This Wall Street Journal article summarizes the work of OMB Watch and others who have responded to the Treasury's revised Anti-terrorist Financing Guidelines. As OMB Watch has noted in it's analysis, the Treasury has moved or modified certain language, while the main focus of the guidelines is maintained.

OMB Watch's commentary on the latest revision says the information-collection recommendations remain "burdensome and unrealistic." Charities also argue that certain federal agencies have begun referencing the guidelines in discussions with nonprofits as if they had the force of law.

The Nonprofit Congress, an initiative of the National Council of Nonprofit Associations (NCNA) has put out "Voices from the Field: The National Meeting Briefing Book", which summarizes the priorities of nonprofits. Six key priorities of nonprofits are outlined, which include; Nonprofit Organizational Effectiveness; Nonprofit Collaboration; Advocacy and Grassroots Community Activities; Partnerships with Government and Business; Public Awareness and Support of the Nonprofit Sector; and Social Change. The National Meeting of the Nonprofit Congress is being held next Monday and Tuesday in Washington, DC, October 16-17, and will hopefully produce a strategic action plan for the nonprofit sector.

The minority staff of the Senate Finance Committee released a report yesterday detailing how five nonprofits have put their tax exempt status at risk in their dealings with lobbyist Jack Abramoff.

The nonprofit groups involved include Americans for Tax Reform, Citizens Against Government Waste, the Council of Republicans for Environmental Advocacy, the National Center for Public Policy Research, and Toward Tradition. The groups may have been willing to provide services and support for Abramoff's clients in exchange for payment, putting their tax-exempt status in jeopardy. The report cited instances, based on Mr. Abramoff’s e-mail, in which Mr. Norquist’s group Americans for Tax Reform had taken money from the lobbyist to perform such services as writing newspaper columns favorable to the clients. The report, which has been referred to the Justice Department and the IRS, further makes recommendations to clarify laws governing tax-exempt nonprofit organizations. Senator Baucus remarked that;

"Nonprofit organizations get a tax exemption because of the expectation that they will provide benefit to the American public. But it seems that on certain occasions, some groups may have improved a lobbyist’s power and profits,” said Baucus. “The Justice Department and the IRS will have to determine whether tax laws were broken. But in my view, these groups’ dealings with Jack Abramoff certainly violated the spirit, and perhaps the letter, of the laws that give charitable and social welfare organizations a break for the good work they’re supposed to do."

An article in today's Washington Post covers the report.

David Kuo, a former staffer in the White House Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives has written a book, "Tempting Faith: An Inside Story of Political Seduction," that outlines how the "faith based" initiative program was used to help GOP candidates. Disturbingly, the book holds claims that applications for federal faith-based funds were sometimes rejected because they were not Christian, despite White House officials insisting that money would be available to all religious groups.

“This is proof that the faith-based initiative was a deplorable sham from day one,” said the Rev. Barry W. Lynn, Americans United executive director. “This initiative was never about helping the poor; it was about shameless partisan politicking. It has undercut the constitutional separation of church and state, and it has been horrible public policy.

The book also asserts that Republican leaders in 2002 and 2004 held these supposed nonpartisan events, often along with Republican candidates, in states and districts with close races to discuss with religious leaders how they could get federal funds.,

Kuo says faith-based office staffers spent a lot of their time trying to prove that religious groups were often denied federal funds because they discriminated in hiring on religious grounds. In fact, staffers were able to find few examples of such conduct. That absence of such evidence dramatically undercuts the Bush administration’s demand that Congress revise civil rights law so that religious groups will be better able to apply for funds.

The Washington Post has this interesting story about an international terrorism financing investigation that began March 2002. More than 15 sites in Northern Virginia were affected by the raids four years ago including charities, businesses, and think tanks, in particular the International Institute of Islamic Thought (IIIT). Noticeably, this investigation is taking a great length of time, reportedly because of an elaborate money trail. During this time, "Some of the organizations raided in 2002 have closed, including several affiliated with Alamoudi, who is serving a 23-year prison term. But the Herndon groups, including IIIT and Safa Trust Inc., are still operating. One of the main organizations named in the 2002 search warrant, the SAAR Foundation, dissolved in 2000." Interestingly, since March 2002, there have only two people have been convicted, but no charges have been made against anyone at the core of the investigation.

