tag:theconversation.com,2011:/africa/topics/philanthropy-and-nonprofits-41124/articlesPhilanthropy and nonprofits – The Conversation2024-03-28T12:50:10Ztag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2263552024-03-28T12:50:10Z2024-03-28T12:50:10Z69% of US Muslims always give to charities during Ramadan, fulfilling a religious obligation<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/583547/original/file-20240321-28-vegr40.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C988%2C5620%2C4421&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Members of the Muslim community gather for the first Taraweeh prayer of Ramadan in New York City in 2024.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/members-of-the-muslim-community-gather-for-the-first-news-photo/2066798836">Adam Gray/AFP via Getty Images</a></span></figcaption></figure><p><a href="https://scholarworks.iupui.edu/items/ecaeeffb-5441-4b96-a2f6-ea8220571f22">Nearly 70% of Muslim Americans</a> say they always <a href="https://theconversation.com/what-is-zakat-a-scholar-of-islam-explains-170756">give zakat</a>, a yearly donation of 2.5% of one’s wealth that Islam encourages, during Ramadan according to a new study I worked on.</p>
<p>Ramadan is a month-long period of fasting and spiritual growth during which Muslims refrain from all food, beverages and sexual activity from dawn to dusk.</p>
<p>Our <a href="https://lakeinstitute.org/research/muslim-philanthropy-initiative/">Muslim Philanthropy Initiative</a> research team at Indiana University surveyed 1,136 Muslims across the country in 2023 to assess the connection between Ramadan and zakat. We also looked into demographic differences in Muslim giving <a href="https://theconversation.com/why-ramadan-is-called-ramadan-6-questions-answered-77291">tied to Ramadan</a>.</p>
<p>We found that women, married couples, those who consider themselves to be very religious, people with incomes in the US$50,000-$75,000 range, people in their 30s, and those who are registered to vote are most likely to give the bulk of their zakat during Ramadan.</p>
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<h2>Why it matters</h2>
<p>Billions of Muslims across the world observe Ramadan.</p>
<p>Zakat, one of the <a href="https://crestresearch.ac.uk/comment/islam-five-pillars">five pillars of Islam</a>, is aimed at redistributing wealth and alleviating poverty within the Muslim community. Muslims can give to the poor, people who owe big debts, stranded travelers and those <a href="https://www.zakat.org/zakat-foundations-ceo-wins-lincoln-anti-slavery-award">seeking to free people from slavery or captivity</a> to meet the requirements of zakat.</p>
<p>Muslims often offer zakat during Ramadan through fundraising at <a href="https://ich.unesco.org/en/RL/iftar-eftari-iftar-iftor-and-its-socio-cultural-traditions-01984">iftars</a>, which are gatherings held at sunset where people break their fast together.</p>
<p>Nonprofits that are not led by Muslims tend to focus their fundraising efforts on <a href="https://neonone.com/resources/blog/year-end-giving-statistics/">giving in December</a> and important secular days for campaigns, such as <a href="https://missionwired.com/insights/giving-tuesday-2023-final-report-11-takeaways/">Giving Tuesday</a>. But if these organizations don’t do outreach to Muslims during Ramadan they are less likely to raise money effectively from a <a href="https://theconversation.com/us-muslims-gave-more-to-charity-than-other-americans-in-2020-170689">small but generous population</a>.</p>
<p>Muslim-led U.S. nonprofits do spend a significant amount of time and money on fundraising during Ramadan. But they may not realize the importance of stepping up their efforts to seek zakat from Muslims in their 30s, women, married couples, active voters and those who regularly pray at a mosque.</p>
<p>In previous research projects, we’ve found that <a href="https://hdl.handle.net/1805/29947">U.S. Muslims support both Muslim and non-Muslim nonprofits</a>, donating at least $4.3 billion in 2021, <a href="https://theconversation.com/us-muslims-gave-more-to-charity-than-other-americans-in-2020-170689">including about $1.8 billion in zakat</a>. </p>
<h2>What’s next</h2>
<p>We are partnering with <a href="https://irusa.org/O">Islamic Relief USA</a>, the largest Muslim-led humanitarian charity in the United States which serves people in the United States and internationally, and our colleagues at Indiana University’s <a href="https://philanthropy.indianapolis.iu.edu/institutes/lake-institute/index.html">Lake Institute on Faith and Giving</a> to conduct annual surveys of Muslims in the United States to better understand Muslim giving starting in 2024.</p>
<p>We’re also conducting surveys and focus groups across the world to have a global understanding of Muslim giving. We aim to release data from Pakistan, Kuwait, Jordan, Turkey, Qatar, Indonesia, Malaysia, Japan, South Korea, Bangladesh, Tanzania, Ethiopia, Bahrain, Kyrgyzstan, Italy, Bangladesh and India, in addition to the United States by the end of 2025.</p>
<h2>What still isn’t known</h2>
<p>Additional research is needed to better understand what motivates these donors to give during Ramadan, how much money U.S. Muslims give to charity during Ramadan and the best ways for nonprofits led by Muslims and non-Muslims to engage donors who are moved to support charitable causes during Ramadan.</p>
<p><em>The <a href="https://theconversation.com/us/topics/research-brief-83231">Research Brief</a> is a short take about interesting academic work.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/226355/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Shariq Siddiqui receives funding from The John Templeton Foundation, Doris Duke Foundation for Islamic Arts, Pillars Fund, Proteus Fund, Islamic Relief USA, Zakat Foundation of America, PennyAppeal USA, Mirza Family Foundation, Helping Hand Relief and Development, Nama Foundation and WF Fund. This research study was funded by Islamic Relief USA.</span></em></p>During the month-long period of fasting, the obligation of zakat takes on heightened significance.Shariq Siddiqui, Assistant Professor & Director of the Muslim Philanthropy Initiative, Indiana UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2205742024-03-26T12:40:26Z2024-03-26T12:40:26ZTrump-era tax cuts contributed to a decline in higher ed giving, with fewer Americans donating to colleges and universities<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/580516/original/file-20240307-22-jtbky3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=165%2C141%2C7710%2C4498&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">How many college grads will frequently donate to their alma mater?</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/los-angeles-ca-ucla-holds-a-commencement-ceremony-in-pauley-news-photo/1499075648?adppopup=true">Sarah Reingewirtz/MediaNews Group/Los Angeles Daily News via Getty Images</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Policy changes brought on by the <a href="https://www.irs.gov/tax-reform">Tax Cuts and Jobs Act</a>, which former President Donald Trump signed into law at the end of 2017, appear to have led many small-dollar donors to give less money to colleges and universities – or to stop giving altogether.</p>
<p>Individual donations, whether from graduates or people who didn’t attend those colleges and universities, declined by 4% from US$44.3 billion in the 2017-2018 academic year to $42.6 billion two years later. That’s what <a href="https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=KWFRsxEAAAAJ&hl=en">my colleague</a>, Sungsil Lee, <a href="https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=_iTiG64AAAAJ&hl=en">and I</a> found when <a href="https://doi.org/10.1080/1360080X.2023.2288735">we examined a decade of data</a> regarding charitable contributions to 660 colleges and universities and adjusted the totals for inflation. </p>
<p>We also found that the Trump-era tax reforms led to a 7% decline in the number of individual donors, after controlling for other factors such as enrollment size and tuition. </p>
<p>To estimate the impact of the tax changes, we analyzed data that the Council for Advancement and Support of Education, a nonprofit, collected in its annual <a href="https://www.case.org/research/surveys/case-insights-voluntary-support-education">Voluntary Support of Education Survey</a>.</p>
<p>We analyzed data from 660 public and private colleges and universities from the 2010-2011 to the 2019-2020 academic years – 12-month periods that run from July 1 of a given year through June 30 of the next.</p>
<p>Because we reviewed complete records for the number of donors and the total amount of donations over the decade, we could observe what changes the tax policy reform may have spurred.</p>
<h2>Why it matters</h2>
<p>Many states have essentially <a href="https://www.cbpp.org/research/state-budget-and-tax/unkept-promises-state-cuts-to-higher-education-threaten-access-and">frozen their spending on higher education since 2008</a>, while the cost of running colleges and universities has increased. As a result, public institutions <a href="https://sheeo.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/04/SHEEO_SHEF_FY18_Report.pdf">rely more heavily on the money they get from tuition</a> <a href="https://www.clevelandfed.org/publications/economic-commentary/2017/ec-201705-trends-in-revenues-at-us-colleges-and-universities-1987-2013">and donors</a> than they used to. The declines in both the amount donated by individuals and the number of donors, however, fell more sharply for private institutions than for public ones.</p>
<p>Gifts from individuals, rather than organizations or companies, accounted for <a href="https://www.case.org/resources/voluntary-support-education-key-findings-2020-21">more than 40% of all the money donated</a> in the 2020 academic year – with much of that money coming from very wealthy people. Most of the $21 billion from individuals donations came in very large sums.</p>
<p><a href="https://www.irs.gov/newsroom/heres-a-quick-overview-of-tax-reform-changes-and-where-taxpayers-can-find-more-info">The Trump tax reforms</a>, by sharply increasing the standard deduction, led millions of taxpayers to stop itemizing their tax returns. That means far fewer Americans are deducting charitable donations from their taxable income today.</p>
<p>While more than 43% of all taxpayers with an adjusted gross income between $50,000 and $100,000 <a href="https://www.irs.gov/statistics/soi-tax-stats-individual-income-tax-returns-complete-report-publication-1304">filed itemized tax returns for their 2017 earnings</a>, less than 14% itemized in 2018, according to the IRS.</p>
<p>Those who no longer itemize <a href="https://doi.org/10.1086/708172">have lost a tax break</a>, and for them, every dollar they give to higher ed or any charity has become more expensive.</p>
<p>Although <a href="https://www.case.org/system/files/media/inline/VSE%202022%20Key%20Findings.pdf">approximately 60% of donations to colleges</a> came from foundations and other philanthropic organizations, <a href="https://doi.org/10.2979/phileduc.1.1.02">these donations are highly concentrated</a> and primarily benefit a few dozen prominent universities. The decline of individual donations can be a particularly big problem for small colleges, we found. </p>
<p>To be sure, other factors, such as <a href="https://doi.org/10.1177/0899764018800791">economic trends</a> and <a href="https://doi.org/10.1007/s10734-020-00543-0">the stock market’s performance</a>, can influence giving too. </p>
<h2>What’s next</h2>
<p>We are now researching how colleges and universities are responding to the tax changes and whether their fundraising initiatives and promotional efforts are persuading more individual donors to give – even if they no longer can take advantage of the charitable tax deduction.</p>
