Charity Lawyer Blog

On April 23, 2026, the Treasury Department announced that the IRS intends to revise Form 990 to shed more light on how tax-exempt organizations handle government grants, government contracts, and fiscal sponsorship arrangements. Treasury and the IRS say the goal is to make it easier to track how money moves in and out of exempt organizations and to confirm that public funds a...

Every charity considering a sweepstakes fundraiser hears the same reassurance: as long as you offer a free entry method, you’re not running an illegal lottery. That’s true, but only if the free entry actually works the way the law requires. Most of the compliance problems we see stem from charities that bolt on a free-entry option as an afterthought, without realizing that a ...

In response to thousands of unauthorized donation pages being created by GoFundMe and other fundraising platforms, on June 24, 2026, the National Council of Nonprofits, along with 52 state and regional nonprofit associations representing nearly 40,000 charitable organizations, published a set of principles for ethical online fundraising platforms. The guidelines are not law. ...

Nonprofits operating under I.R.C. 501(c)(3) are obligated to comply with several rules as a condition of tax exemption. One such rule, known as the Johnson Amendment, prohibits organizations from participating or intervening in any political campaign on behalf of or in opposition to a candidate for public office. The prohibition is absolute. There is no allowance for even min...

Ask most people who work with nonprofits what Form 990 is, and you’ll get some version of the same answer: it’s the annual price of admission for tax exemption. File it every year, or risk automatic revocation after three consecutive years of silence.

That’s true for the vast majority of exempt organizations. But it’s not true for everyone. A handful of categories a...