This year is the 40th anniversary of the release of the Kerner Commission report. The Kerner Commission was officially the National Advisory Commission on Civil Disorders, chaired by the governor of Illinois, Otto Kerner. Nonprofits ought to think about the importance of this occasion for the sector, how far our society has come, how far it really has to go, and what the nonprofit sector’s role might be.
In early February, the U.S. Senate accepted a revised economic stimulus package, reconciling conflicting House and Senate legislation and overcoming Republican opposition to provisions that would have aided senior citizens and disabled veterans.
Like Captain Renault’s encounter with gambling at Rick’s American Café, “I’m shocked, shocked to find that gambling is going on in here,” a flabbergasted U.S. Congress has revealed to the American public that nonprofit universities and hospitals sit on tax exempt endowments amounting to billions of dollars. Not a heck of a lot actually gets spent, in percentage terms less than private foundations that are, by law required to spend—in what the law refers to as “qualified distributions” known in common parlance as private foundation “payout”—while universities in particular continually hammer alumni and the public for donations.
What does it mean for a nonprofit hospital’s charitable purpose if it keeps an “A list” of preferred customers who receive better treatment than all others? The context, of course is one in which ordinary people must struggle to maintain adequate health care coverage.
Nonprofits are piling into the virtual world of Second Life and similar online venues. What might seem to many as simply “role-playing games” or RPGs, Second Life and its ilk are becoming increasingly real life environments, with financial benefits and consequences, for players and nonprofits. A recent Wall Street Journal article detailed a run on the virtual banks in Second Life costing the players—or their avatars—real money. Nothing virtual about that.
A rogue decision from the Minnesota Supreme Court may be the latest salvo to undermine nonprofit property tax exemptions. In Under the Rainbow Child Care Center v. Goodhue County, the justices decided that “(a)n organization that does not provide goods or services free or at considerably reduced rates as a substantial, not just an incidental, part of its operations is not exempt from payment of real property taxes as an institution of purely public charity.”
Despite everything you’ve read and heard about the applicability of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act (SOX) to nonprofit whistle-blowing, the 2002 law’s protections appear to offer flimsy protection from employer retaliation against nonprofit employees who identify misconduct. That’s why the creation of a corporate culture that values and protects nonprofit employee whistle-blowing—internal and external—is so important, because Sarbanes-Oxley falls far short of a whistle-blower’s suit of armor.
The nonprofit sector does not record statistics on many accountability indicators, but it should. One vital statistic to track would be the treatment of whistle-blowers and the disposition of their complaints. Without this information, we have to imagine the fate of nonprofit whistle-blowers extrapolated from weak government and corporate data.
The October 30 roundtable held by the minority (Republican) staff of the Senate Finance Committee (SFC) on nonprofit hospitals sparked some troubling memories.
Trivia question: Who did Barack Obama beat in his 2004 campaign for the U.S. Senate seat from Illinois?
A presidential candidate’s nonprofit history may serve as a mirror for the kinds of decisions he might make about philanthropy once he’s seated in the Oval Office. That history of nonprofit involvement by a candidate or his spouse may also shine a light on the political values of the future putative leader of the Western world.
Barack Obama has had no major reportable nonprofit connections show up on disclosure forms filed during his brief time in the U.S. Senate or during his run as a presidential candidate. In some previous years, his name appears as a former trustee of the Joyce Foundation and the Woods Fund in Chicago, both highly reputable foundations. Joyce is known for many areas of program grants, though its long-standing dedication to campaign finance issues is notable given the senator’s White House aspirations.[1]
Who sold the nonprofit sector the bill of goods that it has the potential to run for-profit business operations—and make money off them to boot?
Even a modicum of exposure to the recent trajectory of national politics and progressive advocacy will lead just about anyone to despair of policy change. With an increasing suburban representation in Congress plus red-leaning rural areas, the likelihood of progressives seizing political control in the near future looks pretty slim to many observers, and the progressive side of the national equation is frequently striking for its ideological mushiness, sometimes little more than 527-financed Internet slogans.