<p><em>The <a href="https://theconversation.com/us/topics/research-brief-83231">Research Brief</a> is a short take about interesting academic work.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/220574/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Jin Lee does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Researchers who analyzed a decade of data detected a reduction in giving after millions of Americans stopped getting a tax break tied to charitable giving.Jin Lee, Associate Professor of Educational Foundations and Leadership, University of Louisiana at LafayetteLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2253442024-03-18T17:38:17Z2024-03-18T17:38:17ZDonor-advised funds: US regulators are scrambling to catch up with the boom in these charitable giving accounts<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/582340/original/file-20240316-18-84zsoq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C817%2C4767%2C3172&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">DAFs more or less operate as a mini foundation.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/photo/golden-piggy-bank-and-golden-coins-3d-render-royalty-free-image/1484749250?adppopup=true">Wong Yu Liang/Moment via Getty Images</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>A <a href="https://www.philanthropy.com/article/a-short-history-of-the-fast-and-furious-rise-of-dafs">revolution in charitable giving</a> is underway due to the growth of donor-advised funds in the United States.</p>
<p>Known widely as DAFs, these <a href="https://www.nptrust.org/what-is-a-donor-advised-fund/">financial accounts are designated for charitable giving</a>. Donors can get an immediate tax deduction by putting money or other assets into the accounts, and advise the accounts’ managers to give away the money at a later date.</p>
<p>After years of concerns about how quickly the money reserved for charity gets distributed and whether donor-advised funds need to operate more transparently, <a href="https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2023/11/14/2023-24982/taxes-on-taxable-distributions-from-donor-advised-funds-under-section-4966">proposed new federal regulations</a> are now pending. Though the regulations would not create new requirements for how rapidly these funds distribute money, they do provide some new guidelines for what <a href="https://www.nptrust.org/what-is-a-donor-advised-fund/grantmaking-rules/">uses for DAFs are allowed</a> by law.</p>
<p>As <a href="https://fisher.osu.edu/people/mittendorf.3">an accounting researcher</a> <a href="https://theconversation.com/donor-advised-funds-charities-with-benefits-74516">who studies DAFs</a>, I believe these new changes may mark the start of what could become a series of reforms.</p>
<h2>Nearly $230 billion</h2>
<p>DAFs have been <a href="https://cof.org/sites/default/files/documents/files/DAF-timeline.pdf">around since the 1930s</a> but got off to a slow start. After decades of being concentrated in community foundations, DAFs became more widely accessible with the introduction of <a href="https://www.investmentnews.com/industry-news/news/fidelity-charitable-reveals-record-year-in-philanthropic-giving-249461">Fidelity Charitable</a> – a DAF-sponsoring organization tied to Fidelity Investments – in 1991.</p>
<p>Many more DAF sponsors <a href="https://www.thinkadvisor.com/2023/07/20/5b-in-giving-shows-rapid-rise-of-donor-advised-funds-schwab-charitable/">connected to investment companies</a> have since emerged. </p>
<p>Because donors <a href="https://www.investopedia.com/articles/managing-wealth/080216/donoradvised-funds-benefits-and-drawbacks.asp">get tax breaks when they put money in them</a> and can then wait a long time before distributing it to nonprofits, DAFs essentially operate as <a href="https://www.taxpolicycenter.org/taxvox/should-congress-curb-donor-advised-funds">streamlined foundations</a>.</p>
<p>DAFs are not, however, subject to the same restrictions.</p>
<p>Foundations have to disclose their donors to the public and also have to distribute minimum amounts for charitable use each year. <a href="https://www.givedirectly.org/donor-advised-funds/">DAFs face</a> <a href="https://www.philanthropyroundtable.org/behind-the-debate-examining-the-measures-of-daf-payout/">neither requirement</a>.</p>
<p><a href="https://philanthropynewsdigest.org/news/daf-grants-to-charities-totaled-52-billion-in-2022-report-finds">DAFs held nearly US$230 billion in assets by the end of 2022</a> and distributed some $52 billion to charities that year. Those are significant sums as giving of all kinds <a href="https://theconversation.com/us-charitable-donations-fell-to-499-billion-in-2022-as-stocks-slumped-and-inflation-surged-207688">totaled about $500 billion that year</a>.</p>
<p>As of 2023 there were about <a href="https://www.nptrust.org/reports/daf-report/">2 million donor-advised funds</a>, according to the National Philanthropic Trust.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/582341/original/file-20240316-22-v60hk0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Set of diverse hands and payment methods. Arms with cash, credit cards, banknotes, wallet, putting coins into piggy bank. Hand drawn vector illustration isolated on light background, flat cartoon style." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/582341/original/file-20240316-22-v60hk0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/582341/original/file-20240316-22-v60hk0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=375&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/582341/original/file-20240316-22-v60hk0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=375&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/582341/original/file-20240316-22-v60hk0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=375&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/582341/original/file-20240316-22-v60hk0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=471&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/582341/original/file-20240316-22-v60hk0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=471&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/582341/original/file-20240316-22-v60hk0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=471&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">There are few DAF regulations in place, but that could soon change.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/illustration/set-of-diverse-hands-and-payment-methods-royalty-free-illustration/1491990624?adppopup=true">Olena Zagoruyko/iStock via Getty Images Plus</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>40% don’t distribute a dime</h2>
<p>Critics of DAFs say that the government should require them to <a href="https://www.vox.com/recode/2019/7/25/8891899/john-arnold-billionaire-criticism-donor-advised-funds-silicon-valley-philanthropic-loophole">regularly disburse at least some of their charitable funds</a>.</p>
<p>Foundations have faced that kind of obligation for more than five decades. They must pay out at least <a href="https://www.nptrust.org/donor-advised-funds/daf-vs-foundation/">5% of their assets</a> each year – although some of that money can be used to pay for their operations or even be set aside in a donor-advised fund.</p>
<p>Supporters of DAFs counter that the payout rate for those accounts is already much higher than the foundation floor of 5%. It <a href="https://www.givechariot.com/post/breaking-down-the-donor-advised-fund-market-in-2022">hovers around 20%</a>.</p>
<p>However, that statistic applies to all the money held in DAFs, not what happens with each one of them. <a href="https://johnsoncenter.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/02/DAFRC_Executive_Summary_Key_Findings.pdf">And almost 40% of them don’t distribute any money at all</a> in a given year. </p>
<h2>Calling for change</h2>
<p>Other changes have been proposed over the years, including:</p>
<ul>
<li><p><a href="https://inequality.org/great-divide/private-foundations-dafs-2021/">Not letting foundations count money they put in a DAF</a> toward their annual 5% payout requirement.</p></li>
<li><p><a href="https://www.philanthropy.com/article/an-unlikely-event-the-israel-hamas-war-could-finally-spark-daf-reform">Introducing new disclosure requirements</a> because currently the public, the charity that gets money from a DAF and even the IRS have <a href="https://apnews.com/article/silent-donor-tim-sanders-daf-privacy-9e499583181ed0c8b7d6685fbea31ecb">no way of knowing</a> for sure who originally provided those funds.</p></li>
<li><p><a href="https://www.philanthropy.com/article/donor-advised-funds-let-wall-street-steer-charitable-donations/">Reining in</a> the <a href="https://www.propublica.org/article/the-wall-street-takeover-of-charity">commercial investment companies</a> that have been at the center of much of the growth in DAFs, by limiting the fees they can earn or <a href="https://ssir.org/articles/entry/the_problem_with_donor_advised_fundsand_a_solution">restricting the ties</a> between them and their affiliated charities.</p></li>
</ul>
<h2>IRS regulations</h2>
<p>The IRS released <a href="https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2023/11/14/2023-24982/taxes-on-taxable-distributions-from-donor-advised-funds-under-section-4966">proposed new DAF regulations</a> at the end of 2023, and gave the <a href="https://www.regulations.gov/document/IRS-2023-0053-0001/comment">public an opportunity comment</a> on them.</p>
<p>The <a href="https://www.philanthropy.com/article/proposed-irs-regulations-of-donor-advised-funds-fall-short-critics-say">proposed regulations</a> <a href="https://nonprofitlawblog.com/proposed-donor-advised-fund-regulations-what-is-a-donor-advised-fund/">would clarify what constitutes a DAF</a>, who is considered a fund’s adviser, and restrictions on DAF disbursements.</p>
<p>Though largely focused on definitions, these proposed regulations are not without teeth. Nor <a href="https://www.philanthropy.com/article/proposed-irs-regulations-of-donor-advised-funds-fall-short-critics-say">have they been immune to controversy</a>.</p>
<p>The proposed regulations would identify certain distributions as taxable and declare that donors are not the only parties considered DAF advisers – the <a href="https://www.mcguirewoods.com/client-resources/alerts/2024/2/donor-advised-funds-proposed-regulations/">donors’ personal financial advisers</a> are, too. This means the financial advisers, like donors, cannot receive any benefits from a DAF.</p>
<p>In identifying taxable distributions, the regulations include the possibility that funds used to support <a href="https://www.taxnotes.com/research/federal/other-documents/public-comments-regulations/nonprofits-group-targets-trouble-spots-donor-advised-fund-regs/7j6vy#7j6vy-0000011">lobbying or activities tied to political campaigns</a> could lead to penalties for both the donor and the fund’s manager. And <a href="https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=4744533">evidence suggests</a> DAFs are commonly used to support lobbying.</p>
<p>A <a href="https://www.mossadams.com/articles/2024/01/proposed-regulations-on-donor-advised-funds">tax would be levied on the DAF totaling 20% of the distribution and another 5%</a> charged to a participating fund manager.</p>
<p>By including <a href="https://www.investmentnews.com/regulation-and-legislation/news/industry-awaits-an-answer-on-proposed-donor-advised-fund-regulations-250293">a donor’s personal financial adviser</a> in the group considered advisers to the DAF, investment fees paid to such financial advisers for their services would become <a href="https://www.cadwalader.com/brass-tax/index.php?nid=79&eid=336">impermissible “excess benefit” transactions</a>. As such, the proposed new rules would require the <a href="https://www.mcguirewoods.com/client-resources/alerts/2024/2/donor-advised-funds-proposed-regulations/">repayment of their compensation plus a 25% penalty</a>.</p>
