Law Commons^™

Solving Charity Failures, Brian L. Frye

Law Faculty Scholarly Articles

“Crowdfunding” is a way of using the Internet to raise money by asking the public to contribute to a project. In the past, asking a large number of people to contribute small amounts of money to a project was expensive and inefficient for most organizations and individuals. By greatly reducing transaction costs, crowdfunding enables anyone to inexpensively and efficiently seek small contributions to a project. While crowdfunding is a new model of fundraising, it has already transformed funding for the arts. For example, the crowdfunding platform Kickstarter distributed more than forty million dollars to the creators of almost seventy-five hundred …

Charities And The Constitution: Evaluating The Role Of Constitutional Principles In Determining The Scope Of Tax Law's Public Policy Limitation For Charities, David A. Brennen

Law Faculty Scholarly Articles

This Article expands the discussion of whether tax-exempt charities, for constitutional law purposes, should be treated as government actors, as private actors or as something in between. While government actors are subject to constitutional law restrictions concerning discrimination and free speech, private non-government actors are not generally subject to these same restrictions. Although tax-exempt charities are often thought of as sovereigns and, thus, government-like, the fact remains that charities are private entities created to serve public purposes. As private entities, charities - like all other private entities - are not necessarily bound by constitutional law principles. Still, the many “public” …

The Power Of The Treasury: Racial Discrimination, Public Policy, And "Charity" In Contemporary Society, David A. Brennen

Law Faculty Scholarly Articles

The Treasury Department is empowered to enforce “established public policy” with respect to tax-exempt charities. Under this public policy power, the Treasury has revoked the tax-exempt charitable status of organizations that discriminated against blacks, organizations whose members engaged in civil disobedience against war, and organizations involved in illegal activity. The Treasury interprets its public policy power as applying to any activity that violates clear public policy. Thus, presumably, the Treasury could use this power to deny tax-exempt charitable status to an organization that engages in conduct that violates assisted suicide laws, anti-abortion laws, or other sufficiently “established” public policies.

The …