Imagine the postcards that delegates to the Democratic and Republication conventions will send to their families back home the next couple of weeks:

Attended lots of fundraisers for charity at the convention, got to hobnob with our favorite lawmakers, met lots of people who I think might have been lobbyists, but they didn’t really have to say so, grabbed lots of corporate knickknacks, do-hickeys, and whatnot that they handed out, a good time was had by all, see you soon!

Yes, happy days are here again, for the special interests that get to use the national parties’ conventions as venues where they can coagulate around lawmakers and delegates to ply their trade without the formalities of bothersome practices like much transparency and disclosure. They can thank the Congressional leadership of both parties for having loosened the reins on how lobbyists and special interests might use charities as venues for cozying up to national legislators.

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Wouldn’t it be great if volunteer drivers for charities such as Meals on Wheels and the Salvation Army could take a charitable deduction of 74 cents for the mileage they drive as opposed to the measly, crummy, insulting 14 cents per mile currently allowed under U.S. law?They could—if they were volunteers in the United Kingdom, but not in the American cauldron of charitable sensitivity.

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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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When a prominent national leadership organization fails to take a stand on ethical issues that affect the nonprofit sector, particularly after trumpeting its own high standards, what message does it send to nonprofits and policymakers? Readers of the Cohen Report may remember our report (National Harbor, Not Safe Harbor) in June regarding the decision of the Council on Foundations to hold its annual meeting at the National Harbor complex in Prince Georges County, Maryland. Despite some press coverage pointing out the dubious arrangements underpinning National Harbor’s charitable activities, namely a philanthropic slush fund awarding grants to nonprofits linked to the County Executive of PG County, the Council remained silent in spite of, or perhaps because of, its close association with National Harbor. Fortunately the Council has been handed another opportunity to speak up, but will it?

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One interesting and not insignificant sub-category of pork barrel spending at the national level involves earmarks to politically connected nonprofits. Some of these are, of course justifiable but some are pure tit for tat or disguised self-dealing. In the wake of a number of scandals involving nonprofits and their sometimes intimate relationships to the likes of Tom DeLay, Rick Santorum, Duke Cunningham and Ted Stevens, we might have expected some lessons to be learned at the federal state and municipal levels but in some locales nonprofit earmarking does not fare well in the light of day.

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