<p><a href="https://www.philanthropyroundtable.org/roundtable-submits-comment-letter-on-proposed-rules-for-donor-advised-funds/">Some DAF proponents</a> have objected to the proposed regulations. A key concern they’ve expressed has to do with what the regulations could mean for <a href="https://www.sifma.org/resources/submissions/irs-proposed-rule-taxes-on-taxable-distributions-from-donor-advised-funds/">financial advisers</a>. </p>
<p>Since financial advisers often oversee investments of both the donor and the donor’s charitable funds, such dual advisory roles may be eliminated by the threat of penalties. </p>
<h2>Changes possible in Congress</h2>
<p>Additional, bigger, changes could occur in the near future through legislation.</p>
<p>Possibilities include requiring DAFs to disclose donors and connect them with distributions so <a href="https://www.philanthropy.com/article/an-unlikely-event-the-israel-hamas-war-could-finally-spark-daf-reform">the public can follow the money</a> or <a href="https://acceleratecharitablegiving.org/reforms/">delaying tax benefits</a> when donations to DAFs are not immediately distributed to charities to encourage donors with DAFs to dispatch their gifts quickly.</p>
<p>Although legislation aimed at requiring faster payouts was <a href="https://nonprofitquarterly.org/do-donor-advised-funds-require-regulatory-attention/">first proposed in 2014</a>, few lawmakers have made it a priority.</p>
<p>The most recent bill, the <a href="https://www.reuters.com/legal/legalindustry/ace-act-legislation-would-significantly-affect-donor-advised-funds-2021-11-11/">Accelerating Charitable Efforts Act</a>, was first proposed by <a href="https://www.king.senate.gov/newsroom/press-releases/king-grassley-introduce-legislation-to-ensure-charitable-donations-reach-working-charities">Sens. Angus King and Chuck Grassley</a> in 2021. It did not <a href="https://www.investmentnews.com/industry-news/news/daf-payout-bill-stalls-in-congress-229779">amass enough support</a> to garner a vote. At this point, it is <a href="https://inequality.org/research/donor-advised-fund-blocking-reform/">unclear whether the lawmakers will reintroduce</a> that measure.</p>
<p>But <a href="https://blog.candid.org/post/donor-advised-funds-daf-growth-popularity-in-philanthropy/">as DAFs play an ever larger</a> role in charitable giving, I believe that Congress will eventually have to take action if it wants to meaningfully regulate this new charitable environment.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/225344/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Brian Mittendorf does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Big changes would require an act of Congress but lawmakers have not stepped up. And there’s been pushback against new rules the IRS has proposed for these accounts reserved for giving.Brian Mittendorf, Professor of Accounting, The Ohio State UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2255092024-03-18T12:28:06Z2024-03-18T12:28:06ZAmid growth in AI writing tools, this course teaches future lawyers and other professionals to become better editors<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/581594/original/file-20240313-18-ljzu6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=20%2C93%2C6852%2C4260&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Even the best paragraphs may have room for improvement.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/photo/cyber-law-or-internet-law-concept-with-ai-robot-royalty-free-image/1350320510?phrase=law+students+writing+ai+&adppopup=true">PhonlamaiPhoto via Getty Images</a></span></figcaption></figure><figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="Text saying: Uncommon Courses, from The Conversation" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/499014/original/file-20221205-17-kcwec8.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/499014/original/file-20221205-17-kcwec8.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=375&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/499014/original/file-20221205-17-kcwec8.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=375&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/499014/original/file-20221205-17-kcwec8.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=375&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/499014/original/file-20221205-17-kcwec8.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=471&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/499014/original/file-20221205-17-kcwec8.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=471&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/499014/original/file-20221205-17-kcwec8.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=471&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<p><em><a href="https://theconversation.com/topics/uncommon-courses-130908">Uncommon Courses</a> is an occasional series from The Conversation U.S. highlighting unconventional approaches to teaching.</em> </p>
<h2>Title of Course:</h2>
<p>“Editing and Advocacy”</p>
<h2>What prompted the idea for the course?</h2>
<p>In part, I wanted to improve the career prospects of the law students, business students and other aspiring professionals I teach. People who can consistently improve the sentences and paragraphs that come across their desk each day have the opportunity to improve the way ideas and messages are communicated. Who wouldn’t want to add someone like that to their company, government agency or nonprofit organization?</p>
<p>Mostly, though, I designed the course so that my students can experience the empowering magic that comes with being able to take a string of words — whether drafted by themselves or somebody else — and transform them into a revised version that is undeniably better than the original. </p>
<h2>What does the course explore?</h2>
<p>Students edit emails. They edit contracts. They edit memos, articles, speeches, proposals, text messages, blog posts — pretty much anything that lawyers and other professionals compose. Sometimes they edit alone. Other times they edit as part of a team. But the goal is always the same: learn and practice a skill that is fundamental to becoming an excellent advocate.</p>
<h2>Why is this course relevant now?</h2>
<p>I first starting teaching “Editing and Advocacy” a few years before the launch of ChatGPT and other generative AI tools. But now that those tools have significantly reduced the cost of producing drafts, the course’s focus on revising drafts — for accuracy, for clarity, for persuasive power — has taken on a newfound relevance.</p>
<p>For instance, when asked how AI might affect what he and other members of the knowledge economy do, tech journalist <a href="https://www.theringer.com/2023/3/21/23649894/the-ai-revolution-could-be%2520-bigger-and-weirder-than-we-can-imagine.">Charlie Warzel suggested</a> that “the greatest skill that we can all have now is to be ‘editors.’” We may, he noted, start to spend an increasing amount of time correcting and refining AI-produced material.</p>
<p>Ilona Logvinova, associate general counsel and head of innovation for the legal department at consulting giant McKinsey, <a href="https://wsjcustomevents.com/lexisnexis2024">made a similar point</a>, telling attendees at a recent conference on the use of AI in law: “I really believe that we’re at a moment where we, as lawyers, can transition from being ‘drafters’ to being ‘editors.’”</p>
<h2>What’s a critical lesson from the course?</h2>
<p>One of the most critical lessons is something I put front and center on the syllabus: “Good editors don’t just see the sentence that was written. They see the sentence that might have been written. They know how to spot words that shouldn’t be included and summon up ones that haven’t yet appeared. Their value comes not just from preventing mistakes but also from discovering new ways to improve a piece’s style, structure, and overall impact.”</p>
<p>The current generation of AI tools is really good at proofreading. But so far, I haven’t encountered any large language model that has the vision, empathy and deep understanding of both context and nuance — not to mention of personal voice —required of a truly exceptional editor.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="A woman peers into a book while seated at her desk, which has both a desktop and a laptop computer." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/582048/original/file-20240314-21-w762u1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/582048/original/file-20240314-21-w762u1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=338&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/582048/original/file-20240314-21-w762u1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=338&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/582048/original/file-20240314-21-w762u1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=338&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/582048/original/file-20240314-21-w762u1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/582048/original/file-20240314-21-w762u1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/582048/original/file-20240314-21-w762u1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">Experts say editing will take on greater importance in the age of artificial intelligence.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Laurence Dutton via Getty Images</span></span>
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<p>That doesn’t mean that a technology with those capacities won’t eventually develop, nor that the technology we already have can’t provide enormously useful editing assistance. In fact, more and more of my assignments in “Editing and Advocacy” give students a chance to play around with ChatGPT-like tools. I have also created an entirely separate course called “Digital Lawyering: Advocacy in the Age of AI” that explores the possibilities – and pitfalls – of using artificial intelligence as a kind of co-counsel.</p>
<p>But as I often remind students in both classes, editing is as much about imagination, emotional intelligence and restraint as it is about syntax, semicolons and subject-and-verb agreement. A good way to become better at it is to cultivate the parts of you that are most human. </p>
<h2>What materials does the course feature?</h2>
<p>Hoping to save my students some money — and wanting to make the materials of the course easily available online — I worked with the <a href="https://www.publishing.umich.edu/our-mission">publishing team</a> at the University of Michigan to create a set of open-access books that anyone with an internet connection can read for free. These include “<a href="https://www.fulcrum.org/concern/monographs/hq37vr12w">Editing and Advocacy</a>,” “<a href="https://www.fulcrum.org/concern/monographs/dv13zw31v">Notes on Nuance</a>,” “<a href="https://www.fulcrum.org/concern/monographs/f1881p37d">Punctuation and Persuasion</a>” and “<a href="https://www.fulcrum.org/concern/monographs/8623j145m">Feedback Loops: How to Give and Receive High-Quality Feedback</a>.”</p>
<h2>What will the course prepare students to do?</h2>
