October 14, 2004 | Read Time: 2 minutes
With Congressional concern about nonprofit groups deepening, the Senate Finance Committee has asked Independent Sector to assemble a national panel of nonprofit experts to recommend legislative actions to help stamp out abuses at charities and foundations.
In a letter that leaders of the Finance Committee sent to Independent Sector, a coalition of about 600 nonprofit groups and grant makers, they also requested that the organization recommend ways to strengthen governance, ethical conduct, and effective practices at nonprofit organizations.
The Finance Committee asked Independent Sector to provide an initial report by February and a final report in the spring.
“There is great value in your bringing together an independent group of leaders with broad experience whose wisdom might inform this process,” said the letter, which was signed by Sen. Charles E. Grassley, Republican of Iowa and the committee’s chairman, and Sen. Max S. Baucus, of Montana, the committee’s top Democrat.
“While we cannot be bound by your panel’s work,” the senators wrote, “we would welcome the recommendations that will be forthcoming from such a panel to assist our legislative efforts to improve oversight and governance of charitable organizations.”
Diana Aviv, president of Independent Sector, expects to name a panel as early as this week, after speaking with about two dozen charity and foundation officials representing a broad section of the nonprofit world. The panel will meet at least monthly and will be supported by several advisory and work groups to consider broad issues on which the Finance Committee wants suggestions.
Delaying Legislation
The Finance Committee’s action — which follows two inquiries it held this summer into the practices of nonprofit groups — signals that it probably will hold off this year on proposing major new charity rules, Ms. Aviv said.
“Instead of limiting the legislative possibilities to a very narrow band of issues that could be considered in a short amount of time,” Ms. Aviv said, “the Senate Finance Committee is showing enormous leadership in restraining its impulses or desires to move very quickly.”
In the letter that Mr. Grassley and Mr. Baucus sent to Independent Sector, they said they were encouraged that nonprofit leaders have expressed a need to be more transparent by adopting such changes as electronic tax filings.
They also said they were encouraged that they had found support for regulatory changes: “We are gratified by the strong degree of support for enacting legislation,” Mr. Grassley and Mr. Baucus wrote.
