing the composition of foundation payout, but staff members of both the Ford Foundation and the C.S. Mott Foundation are thanked in the report’s Acknowledgements section. We hope that the project’s advisors were slightly less potentially biased individuals, and that they’re named in the final version of the report.

posted on: Tuesday, August 02, 2005

The 5/15/05 Nonprofit Times included this nugget in their report on nonprofit fundraising auctions, without a drop of irony, sarcasm, or commentary. Noting that the Wildlife Conservation Society auctioned off the rights to name a new species of monkey discovered in Bolivia, they wrote:

“The auction ran from February 24 to March 3. The winning $650,000 bid was placed by internet casino GoldenPalace.com. The online casino has chosen to name the species Callicebus aureipalatii, which is Latin for “Golden Palace”, since the “.com” cannot be translated. GoldenPalace.com is no stranger to winning unique online auctions. The company garnered attention in November 2004 when it placed the $28,000 winning bid in an eBay auction selling a 10-year-old grilled cheese sandwich bearing what some believe is the image of the Virgin Mary.”