<p>Editing involves reliably making informed, value-creating decisions. You need to know what to add. You need to know what to delete. You need to know what to separate, combine and rearrange. Students in the course study, evaluate and regularly participate in those types of decisions. In the process, they develop an extremely important and highly transferable skill: good judgment.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/225509/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Patrick Barry does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Learning how to produce polished prose can greatly enhance your value on the job.Patrick Barry, Clinical Assistant Professor and Director of Digital Academic Initiatives (University of Michigan Law School) | Visiting Lecturer (University of Chicago Law School) | Visiting Lecturer (UCLA School of Law), University of MichiganLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2232592024-03-11T12:23:54Z2024-03-11T12:23:54ZHow ‘hometown associations’ help immigrants support their communities in the US and back in their homelands<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/580317/original/file-20240307-26-6881fx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=84%2C53%2C5028%2C3119&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Many Mexican immigrants stay connected to communities in their country of origin.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/photo/merged-flags-of-usa-and-mexico-painted-on-concrete-royalty-free-image/640127588?adppopup=true">ronniechua/iStock via Getty Images Plus</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>“<a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/24357864">Hometown associations</a>,” also known as migrant clubs, are nonprofits formed by immigrants who are originally from the same place in their country of origin. They serve as <a href="https://doi.org/10.1080/10841806.2024.2313386">channels through which immigrants make charitable gifts</a> that help people settle in their new country while also aiding communities back in their homelands. Many <a href="https://www.rutgersuniversitypress.org/mexican-hometown-associations-in-chicagoacan/9780813564920/">were created in the 1990s</a>.</p>
<p>Mexican hometown associations are the most widely established. </p>
<p>But <a href="https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1471-0374.2006.00130.x">Turkish</a>, <a href="https://ideas.repec.org/p/pri/cmgdev/wp11-03aagarwala-india-report-march-2011.pdf.html">Indian</a>, <a href="https://doi.org/10.1080/13691830500178147">Filipino, Guatemalan, Salvadoran</a>, <a href="https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/the-global-ethiopian-diaspora-shimelis-bonsa-gulema/1144167013">Ethiopian</a>, <a href="https://doi.org/10.1080/1369183X.2013.871492">Bolivian</a>, <a href="https://doi.org/10.1515/9781782387350-005">Colombian and Dominican</a> immigrants, among others, have created them too. </p>
<h2>Why hometown associations matter</h2>
<p>I’m a <a href="https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=a8EwKzoAAAAJ&hl=en&oi=ao">scholar of philanthropy</a> who has recently studied the Mexican hometown associations that support causes on <a href="https://doi.org/10.1080/10841806.2024.2313386">both sides of the U.S. southern border</a>.</p>
<p>In particular, I researched the associations that make up the <a href="https://www.facebook.com/FederacionZacatecanaEnIllinois/?locale=es_LA">Federación de Clubes Unidos Zacatecanos en Illinois</a>. </p>
<p>This federation, formed by immigrants from towns in the Mexican state of Zacatecas who moved to Illinois, includes 15 active associations. Each has between 20 and 500 members.</p>
<p>Since 1995, these nonprofits have helped newly arrived Mexican immigrants in the communities where they now live and residents of their original Zacatecan hometowns. For example, they help Mexican American students in Illinois pay for college, as well as chip in to cover some higher-ed costs for Mexican students back in Zacatecas.</p>
<p>The associations also contribute to projects that benefit their communities back in Zacatecas. Examples include paving roads, establishing athletic fields, installing electricity, increasing access to clean water and building everything from churches to health clinics. </p>
<p>The groups raise money by holding member breakfasts, mariachi concerts, raffles and other events in Chicago and elsewhere in Illinois. <a href="https://www.facebook.com/FederacionZacatecanaEnIllinois/videos/rifa-fcuzi/248498930146336/?locale=es_LA">Their fundraisers can generate</a> anywhere from a couple of thousand dollars to tens of thousands annually. </p>
<p>Many of these groups have <a href="https://doi.org/10.1002/psp.1958">informal origins</a>. Some got their start when immigrants were gathering for other reasons, such as <a href="https://go.gale.com/ps/i.do?p=AONE&u=anon%7Ec73a92bc&id=GALE%7CA282581052&v=2.1&it=r&sid=googleScholar&asid=86ff5d91">taking part in local soccer and baseball games</a>. Today, most hometown associations remain led by volunteers. </p>
<p>Even with volunteer leadership, in the Mexican case, these associations have adopted more formal approaches to their operations over the years. They gather in local community centers, which they often own. </p>
<h2>Collective remittances</h2>
<p>Hometown associations are an example of what’s known as <a href="https://doi.org/10.1111/j.0012-155X.2004.00380.x">collective remittances</a>, the technical term for immigrants pooling money earned abroad and sending it back to their homelands.</p>
<p>All told, immigrants around the world <a href="https://www.migrationdataportal.org/themes/remittances">send about US$860 billion</a> back to their homelands every year through remittances. This money flows directly to family and friends, helping them pay for housing, food and other expenses.</p>
<p>This estimate leaves out collective philanthropy, including the money that hometown associations send back to their homelands. I’ve never found a reliable estimate of the scale of hometown associations’ charitable contributions. Even the number of associations across immigrant groups is not fully determined, making estimates of their collective donations hard to calculate. </p>
<p>But what I have observed is how the members of hometown associations team up to serve their communities in ways that don’t involve only money. They voluntarily devote their time, labor and knowledge to help their countries of origin for the public good.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/223259/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Susan Appe's research was supported by the U.S. Fulbright Program and The U.S.-Mexico Commission for Educational Exchange (COMEXUS).</span></em></p>Mexican groups are the most common, but immigrants from Turkey, Bolivia and many more countries have formed their own.Susan Appe, Associate Professor of Public Administration and Policy, University at Albany, State University of New YorkLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2235372024-03-05T14:34:39Z2024-03-05T14:34:39ZDonations by top 50 US donors fell again in 2023, sliding to $12B − Mike Bloomberg, Phil and Penny Knight, and Michael and Susan Dell led the list of biggest givers<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/578433/original/file-20240227-22-ys3u32.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C0%2C3008%2C1868&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Penny Knight and Phil Knight were the second-largest givers of 2023.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.wishtv.com/news/education/indiana-lawmakers-join-gop-led-states-trying-to-target-college-tenure/">Michael Hickey/Getty Images</a></span></figcaption></figure><p><em>The top 50 American individuals and couples who gave or pledged the most to charity in 2023 committed US$12 billion to foundations, universities, hospitals and more. That total was 28% below an inflation-adjusted $16.5 billion in 2022, according to the <a href="https://www.philanthropy.com/page/philanthropy-50">Chronicle of Philanthropy</a>’s latest annual tally of these donations.</em></p>
<p><em>The Conversation U.S. asked <a href="https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=VYsdAEIAAAAJ&hl=en">David Campbell</a>, <a href="https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=c__VVwsAAAAJ&hl=en&oi=ao">Angela R. Logan</a> and <a href="https://philanthropy.iupui.edu/people-directory/moody-michael.html">Michael Moody</a>, three scholars of philanthropy, to assess the significance of these gifts and to consider what they indicate about the state of charitable giving in the United States.</em></p>
<h2>What trends stand out overall?</h2>
<p><strong>David Campbell:</strong> <a href="https://theconversation.com/donations-by-top-50-us-donors-dropped-sharply-to-16-billion-in-2022-bill-gates-elon-musk-mike-bloomberg-and-warren-buffett-lead-the-list-of-biggest-givers-199732">As was the case in 2022</a>, more than one-third of these big gifts – $4.4 billion – went to donors’ personal foundations. Another $764.3 million flowed into donor-advised funds. Also known as DAFs, these charitable savings accounts make it possible for donors to reserve assets such as cash, stocks and bonds for future charitable gifts.</p>
<p>That’s not necessarily a bad thing, but it does mean that a significant amount of the money these wealthy Americans technically gave away in 2023 didn’t get in the hands of charities right away. And while foundations must <a href="https://www.ncfp.org/2008/10/15/what-is-the-5-payout-rule/">give away or spend 5% of their assets every year</a>, there are no such requirements for DAFs.</p>
<p>Many of the same wealthy people make this list every time, and they stick with a few main priorities. Media mogul and former New York City Mayor <a href="https://www.bloomberg.org/public-health/">Mike Bloomberg</a>, for example, puts a lot of his charitable money into public health.</p>
<p><strong>Michael Moody:</strong> One thing that stands out for me is what’s missing. This list doesn’t include some billionaires known to give significant amounts of money to charity, and it doesn’t reflect all the ways that the wealthiest Americans seek to do good aside from giving to charitable organizations. </p>
<p>The list leaves out anonymous donors, such as the one who in 2023 <a href="https://www.mcpherson.edu/2023/07/mcpherson-college-establishes-1-billion-endowment/">catapulted the endowment of McPherson</a>, a small college in Kansas, past the $1.5 billion mark. It also omits a very prominent billionaire donor: author and philanthropist MacKenzie Scott.</p>
<p>Scott openly discusses her giving in periodic essays posted to the internet, including one in December 2023 when she described the <a href="https://yieldgiving.com/essays/giving-update/">more than $2.1 billion she had given</a> in the previous 12 months to <a href="https://yieldgiving.com/gifts?essay=20231206">360 nonprofits</a>.</p>
<p>However, this sort of self-disclosure doesn’t fit the <a href="https://www.philanthropy.com/article/how-the-chronicle-compiled-its-list-of-the-top-50-donors-of-2022">Chronicle of Philanthropy’s methodology</a>. To avoid counting the same donation twice, it acknowledges only those gifts that go directly to charities or are made to foundations and other intermediaries such as DAFs. Without specific information from Scott or her representatives about which vehicles she uses and how much money she funnels through them each year, they leave her off the list. </p>
<p>Another <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2023/02/15/investing/elon-musk-charity-donation/index.html">probable omission is Elon Musk</a>, one of the richest people in the world, who leads several companies and <a href="https://philanthropynewsdigest.org/news/elon-musk-donated-1.95-billion-in-tesla-stock-in-2022">designated billions for charity in 2021 and 2022</a>. He has said little about his giving. Details about gifts he’s made to his foundation or other charities usually surface only through mandatory legal filings. Also, <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/musk-says-spacex-tesla-neuralink-boring-company-are-philanthropy-2022-4?r=US&IR=T">Musk has argued that his companies</a> are his best “philanthropy.”</p>
<p>Similarly, other billionaires who regularly make this list also say they use money to do good in ways beyond the charitable gifts summarized here.</p>
<p>John Arnold, who made a fortune by starting and running a hedge fund, and his wife, Laura Arnold, as well as Facebook co-founder Mark Zuckerberg and his wife, Priscilla Chan, often point to ways they pursue their philanthropic goals through for-profit means, as well as through gifts to their foundations and DAFs. <a href="https://philanthropynewsdigest.org/news/laura-and-john-arnold-foundation-to-restructure-as-llc">They reserve large chunks of their fortunes</a> in <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2015/12/03/technology/zuckerbergs-philanthropy-uses-llc-for-more-control.html">limited liability companies</a>, which are private corporations that they use to either make charitable donations or invest in what they believe are socially responsible companies.</p>
