Even in the midst of the nation’s financial sector meltdown prompting a societal march toward a long and deep economic recession, far too many people who should know better have decided to blame the Community Reinvestment Act for the subprime foreclosure crisis and the implosion of commercial banks and mortgage brokers.

The nonprofit sector knows better—and had better get on the stick to advocate against efforts to weaken this absolutely vital component of national policy. Enacted in 1977 “to encourage depository institutions to meet the credit needs of lower-income communities” (emphasis added),[i] CRA became a crucial tool for reversing the prevalent banking practice of racial and geographic “redlining.”

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A bailout package is ready to be voted on by Congress, but that doesn’t obviate the concerns of Nonprofit Quarterly readers who by and large believe that the bailout and the conditions that led to it reveal something fundamentally wrong about our society. The so-called Troubled Assets Relief Program (TARP) may even be necessary to jumpstart liquidity and credit in the financial sector, but it is for many a bitter pill to swallow.

We asked NPQ readers to “sound off” on the bailout, and boy did they ever. Rather than moaning about the loss of potential philanthropic grants from now semi-comatose or dead Wall Street behemoths, NPQ’s commentators went to the heart of the issue. They know that no amount of charitable grantmaking from Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, Bear Stearns, or Lehman Brothers makes up for the shortfalls nonprofits face everyday as a result of long-term disinvestment in the systems on which the least well off Americans depend.

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In the wake of the federal government’s intervention in the financial markets this past week—unprecedented since the Depression era banking legislation put through by Franklin Delano Roosevelt—nonprofits should not look to philanthropy from commercial banks and investment firms to soften the blow of the ailing economy and the inevitable impact on the nonprofit sector.

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Should the nonprofit National Football League be exempt from IRS 990 salary disclosure requirements? Apparently the NFL thinks it deserves its own unique exempt tax status, maybe 501(c)(”m” for monopoly), allowing it to report on what it thinks is important for the public to know and withhold what might make the public a little upset with the nonprofit trade association of sports barons.

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Quick, what’s the difference between Triantafilitsa Mattfeld and Dale Rathke?

Both were caught embezzling money from their nonprofit organizations, Mattfeld $180,000 from the Navy Elementary School PTA in Fairfax County, Virginia, Rathke exactly $948,607.50 while he was handling the books for ACORN, the nation’s premier community-based organizing and advocacy network founded by his brother Wade Rathke who also served until June as ACORN’s Chief Organizer.

Both reached agreements with their organizations to make some sort of financial restitution, Mattfeld pledging $75,000 after having put an additional $80,000 back into the PTA’s accounts in the previous five years, Rathke’s family making $30,000 a year payments since 2001, for a total of $210,000 according to the New York Times with an anonymous donor pledging to pay the remaining balance.

The differences are more than how much they pilfered and how much they or their families and supporters are pledged to repay.

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