The searches primarily targeted a group of Middle Eastern men who operated a tightly connected Herndon-based network of more than 100 organizations, known collectively as the Safa Group, some of which existed only on paper, according to court documents. evidence of the transfer of large amounts of funds from the Safa Group organizations directly to terrorist-front organizations since the early 1990's.

A new report put out by the Urban Institute, "The International Charitable Nonprofit Subsector: Scope, Size, and Revenue", found that U.S. based international nonprofits are running on a decreasing money supply. The report analyzes data from fiscal years 2001-2003 from about 2,600 nonprofits with $25,000 or more in annual revenue, dividing U.S.-based international nonprofits into three main categories; international development and assistance, international understanding, and international affairs.

Of the three-fourths involved in international development and relief assistance, almost four in 10 had negative operating margins in 2003. Forty-four percent of organizations working to improve international understanding, and 47 percent of organizations concerned with international affairs, ran a deficit in 2003, the report says.

However, an increasing number of international nonprofits also have increasing revenue.

The Philanthropy Journal covered the release of this report.

In Ohio

On October 4, a federal judge in Cleveland blocked part of a new Ohio state law that would require naturalized citizens to provide a certificate of naturalization upon trying to vote if a poll worker challenged their eligibility. Fortunately this clear form of discrimination, where naturalized citizens are meant to be treated differently from native-born citizens at the polling place, will be blocked.

Absent proof of citizenship, the person would be allowed to cast a provisional ballot but would have to provide proof of citizenship within 10 days for the vote to count. A group of foreign-born citizens, many from Greater Cleveland, filed a lawsuit in August, saying the new law could lead to ethnic and racial profiling.

The morning the case was being considered, The Cleveland Plain Dealer had this editoral, and this article covering the story the next day.

Arizona

The 2004 Arizona state law that requires voters to present identification when casting ballots and proof of citizenship when registering to vote will not be enforced in the upcoming November election, as decided by the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals on October, 5. Yet, the voter identification law was implemented in the state's primary last month. The Secretary of State shortly after called for an immediate reversal.

Ever since it passed in 2004, Arizona's voter ID law has been challenged in federal court by numerous groups including the Inter Tribal Council of Arizona, the League of Women Voters, the Navajo Nation, the Arizona Civil Liberties Union, the Arizona Advocacy Network and the Mexican-American Legal and Educational Fund.

The Arizona Daily Star News Story can be read here.

Don't miss this cartoon on the IRS Political Activities Compliance Initiative (PACI) posted on Jim Wallis' God's Politics blog.

The Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN), a well respected advocacy group that has been very actively involved with voter registration drives with a particular focus on low income communities, is now being charged with negligence. In Philadelphia, 3,000 voter registration cards that ACORN submitted were rejected because of missing or invalid addresses and in Denver County about 200 cards were found to have similar handwriting on the signatures. The problems found with ACORN's voter registration cards range from nonexistent addresses to forged signatures. The organization disputes these allegations, citing inexperienced workers and says it is working to reduce these problems. ACORN plans to continue working to reduce voting obstacles for the poor.

ACORN was accused of submitting questionable voter registration cards in 2004 in Ohio, Florida, Minnesota, North Carolina and Virginia, and in 2003 in Missouri. Prosecution is rare, and federal lawsuits accusing the group of fraud were dismissed in Florida.

ACORN, which has about 220,000 members nationally, registered 1.2 million people to vote in 2004 and is running voter registration drives in 17 states this year. ACORN recruits new voters in heavily Democratic poor and minority neighborhoods. The group says those areas are the most underrepresented in the political process.

The story can be read here.

BNA Money and Politics (subscription required) reported that the tax-exempt status of charities and other nonprofits will continue to be examined into 2007. On Tuesday the Urban Institute sponsored a forum geared toward nonprofits, at which a Senate Finance Committee aide remarked that the committee will investigate the role of tax code Section 501(c)(3) and 501(c)(4) organizations in politics, including hospitals and universities.

Nonprofit lobbyists told BNA Oct. 4 that it may be easier to move on nonprofit legislation in 2007 because some of the main detractors of charitable reform may be out of Congress or in a lessened position to oppose such legislation. However, some of the remaining issues to be addressed on the subject are more difficult, and more likely to generate resistance in the community, including provisions on donor-advised funds and supporting organizations, they said.