<p><iframe id="T04sr" class="tc-infographic-datawrapper" src="https://datawrapper.dwcdn.net/T04sr/3/" height="400px" width="100%" style="border: none" frameborder="0"></iframe></p>
<h2>What surprises you about the biggest donors?</h2>
<p><strong>Campbell:</strong> Last year, <a href="https://theconversation.com/donations-by-top-50-us-donors-dropped-sharply-to-16-billion-in-2022-bill-gates-elon-musk-mike-bloomberg-and-warren-buffett-lead-the-list-of-biggest-givers-199732">I predicted</a> that Melinda French Gates, the ex-wife of Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates, would make the 2023 list and she did. French Gates was the ninth-largest donor of 2023, while her former husband was No. 16.</p>
<p>French Gates has charted her own course by creating <a href="https://www.philanthropy.com/article/melinda-french-gates-effort-aims-to-accelerate-womens-power-and-influence?sra=true">Pivotal Ventures</a>, a limited liability company. But she has continued to give primarily by funding the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the biggest private source of <a href="https://pages.devex.com/rs/685-KBL-765/images/the-top-10-foundations-funding-development.pdf">funding for international development</a>.</p>
<p>French Gates indicated that she <a href="https://www.wsj.com/articles/melinda-french-gates-no-longer-pledges-bulk-of-her-wealth-to-gates-foundation-11643808602">plans to branch out</a> with her philanthropy. But she and Bill <a href="https://www.gatesfoundation.org/about/leadership?division=Co-chairs%20and%20Board%20of%20Trustees">still co-chair the foundation</a> bearing their names.</p>
<p><strong>Angela Logan</strong> Most <a href="https://www.dafresearchcollaborative.org/national-study-dafs7">donor-advised funds aren’t massive</a>. Only 1% of those accounts held balances of $10 million as of late 2021, according to a recent report. Yet, some of the biggest donors of 2023 deposited far more than that.</p>
<p>Tech executive Michael Dell and his wife, Susan Dell, have infused theirs with $486 million, while Phil Knight, the founder of the athletic apparel and footwear company Nike, and his wife, Penny Knight, placed $104 million in their DAF. <a href="https://www.dell.org/what-we-do/">Both couples</a> also have <a href="https://www.causeiq.com/organizations/knight-foundation,911791788/">their own foundations</a>.</p>
<p>I believe it’s worth watching to see whether in the future more of the biggest donors will take this route, rather than creating their own family foundations.</p>
<p>One concern is that there is <a href="https://www.philanthropy.com/article/an-unlikely-event-the-israel-hamas-war-could-finally-spark-daf-reform">no obligation for donors to disclose gifts</a> they make through DAFs, another <a href="https://www.irs.gov/charities-non-profits/public-disclosure-and-availability-of-exempt-organizations-returns-and-applications-requirements-for-private-foundations">difference between them and foundations</a>.</p>
<p>If more of the biggest donors take the DAF route, rather than forming foundations or giving directly to charities, the public would lose access to information about where philanthropic dollars go. And that could potentially further erode trust in charitable giving and nonprofits.</p>
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<h2>What concerns do you have?</h2>
<p><strong>Campbell:</strong> While these gifts are formidable, I still think about those who are not showing up. Only 23 of the top givers are from the <a href="https://www.forbes.com/forbes-400/">Forbes 400 list</a> of the wealthiest Americans.</p>
<p>I find it surprising that many of those with the most to give away are outflanked by others’ generosity. Only 13 of the year’s top donors have signed <a href="https://givingpledge.org/">the Giving Pledge</a>, a “promise by the world’s wealthiest individuals and families to dedicate the majority of their wealth to charitable causes.” This fact leads me to wonder what the long-term plans are for many of the other top donors.</p>
<p>Will they sign to the Giving Pledge? What makes them willing to give so much today but not commit for tomorrow? </p>
<p><strong>Logan</strong> Similarly, I’m struck by the lack of diversity in terms of age among the top givers. More than half of them are over 80. Only one person listed among the youngest members of the Forbes 400 list, Zuckerberg, also made the cut.</p>
<p>Even more intriguing is that, in addition to Zuckerberg, five more of the <a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/savannahborn/2023/10/03/the-youngest-billionaires-on-the-2023-forbes-400-list/">youngest members of the Forbes 400</a> have signed the Giving Pledge: Airbnb co-founders Joe Gebbia, Nathan Blecharczyk and Brian Chesky; Brian Armstrong, CEO of the cryptocurrency platform Coinbase; and Facebook co-founder Dustin Moskovitz. </p>
<p>What makes them willing to commit so much tomorrow but less inclined to give as much today? </p>
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<h2>What do you expect to see in 2024 and beyond?</h2>
<p><strong>Logan:</strong> I feel as though this has been stated every four years since I turned 18, but the 2024 U.S. presidential election will be the most consequential in the nation’s history.</p>
<p>I suspect that in this election cycle, donors are putting more of their philanthropic dollars toward preserving democracy, voter education and the causes that matter to Americans on the left, right and center.</p>
<p>Additionally, even if the conflict between Israel and Hamas ends soon, I expect to see an increase in giving in 2024 to combat both antisemitism and Islamophobia and for that to continue going forward. <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2023/10/29/us/hate-crimes-antisemitism-anti-muslim-dg/index.html">Hate-related crimes</a>, including those targeting Muslims and Jews, have been rising in the U.S. since 2014. And they have surged since Hamas attacked Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, and Israel launched its war on Gaza. That could drive further giving along the lines of the $100 million that New England Patriots owner Robert Kraft provided his <a href="https://www.wsj.com/us-news/robert-kraft-patriots-israel-anti-semitism-0cf70cb4">Foundation to Combat Antisemitism</a> in 2023.</p>
<p><strong>Moody:</strong> I expect that most of the biggest gifts will keep going to foundations and DAFs, as well as higher ed and medical causes. That pattern seems to hold steady, regardless of whatever new culture war, political fight or international conflict is in the headlines.</p>
<p>However, as Angela Logan notes, there are hints that we’ll see more major gifts focused on issues like ethnic conflict, bigotry or racial justice and uplift. One notable example of this in 2023 was the Knights’ <a href="https://philanthropynewsdigest.org/news/phil-knight-invests-400-million-in-portland-s-albina-neighborhood">$400 million pledge to revive a struggling Black neighborhood</a> in Portland, Oregon.</p>
<p>But the world of philanthropy can be surprising sometimes. Donors can make choices no one saw coming, and new donors can burst on the scene. With <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2023/11/30/business/ubs-billionaires-report/index.html">new billionaires emerging</a> at a swift pace, it’s hard to predict what’s going to happen next.</p>
<p>Consider, for instance, the news announced in late February 2024 that <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2024/02/26/nyregion/albert-einstein-college-medicine-bronx-donation.html">Ruth Gottesman donated $1 billion</a> to the Albert Einstein College of Medicine in the Bronx.</p>
<p>Gottesman is a former professor at that medical school. Her husband, <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2022/09/29/business/dealbook/david-s-gottesman-dead.html?searchResultPosition=1">David “Sandy” Gottesman</a>, was a billionaire investor who died in 2022 without putting any strings on what she should do with their fortune. This gift broke with some common conventions.</p>
<p>While she did stipulate that the funds should be be used to make the school tuition-free forever, she didn’t tie the gift to <a href="https://charitylawyerblog.com/2021/06/28/charity-naming-rights-how-to-do-it-right/">naming rights</a>. She insisted, instead, that the college keep its name. Initially, she even <a href="https://www.inc.com/jason-aten/dr-ruth-gottesman-just-gave-1-billion-to-make-tuition-free-at-this-bronx-medical-school-it-comes-with-a-surprising-catch.html">wanted to give the money anonymously</a>. </p>
<p>Will other big donors now follow suit?</p>
<p><em>The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation has provided funding for The Conversation U.S. and provides funding for The Conversation internationally. Arnold Ventures provides funding for The Conversation U.S.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/223537/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>David Campbell is the Chair of the Board of the Conrad and Virginia Klee Foundation. </span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Angela R. Logan is the Board President of the Nonprofit Academic Centers Council.</span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Michael Moody does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Three philanthropy scholars discuss several trends in giving by the wealthiest Americans highlighted in this yearly report. Among them: Much of this money doesn’t go to charities right away.David Campbell, Professor of Public Administration, Binghamton University, State University of New YorkAngela R. Logan, Associate Teaching Professor of Management & Organization, St. Andre Bessette Academic Director of the Master of Nonprofit Administration, University of Notre DameMichael Moody, Professor of Philanthropic Studies, Indiana UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2245892024-03-04T13:38:08Z2024-03-04T13:38:08ZCommunity-based entrepreneurs are leading the way in solving the local news crisis<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/578706/original/file-20240228-20-l0td86.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=30%2C0%2C6679%2C4476&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Local newspapers have been shuttering at an alarming rate for more than a decade.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/photo/african-american-businessman-in-suit-reading-royalty-free-image/1349968313">Prostock-Studio/Getty Images</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>The local news crisis has led to no end of policy proposals, funding initiatives and angry denunciations of the harm done to journalism by the likes of Craigslist, Google and Facebook. </p>
<p>Ideas for responding to the crisis include paying recent journalism school graduates with state tax revenues to <a href="https://journalism.berkeley.edu/state-funds-berkeley-journalism-25-million-to-strengthen-californias-local-news-coverage/">cover underserved communities</a>, as in California; mandating that state agencies <a href="https://localnewsinitiative.northwestern.edu/posts/2024/02/19/illinois-local-news-legislation-stadelman/">direct half of their spending</a> on advertising to community media, as has been proposed in Illinois; and <a href="https://www.editorandpublisher.com/stories/the-community-news-and-small-business-support-act-hr-4756-offering-tax-credits-to,244841">creating tax credits</a> that would benefit subscribers, advertisers and publishers, the subject of several federal and state initiatives. </p>
<p>And those are just a few. </p>
<p>Though all of these have some merit, they share a fundamental flaw: They are top-down solutions to problems that differ from one community to another. </p>
