May 8, 2008 | Read Time: 1 minute
As The Wall Street Journal editorial page and others push for former President Bill Clinton to release the names of donors to his foundation, Liz Towne, director of advocacy programs for the Alliance for Justice, worries that other nonprofit organizations will face similar scrutiny.
“The Clinton Foundation, and millions of other public charities, have no legal obligation to disclose their donors. Many have suggested this is a travesty, a miscarriage of justice — ‘bring on the sunshine to the whole 501(c)(3) public charity community,’ they cry,” she writes on the Alliance’s Nonprofit & Foundation Advocacy Blog.
If such disclosure were required, she says, it would discourage support to controversial causes, such as reproductive rights.
She suggests that one possible solution is a proposal in Congress that would force presidential libraries to disclose contributors.
But she wonders why the Journal and other conservative commentators have not promoted the legislation. “It would seem to me that to do otherwise proves that these cries for disclosure are politically motivated,” she writes.
What do you think? Should presidential libraries be required to disclose their donors?
