Martignetti Planned Giving Advisors

Taxes Don’t Motivate

September 2, 2010

Deductions, Taxes and Tax Day


Donors are not primarily motivated by taxes when they make their giving decisions. Rich, middle, or poor, we all have other considerations and motivations that trump the tax code’s financial incentives. This New York Times piece by Judith Warner, “The Charitable-Giving Divide” explores those greater influences.

I have always believed the Obama proposal to limit charitable deductions for high earners will not have the devastating impact on charitable giving that many predict. The decrease will be small and temporary.

History has shown that giving rebounds within a few years of depression, recession and tax code changes, then continues its gradual rise.

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Your Charity as Creditor: Red Flags Rule

August 31, 2010

The Federal Trade Commission has a delightful new rule, the Red Flags Rule (link is to a 17 page .pdf from the FTC), which may draw your nonprofit into its regulatory web.

Your involuntary participation hinges on the law’s definition of “creditor” and the Red Flags Rule clearly announces that charities can fall within the law’s reach. This has me thinking about red flag football as a kid, when I was routinely forced into involuntary non-participation, after neither team picked me as a player. In an especially low point in my childhood, I was the football.

The Red Flags Rule compels organizations of all types to identify those business processes (red flags) that make them vulnerable to identity theft. Enforcement begins in December of this year.

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Charity Registration Relied On Differently

August 26, 2010

I’ve been collecting examples of how different types of organizations rely on Charity Registration to further their work. Mostly, compliance with the registration laws, which vary from state to state, is cited as a mechanism to protect the public from fraudulent nonprofits. That’s the avowed purpose of these regulations, though I often question whether they’re [...]

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Speaking on October 22nd at the 2nd Long Island Not-for-Profit Fiscal Conference

August 25, 2010

I’ll speak about Charity Registration in the afternoon session #2 at the 2nd Long Island Not-for-Profit Fiscal Conference. What’s great about this event is they promise to have speakers who can “provide the expertise you need in a language you can understand.” I always strive to do that. If you’re in the NYC or Long [...]

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Failure IS an Option, So Let’s Talk

August 24, 2010

I love last week’s New York Times piece by Stephanie Strom, “Nonprofits Review Technology Failures.”  The essential message is that nonprofits will suffer failures, and the charity community is wise to learn from them. I’ve written about the corporatization of nonprofits, which includes donor expectations of outcome measurements (just as shareholders expect of companies).  If your nonprofit [...]

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Corporatization Redux II

August 19, 2010

I’ve posted twice about how state and federal governments and donors are corporatizing nonprofits by treating them like for-profit companies: The Corporatization of U.S. Nonprofits and Corporatization Redux.The Wall Street Journal reports nonprofits are behaving like corporations and treating each other the same, not collegially as in the past. It’s all about marks: trademarks, copyrights [...]

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Unheralded Giving

August 17, 2010

We learned last week that Johnny Carson directed over $150 million from his estate to his foundation. The transfer was only discovered through research by The Smoking Gun. The gifts of securities and royalties were never announced by Carson or those affiliated with him or his foundation. In the Jewish tradition, based on Maimonides’ degrees [...]

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Email Solicitations Have Consequences

August 11, 2010

Recently two friends emailed me about Catalog Choice’s $20,000 Paperless Choice Digital Fundraising Challenge. It’s a contest to encourage nonprofits away from paper solicitations to “successful & replicable digital fundraising campaigns.” Including email. I applaud the idea, co-sponsored by the Overbrook Foundation. The nonprofits that nominate their email fundraising campaigns need to know that in [...]

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The Elusive “Perfect Fit” Employee

August 9, 2010

In the midst of our recession, lots of nonprofit jobs have been shed, which puts lots of qualified people on the street competing for a small number of jobs. That has created a buyers’ market for nonprofit employers, and I’m hearing dismaying stories from job seekers that organizations love their qualifications but are holding out [...]

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Heartstring Charities Failed to Register

August 5, 2010

The Connecticut Attorney General has opened an investigation into two in-state charities that did not register with the office’s Public Charities Unit. The groups worked around leukemia and were accepting donations to help a high profile 22-year-old Yale student. Yale University had referred people to these charities. It would have been so easy to comply [...]

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