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Advocacy Blog
Friday, June 01, 2007
GWOB Releases Letter to Treasury Dept
Grantmakers Without Borders released a letter to Secretary Paulson about the Treasury Department's Risk Matrix for the Charitable Sector. As a major philanthropic network with over 130 organizations worldwide, GWOB has taken issue with the Treasury's "formulaic chart of ambiguous factors" which asks grantmakers to classify each grantee as "high", "medium" or "low" risk. Since charitable organizations with proven legitimate records, such as the American Red Cross and the Smithsonian Institute are susceptible to scandals, GWOB asks why then should such erratic occurrences warrant an arbitrary label of "high risk." The GWOB letter also challenges the assumption that charities are a major source of terrorist funding, highlights the importance of due diligence and questions the Treasury's definition of "regions known to have a concentration of terrorist activity." According to GWOB, such vague categorizations discourage philanthropic investments in projects incorrectly labeled as "high" risk.
To view the letter, click here.
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