<p>There is an old saying that goes back a dozen years to the earliest days of hyperlocal digital news: <a href="https://streetfightmag.com/2011/05/12/authentically-local-declares-local-doesn%E2%80%99t-scale/">Local doesn’t scale</a>. In fact, I’d argue, the real solution to the local news crisis needs to come from the bottom up – from folks at the community level who decide to take their news and information needs into their own hands. </p>
<p>Examples range from relatively large operations such as <a href="https://coloradosun.com/about-us/">The Colorado Sun</a>, a digital startup founded by 10 <a href="https://www.denverpost.com/">Denver Post</a> journalists who became frustrated with the depredations of the Post’s hedge fund owner, Alden Global Capital, to small outlets such as <a href="https://sahanjournal.com/about-sahan-journal">Sahan Journal</a>, a Minnesota-based project that covers the state’s growing African diaspora.</p>
<p>Reinventing community journalism at the grassroots is the theme of <a href="https://whatworks.news/book">“What Works in Community News: Media Startups, News Deserts, and the Future of the Fourth Estate,”</a> written by <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/ellenclegg/">Ellen Clegg</a> and me. Clegg is retired from top editing positions at <a href="https://www.bostonglobe.com/">The Boston Globe</a>, is a co-founder of the digital nonprofit <a href="https://brookline.news/">Brookline.News</a> and teaches journalism at Northeastern University and Brandeis University. <a href="https://camd.northeastern.edu/people/dan-kennedy/">I’m a journalism professor</a> at Northeastern and the author of two previous books on the future of news. </p>
<p>“What Works in Community News” examines about a dozen projects in nine parts of the country. What they have in common is dedicated leadership at the local level – entrepreneurial journalists who are developing new business models on the fly.</p>
<h2>A growing crisis</h2>
<p>There is no question that the local news crisis is real and growing. According to the most recent report by the Local News Initiative, based at Northwestern University’s Medill School, nearly 2,900 newspapers, mostly weeklies, <a href="https://theconversation.com/wealthier-urban-americans-have-access-to-more-local-news-while-roughly-half-of-us-counties-have-only-one-outlet-or-less-220382">have closed</a> since 2005. That’s about a third of the total. </p>
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<p>Weeklies have traditionally served as the beating heart of community journalism, covering local government, schools and neighborhood issues – not to mention more quotidian matters such as weddings, births, deaths and youth activities that can help draw neighbors together. </p>
<p>A <a href="https://medium.com/office-of-citizen/how-we-know-journalism-is-good-for-democracy-9125e5c995fb">plethora of research</a> suggests that communities that lose their local news source suffer from a variety of ills. Voter turnout declines. Fewer people run for political office. There is even what we might call <a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-05-30/when-local-newspapers-close-city-financing-costs-rise">a corruption tax</a>, as local officials who borrow money to build, say, a new fire station or high school have to pay a higher interest rate in places without reliable community journalism. </p>
<p>Perhaps most disturbing is that news consumers now feed their habit with outraged commentary from divisive national outlets, especially cable news, which in turn helps worsen the problem of <a href="https://theconversation.com/republicans-and-democrats-consider-each-other-immoral-even-when-treated-fairly-and-kindly-by-the-opposition-220002">partisan polarization</a> that is ripping us apart. </p>
<p>Folks who attend school board meetings ought to be talking about test scores and teacher salaries. Instead, they are all too often yelling at their friends and neighbors about such Fox News-driven controversies as COVID-19 restrictions, critical race theory and books they want to ban.</p>
<p>So how might a community without an adequate news outlet go about meeting the needs of its residents? </p>
<h2>Entrepreneurs step up</h2>
<p>What happened in Bedford, Massachusetts, is instructive. A suburb of about 14,000 people located northwest of Boston, the town was at one time home to a weekly newspaper called the Bedford Minuteman. That once-robust weekly had by 2012 been downsized by its corporate owner, GateHouse Media, which later merged into Gannett, the U.S.’s largest newspaper chain.</p>
<p>Three members of the League of Women Voters who had been monitoring local government and reporting back to the membership asked themselves: Why not write this up for the benefit of the public?</p>
<p>Thus was born <a href="https://thebedfordcitizen.org/">The Bedford Citizen</a>, one of the projects that we feature in our book. Over the years, the nonprofit website has grown from an all-volunteer operation into a professional news organization, funded through initiatives ranging from voluntary membership fees to an annual glossy guide that’s filled with advertising and mailed to every household in town.</p>
<p>Today, the Citizen has a full-time editor, a part-time reporter and paid freelancers alongside a contingent of unpaid contributors. The Minuteman, meanwhile, faded away and was <a href="https://dankennedy.net/2022/03/17/gannett-goes-a-massive-spree-of-closing-and-merging-weekly-newspapers/">shut down</a> in 2022 under Gannett’s ownership.</p>
<p>In recent years, hundreds of such projects <a href="https://www.lionpublishers.com/about/">have sprung up</a>, both nonprofit and for-profit. Are there enough to offset the several thousand papers that have closed and continue to close? No. But Clegg and I are optimistic about the continued growth of independent local news.</p>
<h2>Helping underserved communities</h2>
<p>One problem that is not easily solved is what to do about <a href="https://www.niemanlab.org/2024/02/wealther-urban-americans-have-access-to-more-local-news/">underserved populations</a>, especially in rural parts of the country and in urban communities of color. </p>
<p>We visited several projects in such areas, and what we found was that the folks who are running them are struggling.</p>
<p>At the <a href="https://www.stormlake.com/">Storm Lake Times Pilot</a>, publisher-editor <a href="https://whatworks.news/2021/11/15/our-latest-contest-features-an-interview-with-art-cullen-editor-of-the-storm-lake-times/">Art Cullen, a Pulitzer Prize winner, told us</a> on our podcast that he and his brother, John, the paper’s president, do not pay themselves a salary and that they’re collecting Social Security. </p>
<p>Wendi C. Thomas, the founder of the award-winning <a href="https://mlk50.com/">MLK50: Justice Through Journalism</a>, in Memphis, Tennessee, began by running up credit card debt, although she was eventually able to attract grant money.</p>
<p>Ultimately, it is in these lower-income communities where some top-down attention is needed. </p>
<p>The most ambitious initiative to support local news through philanthropy is Press Forward, a consortium of more than 20 foundations that will provide independent community news outlets with $500 million over the next five years. That barely scratches the surface of what is needed, though, and the foundations are now attempting to <a href="https://www.poynter.org/business-work/2024/press-forward-announces-local-expansion/">leverage that money</a> by raising another $500 million at the local level.</p>
<p>In our view, such efforts should be seen as a supplement rather than as an all-encompassing solution.</p>
<p>Consider, for instance, the NewsMatch program administered by <a href="https://inn.org/">the Institute for Nonprofit News</a>. NewsMatch <a href="https://newsmatch.inn.org/">provides funds</a> to local outlets based on how much they are able to raise on their own. Nonprofit journalism leaders need to educate philanthropists in their own communities that news is worth supporting just as much as youth programs or arts and culture. For-profits need to demonstrate their value to would-be subscribers and advertisers.</p>
<p>What Clegg and I have observed in our reporting across the country is that there is no one-size-fits-all solution. Anything can work; anything can fail. </p>
<p>Above all, the local news crisis will not be solved by elected officials or national foundations, though they can surely help. Rather, it will be solved – and is being solved – by visionary entrepreneurs at the grassroots who listen to the needs of their communities.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/224589/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Dan Kennedy does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>As digital news pioneers observed, ‘local doesn’t scale.’ Any solution to the local news crisis is going to involve reporters and editors who are creative and smart about what works for their readers.Dan Kennedy, Professor of Journalism, Northeastern UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2233072024-03-01T13:36:06Z2024-03-01T13:36:06ZRemembering the 1932 Ford Hunger March: Detroit park honors labor and environmental history<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/579009/original/file-20240229-25-snzdp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">A Dearborn policeman knocked unconscious was the first casualty of the 1932 Ford Hunger March in Detroit and Dearborn.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://wayne.contentdm.oclc.org/digital/collection/vmc/id/35955/rec/1">Walter P. Reuther Library, Archives of Labor and Urban Affairs, Wayne State University/Detroit News Burckhardt.</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>The intersection of Fort Street and Oakwood Boulevard in southwest Detroit today functions mostly as a thoroughfare for trucks and commuters. </p>
<p>However, as you sit idling at the stoplight waiting to cross the bridge over the Rouge River, you might glance to the side and see something unexpected in this heavily industrialized area: A sculpture of weathered steel reaches toward the sky alongside a spray of flowers and waves of grasses and people fishing. </p>
<p>This inconspicuous corner, now the home of the <a href="https://www.motorcities.org/fortstreet">Fort Street Bridge Park</a>, has several stories to tell: of a river, a region, a historic conflict and an ongoing struggle. </p>
<p>If you pull over, you’ll enter a place that attempts to pull together threads of history, environment and sustainable redevelopment.</p>
<p>Signs explain why this sculpture and park are here: to honor the memory of <a href="https://www.zinnedproject.org/news/tdih/hunger-march-ford/">protesters who met on this very spot on March 7, 1932</a>, before marching up Miller Road to the massive Ford Rouge River Complex located in the adjacent city of Dearborn. </p>
<p>As a <a href="https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=K9xPsDgAAAAJ&hl=en&oi=ao">sociology professor</a>, I have a strong interest in how the history of labor and industrial pollution have influenced Detroit. </p>
<p>I’m also interested in the potential for <a href="https://doi.org/10.1007/s11252-018-0765-7">environmental restoration</a> or “<a href="https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cities.2019.05.002">green reparations</a>” to <a href="https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cities.2019.05.002">offer a new way forward</a>.</p>
