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Question: May a private corporate foundation or corporate giving program make a grant to a newly-established charity that has not yet received its IRS tax exemption letter? Answer: Yes, but when making a grant to a charity whose application for exempt status is pending before the IRS, a private…

Generally, there is no legal restriction against making grants to churches, synagogues, mosques or other religious institutions. But there are some things foundations interested in such grantmaking should know. For years, private foundations and public charities have recognized religious…

Family foundations use discretionary grantmaking to achieve a variety of purposes. Discretionary grantmaking allows some foundations to avoid strife by giving each branch of the extended family a sum of money that it can think of as its own to control. For others, a discretionary fund provides…

Everything you need to know to stay out of trouble with third-party representatives. Does hearing the sentence "Just make that grant check payable to my fiscal agent" stop you in your tracks? It should. If your potential grantees are washing your grant funds through an accommodating charity that…

Can a 501(c)(3) organization with a donor advised fund at a community foundation make a distribution to itself? Unfortunately, when the law changed under the Pension Protection Act of 2006, this was left unclear. Intermediate sanctions rules prohibit grants and similar payments to donors from a…

Gifts from private foundations to field of interest funds, designated funds, and other funds that are not donor advised, are entirely permissible and do not raise special concerns. Gifts to a donor-advised fund can raise red flags as a potential donor control issue. The law does not prohibit gifts…

When donors to scholarship funds see the impact that their money can have on the life of a student, they are often inspired to contribute more. Sometimes they will add more to the principal of the fund so that future awardees can receive bigger scholarships or more scholarships can be awarded.…

Responding to requests from the Council on Foundations and Independent Sector, the Internal Revenue Service on December 4, 2006 issued interim guidance on several of the donor-advised fund issues arising from the Pension Protection Act of 2006. The IRS notice is available at http://www.irs.gov/pub/…

Ideally, grantmakers will work with an existing charity or other well-established organization to provide disaster relief. But in the months after a disaster, it is not uncommon to see new charities cropping up in efforts to meet the immense and diverse needs of the affected communities. The…

The private foundation executive director was concerned. Members of her board were going to make grants to promote public housing and economic development but none of the groups involved were the typical 501(c)(3)s to which the foundation normally made grants. One possibility seemed to be making a…

In the aftermath of a natural disaster, corporate grantmakers often wish to address the needs of employees and the community at large. Grantmakers must understand the legal rules that govern disaster grantmaking. Below are the answers to many common questions on providing disaster relief. Although…

Corporate grantmakers regularly serve the broader community through grantmaking, promoting employee volunteerism, and other activities. When may a corporate grantmaking entity focus its charitable efforts on assisting its own employees and their dependents? The answer to this question depends on…

In international grantmaking, private foundations often make grants to organizations (“Initial Grantees”) that, in turn, re-grant those funds to other non-public charity organizations or individuals (“Secondary Grantees”). Legal issues arise when a private foundation makes a grant to an Initial…

Since the terrorism attacks on September 11, 2001, grantmakers and other charitable organizations have become quite familiar with the work of the U.S. Treasury Department's Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) in the area of anti-terrorism concerns. OFAC has been one of the key U.S. government…