Philanthropy Today

NONPROFIT NEWS FROM ELSEWHERE

The IRS office that regulates tax-exempt groups, long since defanged, is losing even more of its power, even as the number of nonprofits explodes. Politicians have attacked the Exempt Organizations office for decades, notably in the 1990s, when President Bill Clinton cut its powers and staff, and in 2012, when Republicans accused it of putting conservative nonprofits under extra scrutiny. As a result, an office that had a staff of about 120 lawyers and accountants in the 1990s now exercises vanishingly little oversight of hundreds of small nonprofits and cannot fund probes into potentially illegal political activity by tax-exempt groups. Meanwhile, some recent high-profile scandals and at least one independent assessment have revealed major nonprofit fraud or irregularities that the office did not catch, even as a Trump-era law is about to further rein in regulators and break up the office entirely. “For all intents and purposes, the IRS is getting out of the tax-exempt services business,” said Marcus Owens, a former director of the office. (New Republic, subscription)

More News

• A Migrant Wave Tests New York City’s Identity as the World’s Sanctuary (New York Times)
• Vance’s Anti-Drug Charity Enlisted Doctor Echoing Big Pharma (Associated Press)
• Anti-Vaccine Group Chaired by Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Removed From Facebook and Instagram (CBS News)
• Prince William Environmental Charity Deeps Investments in a Bank Tied to Fossil Fuels (Associated Press)
• Experts: Hawaii Nonprofit’s Non-Bid, $19.5 Million Covid Contract Was a Lucrative ‘Sweetheart Deal’ That Gouged Taxpayers (Hawaii News Now)
• The Actor Who Brought Omar to Life in ‘The Wire’ Had Recently Devoted Himself to Anti-Violence Work in Black Communities in Brooklyn. And Then He Died. (New York Times)
• These Leading Women in Philanthropy Are Igniting Black Girl Dreams With Southern Black Girls & Women’s Consortium (Black Enterprise)

Legacies

• Ann McGuiness, Major Fund-Raiser for Women’s Health, Dies at 65 (Boston Globe and New York Times)
• Betty Brown Casey, a Longtime Supporter of the Washington National Opera, and of the Capital’s Trees, Dies at 95 (Washington Post)

Arts and Culture

• Art and Medicine Intersect in New York City Hospitals (PBS NewsHour)
• Cambodia Says It’s Found Its Lost Artifacts: In Gallery 249 at the Met (New York Times)
• Orlando Museum of Art Is “Re-Evaluating All Exhibitions” Amid FBI Raid Fallout (Hyperallergic)
• Virtual Museum Visits Improve Well-Being for Elderly, Study Finds (Hill)