<p>To understand this potential future, we must first recognize and honor the past.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="An iron sculpture commemorates industry and sits as the centerpiece of the Ford Street Bridge Park." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/577974/original/file-20240226-24-rb9wdh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/577974/original/file-20240226-24-rb9wdh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/577974/original/file-20240226-24-rb9wdh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/577974/original/file-20240226-24-rb9wdh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/577974/original/file-20240226-24-rb9wdh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/577974/original/file-20240226-24-rb9wdh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/577974/original/file-20240226-24-rb9wdh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The Fort Street Bridge Park is located along the banks of the Rouge River in southwest Detroit.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Paul Draus</span>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>14 demands</h2>
<p>In their book “<a href="https://www.ueunion.org/labors-untold-story#:%7E:text=Extensively%20researched%2C%20yet%20highly%20readable,conflict%20from%20the%20workers'%20perspective.">Labor’s Untold Story</a>,” published in 1955, journalist Richard Boyer and historian Herbert Morais quote a contemporary account of the Hunger March: </p>
<p><em>It was early, it was cold when the first of the unemployed Ford workers (many of whom had been laid off the day before) arrived at Baby Creek Bridge. They were a small gray group and they stood slapping their sides, warding off the cold, and wondering if they alone would come.</em></p>
<p>Others soon joined them: Black and white, men and women, immigrants and American-born. They united to deliver a list of 14 demands to the auto tycoon <a href="https://corporate.ford.com/articles/history/henry-ford-biography.html">Henry Ford</a>, whose US$5 daily wage for his workers was once considered revolutionary. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="Police with bats follow Hunger March marchers on March 7, 1932." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/579052/original/file-20240229-30-qh3912.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/579052/original/file-20240229-30-qh3912.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=463&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/579052/original/file-20240229-30-qh3912.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=463&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/579052/original/file-20240229-30-qh3912.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=463&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/579052/original/file-20240229-30-qh3912.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=582&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/579052/original/file-20240229-30-qh3912.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=582&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/579052/original/file-20240229-30-qh3912.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=582&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Hunger March protesters demanded better pay and working conditions at the Ford Rouge plant.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://wayne.contentdm.oclc.org/digital/collection/vmc/id/37798/rec/1">Detroit News Staff via Walter P. Reuther Library, Archives of Labor and Urban Affairs, Wayne State University.</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Among the marchers’ demands: jobs for laid-off workers, a seven-hour workday without a pay reduction, two 15-minute rest periods a day, an end to discrimination against Black workers and the right to organize. </p>
<p>This crowd of several thousand marched up the road on one of the coldest days of winter. They were greeted at the Dearborn border with clouds of tear gas, jets of cold water and a shower of bullets. </p>
<p>It was then that the Ford Hunger March became the Ford Massacre. </p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/HFEskpjPbfE?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">Detroit Workers News Special 1932: Ford Massacre via Workers Film & Photo League International.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>The seeds of a labor movement</h2>
<p>Beth Tompkins Bates, in her book “<a href="https://uncpress.org/book/9781469613857/the-making-of-black-detroit-in-the-age-of-henry-ford/">The Making of Black Detroit in the Age of Henry Ford</a>,” wrote that “The response of the Ford Motor Company on that day shot holes in the myth that Ford cared about his workers, that he was different from other businessmen.” </p>
<figure class="align-left ">
<img alt="Black and white portrait of a young man with wavy hair" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/578741/original/file-20240228-32-57ksmd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/578741/original/file-20240228-32-57ksmd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=736&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/578741/original/file-20240228-32-57ksmd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=736&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/578741/original/file-20240228-32-57ksmd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=736&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/578741/original/file-20240228-32-57ksmd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=926&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/578741/original/file-20240228-32-57ksmd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=926&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/578741/original/file-20240228-32-57ksmd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=926&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Portrait of Joe Bussell, killed by Ford Servicemen during the 1932 Ford Hunger March in Detroit. Bussell’s relatives contributed to the Fort Street Bridge Park.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://reuther.wayne.edu/node/7269">Walter P. Reuther Library</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>At the end of the day, four marchers lay dead, while many others were injured and hospitalized. A fifth would die months later of his wounds. </p>
<p>More than 30,000 people showed up for the dead marchers’ funerals. The violent reactions of Ford security and Dearborn police during the march were widely condemned. </p>
<p>In an effort to address the stain on its public image, the Ford family first commissioned then expanded a major work by <a href="https://www.nps.gov/places/detroit-industry-murals-detroit-institute-of-arts.htm">Mexican muralist Diego Rivera</a> that was to become the centerpiece of the Detroit Institute of Arts, known as the Detroit Industry Mural. Rivera, <a href="https://doi.org/10.1017/S0018246X0800678X">a known communist</a>, depicted both ruthless efficiency and the racialized inequality of the industrial process. </p>
<p>Ford’s battle against unions was ultimately a failure. Five years after the Hunger March, the so-called “<a href="https://reuther.wayne.edu/ex/exhibits/battle.html">Battle of the Overpass</a>” led to the organization of the Rouge plant by the United Auto Workers. </p>
<p>The Ford Hunger March, long forgotten by many, is now <a href="https://www.workers.org/2022/03/62190/">acknowledged as an important catalyst</a> in the growth of the union movement. </p>
<h2>Struggle for sustainability and justice</h2>
<p>The fight for sustainability and environmental justice is another major theme of the park, which chronicles the history of the Rouge River, including the day in 1969 when the <a href="https://www.greatlakesnow.org/2019/10/rouge-river-fire-anniversary-great-lakes-moment/">oily water infamously caught fire</a>. </p>
<p>The hellish image of burning rivers helped motivate the signing of the <a href="https://www.boem.gov/air-quality-act-1967-or-clean-air-act-caa">Clean Air</a> and <a href="https://www.epa.gov/laws-regulations/summary-clean-water-act">Clean Water acts</a>, as well as <a href="https://www.epa.gov/history">the creation of the Environmental Protection Agency</a>. </p>
<p>The air and water in and around Detroit are <a href="https://www.greatlakesnow.org/2023/05/once-beset-industrial-pollution-rouge-river-slow-path-recovery/">much cleaner today</a> than they were 1969. But this doesn’t change the fact that the area where the park sits bears a disproportionate burden of the pollution generated by the region’s industrial production, which includes cement plants, gypsum and aggregates processors, salt mining and asphalt storage, as well as a steel mill and petroleum refinery.</p>
<p>Another <a href="https://www.marathonpetroleum.com/content/documents/Citizenship/2018/Sustainability_Report_10_21.pdf">donor to the park</a> is Marathon Petroleum Corporation whose Detroit Refinery occupies the adjoining neighborhood. Though Marathon has invested in the development of green spaces on its own property, the refinery has also expanded in recent years, <a href="https://wdi-publishing.com/product/marathon-petroleum-and-southwest-detroit-the-intersection-of-community-and-environment/">further degrading the local environment</a>.</p>
<p>Research shows that workers <a href="https://doi.org/10.1016/j.pmedr.2021.101502">benefit from unionization</a> in myriad ways, not only directly but indirectly. But <a href="https://theconversation.com/2023s-historic-hollywood-and-uaw-strikes-arent-labors-whole-story-the-total-number-of-americans-walking-off-the-job-remained-relatively-low-219903">recent labor victories</a> by the UAW, Hollywood writers and other organizers stand in stark contrast to the <a href="https://theconversation.com/1-in-10-us-workers-belong-to-unions-a-share-thats-stabilized-after-a-steep-decline-221571">long-term erosion of union membership</a>.</p>
<p>Today, the Fort Street Bridge Park in southwest Detroit serves to remind us of the complexities of history and how apparent progress in one area may be followed by a setback somewhere else. It also represents how the spirit of community, unbroken, keeps pushing for something better.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/223307/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Paul Draus is affiliated with Friends of the Rouge and Downriver Delta CDC, two nonprofit organizations involved with the Fort Street Bridge Park. He is also the facilitator of the Fort-Rouge Gateway (FRoG) Partnership, a coalition of representatives from nonprofit, community-based, academic and industry that is focused on the sustainable redevelopment of the industrial Rouge region. </span></em></p>On March 7, workers at the Ford Rouge River plant marched for better working conditions, sparking America’s labor movement. Almost a century later, a quiet park honors their memory.Paul Draus, Professor of Sociology; Director, Master of Science in Criminology and Criminal Justice, University of Michigan-DearbornLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2226902024-02-27T15:05:30Z2024-02-27T15:05:30ZGifts that live on, from best bodices to money for bridge repairs: Women’s wills in medieval France give a glimpse into their surprising independence<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/577678/original/file-20240223-20-h7u1l8.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=17%2C1%2C949%2C949&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Women's wills and last testaments provide a more nuanced picture of life in the Middle Ages than medieval stereotypes allow, such as that depicted in "Death and the Prostitute" by Master of Philippe of Guelders.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://inpress.lib.uiowa.edu/feminae/DetailsPage.aspx?Feminae_ID=37729">Gallica/Bibliothèque nationale de France/Feminae</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>In medieval Europe, views of women could often be summed up in two words: sinner or saint.</p>
<p>As <a href="https://web.uri.edu/history/meet/joelle-rollo-koster/">a historian of the Middle Ages</a>, I teach a course entitled Between Eve and Mary: the two biblical figures who sum up this binary view of half of humanity. In the Bible’s telling, Eve <a href="https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Genesis%203&version=KJV">got humans expelled from the Garden of Eden</a>, unable to resist biting into the forbidden fruit. Mary, meanwhile, <a href="https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Luke%201&version=KJV">conceived the Son of God</a> without human intercourse. </p>
