International Giving
Small Grants, Big Difference
I enjoyed presenting at a great session, “Small Grants, Big Difference,” during last week’s Council on Foundations Annual Conference with Daniel Tillias of Pax Christi Sakala in Haiti; Kate Ahern of the Case Foundation; and Monica LaBiche Brown of Water for People. It was great that 75 or more…
First Timer from Across the Pond
Having moved from London to New York just two weeks earlier, I walked into the Council on Foundatons’ day-long global preconference session with trepidation; would I remember what my organization did? Would the other attendees groan when they realised I was a fundraiser? Would they understand my…
How a Private Foundation Can Use "Friends of" Organizations
Legal Compliance Guidance
U.S. private foundations are increasingly involved in international grantmaking. One way for a private foundation to give overseas is to make grants directly to foreign charities. Many U.S. private foundations, however, may want to consider giving overseas indirectly through a "Friends of"…
I recently received a call from a researcher on a new project. As I understood it, a prominent U.S. foundation had asked them to study how domestic donors deal with gender issues. They were to identify funders with a specific commitment to the gender lens in their funding priorities, and then…
To Check or Not to Check: Complying With OFAC Regulations
Legal Compliance Guidance
After September 11, 2001, many grantmakers and other charitable organizations that were not previously familiar with the U.S. Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC), learned of its existence. As one of the key U.S. government agencies seeking to shut down terrorism funding…
The Debate Over Anti-Terrorism Certification
Legal Compliance Guidance
In an effort to ensure that charitable resources are used exclusively for charitable purposes and not used to support terrorist activity, organizations may choose to adopt practices in addition to those explicitly required by law. Among the practices that some charities choose to adopt is including…
Legal Compliance Guidance
In international grantmaking, private foundations often make grants to organizations (“Initial Grantees”) that, in turn, re-grant those funds to other non-public charity organizations or individuals (“Secondary Grantees”).
Legal issues arise when a private foundation makes a grant to an Initial…
Legal Compliance Guidance
Since the terrorism attacks on September 11, 2001, grantmakers and other charitable organizations have become quite familiar with the work of the U.S. Treasury Department's Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) in the area of anti-terrorism concerns. OFAC has been one of the key U.S. government…
Legal Compliance Guidance
Since the November 7, 2002 publication by the United States Department of the Treasury of its “Anti-Terrorist Financing Guidelines: Voluntary Best Practices for U.S.-based Charities,”1 grantmakers have grappled with the problem of how to comply with their legal obligations under Executive…
Legal Compliance Guidance
A plain-language guide to Executive Order 13224, the Patriot Act, embargoes and sanctions, IRS rules, Treasury Department voluntary guidelines, and USAID requirements.
Legal Compliance Guidance
In existence since the 1930s, donor-advised funds have been one of the fastest growing charitable giving vehicles of the past decade.[1] Capitalizing on this growth and on the increasing interest in international philanthropy among donors in the United States, a number of public charities have…
Legal Compliance Guidance
Prepared by the International Center for Not-for-Profit Law, this report provides a summary of the legal constraints in global grantmaking and draws on illustrative examples from the U.S., Europe, and other regions. It also outlines potential options to address these barriers.
External Resource
NGOsource improves the efficiency of international grantmaking and aims to achieve a significant increase in cross-border philanthropy by centralizing, streamlining, and standardizing the equivalency determination process for U.S. grantmakers. NGOsource is a project of TechSoup and was started with…
Legal Compliance Guidance
September 24, 2012
The Department of Treasury and the IRS issued proposed regulations applicable to private foundations seeking to make grants to foreign organizations using equivalency determinations. The guidance broadens the range of professionals on whose written advice a private foundation…
Over the past several years, no strategy for change has captured the imagination of philanthropy more than impact investing. In the United States and even more so in emerging markets, people and institutions with financial means are deploying those resources in new and sometimes innovative ways.…
Woods, Trees, and the Rise of African Philanthropy
In the early 1990s, I spent a year living and working in Uganda. One day I was with some friends driving back from a trip to one of the beautiful game parks there. It was late afternoon and not long before darkness would set in. We decided to pitch our tents by the side of the long and sparsely…