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Full-Text Articles in Law

Respecting Foundation And Charity Autonomy: How Public Is Private Philanthropy? (Symposium) (With J. Tyler), Evelyn Brody Jan 2010

Respecting Foundation And Charity Autonomy: How Public Is Private Philanthropy? (Symposium) (With J. Tyler), Evelyn Brody

Evelyn Brody

Recent years have seen a disturbing increase in legal proposals by the public and government officials to interfere with the governance, missions, strategies, and decision-making of foundations and other charities. Underlying much of these debates is the premise – stated or merely presumed – that foundation and charity assets are “public money” and that such entities therefore are subject to various public mandates or standards about their structure, operations, and policies. The authors’ experiences and research reveal three “myths” that, singly or collectively, underlie claims that charitable assets are public money. The first myth conceives of charities as shadow governments …


Introduction To Symposium, Who Guards The Guardians?: Monitoring And Enforcement Of Charity Governance (With D. Reiser), Evelyn Brody Mar 2005

Introduction To Symposium, Who Guards The Guardians?: Monitoring And Enforcement Of Charity Governance (With D. Reiser), Evelyn Brody

Evelyn Brody

No abstract provided.


The Twilight Of Organizational Form For Charity: Musings On Norman Silber, A Corporate Form Of Freedom: The Emergence Of The Modern Nonprofit Sector (Book Review), Evelyn Brody Mar 2002

The Twilight Of Organizational Form For Charity: Musings On Norman Silber, A Corporate Form Of Freedom: The Emergence Of The Modern Nonprofit Sector (Book Review), Evelyn Brody

Evelyn Brody

No abstract provided.


The Limits Of Charity Fiduciary Law, Evelyn Brody Mar 1998

The Limits Of Charity Fiduciary Law, Evelyn Brody

Evelyn Brody

Trustees of charitable trusts and directors of nonprofit corporations operate under legal regimes designed for their for-profit cousins. In the absence of private beneficiaries or shareholders to look after their own interests, however, charity fiduciaries frequently escape accountability for their self-dealing and neglect or mismanagement. Few charities have members endowed with voting rights, and state attorneys general have limited resources to devote to monitoring the nonprofit sector. Similarly, at the federal level, the Internal Revenue Service is a tax collector, not a policing agency (although its new powers to tax excess benefits will undoubtedly draw it further into charity operations). …


Hocking The Halo: Implications Of The Charities' Winning Briefs In Camps Newfound/Owatonna, Inc., Evelyn Brody Mar 1998

Hocking The Halo: Implications Of The Charities' Winning Briefs In Camps Newfound/Owatonna, Inc., Evelyn Brody

Evelyn Brody

In Camps Newfound/Owatonna, the petitioner charity – with important assistance from friends-of-the-court charities – persuaded the Supreme Court to overturn a Maine statute that granted property tax exemption only to those charities primarily serving state residents. Camps Newfound/Owatonna, Inc. v. Town of Harrison, 117 S. Ct. 1590 (1997). Given this statute's facial discrimination, why was victory a 5-4 squeaker? The charities naturally reasoned that coming within the Commerce Clause requires proving that charities engage in commerce (particularly interstate commerce). In their focus on the financial impact of the discriminatory statute, however, the charities never offered a positive construct of property-tax …


Introduction To Nonprofit Symposium Issue, Evelyn Brody Mar 1998

Introduction To Nonprofit Symposium Issue, Evelyn Brody

Evelyn Brody

No abstract provided.


Charitable Endowments And The Democratization Of Dynasty, Evelyn Brody Mar 1997

Charitable Endowments And The Democratization Of Dynasty, Evelyn Brody

Evelyn Brody

Charitable endowments and other passive investments exceed $425 billion. Why do many donors require that the principal of their contribution must be held in perpetuity, and that only the income may be used for charitable purposes? Why do most charity managers voluntarily accumulate operating surpluses, and reinvest a portion of real endowment income? This Article suggests that rather than looking at how charities use their endowment income, we should focus on what happens to the endowment principal. It appears that the taste for perpetual charitable endowments persists as the happy co-incidence of donors' desire for immortality for themselves and their …


Agents Without Principals: The Economic Convergence Of The Nonprofit And For-Profit Organizational Forms, Evelyn Brody Mar 1996

Agents Without Principals: The Economic Convergence Of The Nonprofit And For-Profit Organizational Forms, Evelyn Brody

Evelyn Brody

Are nonprofit organizations 'different' from firms with owners? The accepted economic account holds that nonprofits are more trustworthy than business firms because nonprofits cannot distribute profits to owners. However, all firms, nonprofit or proprietary, have converged into similar patterns of behavior. Firms, whether nonprofit or proprietary (or even public), are subject to many of the same economic forces, such as resource dependency, institutional isomorphism, and organizational slack. Even in the absence of shareholders somebody still has to run the enterprise: to decide what objectives to pursue, and how; to manage its financial and human resources; and to span the boundaries …


Institutional Dissonance In The Nonprofit Sector, Evelyn Brody Mar 1996

Institutional Dissonance In The Nonprofit Sector, Evelyn Brody

Evelyn Brody

Our political and economic system contains three seemingly distinct sectors: public, proprietary, and nonprofit. This division masks serious issues of who should provide welfare services, schooling and health care; who should build infrastructure; who should control private wealth. The nonprofit law takes a laissez faire approach to permissible nonprofit activities, leading many to lament the increasing 'commercialization' of the nonprofit sector. However, an examination of historical as well as current activities engaged in by firms in all three sectors reveals that the basis terms of the social debate are eternal, while institutions dominant at different times and in different places …