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.

(more…)

Press coverage of the July 16^th revisions to Congressional lobbying rules was scant and generally positive. It must be a rerun of “Short Attention Span Theater” on Capitol Hill and in the Fourth Estate.

(more…)

As we predicted in the summer issue of the Nonprofit Quarterly and in the Financial Times, the California state legislature and the state’s biggest private foundations struck a deal to scuttle the looming legislative mandate (Assembly Bill 624) that large foundations report on their grantmaking to racially diverse communities and minority-led nonprofits. The deal was struck away from the public spotlight and announced on June 24th.

(more…)

Whether one likes or dislikes the policies promoted by Barack Obama in his run for the presidency, he is impressively committed to transparency and disclosure. Obama appears unafraid of the cleansing role of sunshine in American politics, even if the disclosures spark some critical commentary.

Last month, Obama released a list of every — every! — earmark he had requested, successfully or not, in the federal budgets for Fiscal Years 2006 and 2007. In contrast, Hillary Clinton has not released her earmarks list, nor has she disclosed the names of contributors to her family’s and husband’s foundations or released her tax returns.

(more…)

There is something wrong with the debate about “diversity” that has roiled the foundation sector. The problem is simply diversity itself. Like much of modern political syntax, it is the term of art because it is increasingly devoid of meaning — or because it is more palatable than other, older, more politically charged variations on the theme.

(more…)