<p>Either way, they’re daunting models – and either way, patriarchy considered women in need of protection and control. But how can we know what medieval women thought? Did they really accept this vision of themselves? </p>
<p>I do not believe that we can totally understand someone who lived and died hundreds of years ago. However, we can try to somewhat reconstruct their frame of mind with the resources we have available. </p>
<p>Few documents that survive from medieval Europe were written by women or even dictated by women. Those that do are often formulaic, full of legal and religious language. Yet the wills <a href="https://muse.jhu.edu/article/363743">and censuses</a> that survive, and which I study, open a window into their lives and minds, even if not produced by women’s hands. These documents suggest that medieval women had at least some form of empowerment to define their lives – and deaths.</p>
<h2>A centuries-old census</h2>
<p>In 1371, the city of Avignon, in present-day France, <a href="https://doi.org/10.1353/jowh.2010.0480">organized a census</a>. The resulting document is ripe with the names of more than 3,820 heads of household. Of these, 563 were female – women who were in charge of their own household and did not shy away from declaring it publicly.</p>
<p>These were not women of high social status but individuals scarcely remembered by history, who left only traces in these administrative documents. One-fifth of them declared an occupation, including both single and married women: from unskilled laborer or handmaid to innkeeper, bookseller or stonecutter. </p>
<p>Nearly 50% of the women declared a place of origin. The majority came from around Avignon and other parts of southern France, but some 30% came from what is now northern France, southwest Germany and Italy. </p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/577715/original/file-20240224-24-qcjvza.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="An illustration of a blond woman in a pink dress carrying a wooden vessel on top of her head outside." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/577715/original/file-20240224-24-qcjvza.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/577715/original/file-20240224-24-qcjvza.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/577715/original/file-20240224-24-qcjvza.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/577715/original/file-20240224-24-qcjvza.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/577715/original/file-20240224-24-qcjvza.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=948&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/577715/original/file-20240224-24-qcjvza.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=948&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/577715/original/file-20240224-24-qcjvza.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=948&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">An illustration from 11th-century physician Ibn Butlan’s text Tacuinum sanitatis.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/btv1b105072169/f186.image.r=%22Latin%209333%22?lang=EN#">Bibliothèque nationale de France</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The majority of ladies who arrived from faraway regions arrived alone, suggesting medieval women were not always necessarily “stuck” at home under the domination of a father, brother, cousin, uncle or husband. Even if they wound up that way, they seemed to show some guts by leaving in the first place. </p>
<h2>New cities, new lives</h2>
<p>In cities like Avignon, with a large proportion of immigrants, long-lasting lineages disappeared. As <a href="https://ehess.academia.edu/JacquesChiffoleau">historian Jacques Chiffoleau</a> <a href="https://search.worldcat.org/title/9196772">has suggested</a>, most late medieval Avignonese were “orphans” who lacked extended family networks in their new surroundings – <a href="https://doi.org/10.4324/9780203866085">and this was reflected in the culture</a>.</p>
<p>Since the 12th century, women in the south of France had been considered “sui iuris” – capable of managing their own legal affairs – if they were not under a father or husband’s control. They could dispose of their own possessions and distribute them at will, both <a href="https://www.routledge.com/Death-in-Medieval-Europe-Death-Scripted-and-Death-Choreographed/Rollo-Koster/p/book/9781138802131">before and after death</a>. Married daughters’ dowries often prevented them from inheriting parents’ property, but they could when no male descendants could be found.</p>
<p>In the late Middle Ages, women’s legal rights expanded as urbanization and immigration changed social relationships. They could become legal guardians of their children. What’s more, judging by women’s testaments, widows and older daughters did make legal decisions of their own without the “required” male guardianship.</p>
<figure class="align-left zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/577717/original/file-20240224-20-gv83x8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="An old manuscript page with lines of font and a brightly colored illustration of men and women standing in a field while others climb trees." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/577717/original/file-20240224-20-gv83x8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/577717/original/file-20240224-20-gv83x8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=768&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/577717/original/file-20240224-20-gv83x8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=768&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/577717/original/file-20240224-20-gv83x8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=768&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/577717/original/file-20240224-20-gv83x8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=965&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/577717/original/file-20240224-20-gv83x8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=965&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/577717/original/file-20240224-20-gv83x8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=965&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A page from the Book of Hours by Master d'Alelaide of Savoia, a 15th-century artist, shows the harvesting of pears and apples.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/book-of-hours-by-master-dalelaide-of-savoia-detail-news-photo/1011961044?adppopup=true">PHAS/Universal Images Group via Getty Images</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>In addition, married women could <a href="https://www.routledge.com/Across-the-Religious-Divide-Women-Property-and-Law-in-the-Wider-Mediterranean/Sperling-Wray/p/book/9780415807173">make legally binding decisions</a> as long as their husbands were present with them in front of a notary. Although husbands were technically considered their wives’ “guardians,” they could declare them legally free of guardianship. Wives would then be allowed to name their witnesses, appoint their universal heir and list donations and bequests to individuals and the church, which they hoped would save their soul.</p>
<h2>Speaking beyond the grave</h2>
<p>European archives literally overflow with legal documents that are awaiting discovery in musty boxes. What is lacking is a new generation of historians who can analyze them and paleographers who can read the handwriting.</p>
<p>Everyone high and low used notaries’ services for contractual forms, from an engagement and marriage to the sale of property, business transactions and donations. In this mass of documentation, <a href="https://research-repository.st-andrews.ac.uk/handle/10023/3052">wills provide a refreshing perspective</a> into medieval women’s agency and emotions as they contemplated the end of their lives.</p>
<p>In the 60 or so <a href="https://research-repository.st-andrews.ac.uk/handle/10023/3052">women’s testaments kept in Avignon</a>, women named where and with whom they wanted to be buried, often choosing their children or parents over their husbands. They named which charities, religious orders, hospitals for the poor, parishes and nunneries would benefit from their generosity, including bequests for repairs on Avignon’s famous bridge. </p>
<p>These women may have dictated their last wishes lying in bed, waiting for death, with the notary guiding their decisions. Still, given the things they dictated – donations for the dowries of poor girls, for their relatives and friends, to have their names remembered in Catholic Masses for the dead – I would argue that we are hearing their own voices. </p>
<h2>Rosaries, repairs and furs</h2>
<p>In 1354, Gassende Raynaud of Aix asked to be buried with her sister, Almuseta. She left a house to her friend Aysseline, while Douce Raynaud – who may have been another sister – received six dishes, six pitchers, two platters, a pewter jug, a cauldron, her best cooking pot, a cloak of fur with muslin, a big blanket, two large sheets, her best bodice, a little coffer, and all the mending thread and hemp that she possessed. She left a coffer, a copper warmer, the best trivet of the house and four new sheets to her friend Alasacia Boete.</p>
<p>Gassende’s generosity didn’t stop there. Jacobeta, Alasacia’s daughter, received a rosary of amber; Georgiana, Alasacia’s daughter-in-law, a bodice; and Marita, Alasacia’s granddaughter, a tunic. To her friend Alasacia Guillaume, Gassende left the unusual gift of a portable altar for prayers and an embroidered blanket. To Dulcie Marine, she bequeathed a choir book called an antiphonary and the best of her cloaks or furs.</p>
<p>In another Avignon will, written in 1317, Barthélemie Tortose made bequests to several Dominican friars, including her brother. She left funds to the prior of the order, her brother’s supervisor: perhaps rewarding the “boss” in order to keep her brother in his favor. She provided for charities and repairs for two bridges over the violent Rhône River, but also substantial support to provide food and clothing to all nuns’ convents of the city. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/577716/original/file-20240224-22-2jvol2.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="An illustration in shades of green and red showing two towns connected by a bridge over a river with a few small islands in it." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/577716/original/file-20240224-22-2jvol2.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/577716/original/file-20240224-22-2jvol2.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=226&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/577716/original/file-20240224-22-2jvol2.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=226&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/577716/original/file-20240224-22-2jvol2.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=226&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/577716/original/file-20240224-22-2jvol2.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=284&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/577716/original/file-20240224-22-2jvol2.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=284&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/577716/original/file-20240224-22-2jvol2.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=284&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A 16th-century illustration of the Rhone River, with Avignon on the right.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Wikimedia</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>More especially, she supported her female kin, such as leaving rental income to her niece, a Benedictine nun. She then requested that her clothes be cut into habits for nuns and liturgical garments. </p>
<p>We can get a glimpse at <a href="https://research-repository.st-andrews.ac.uk/bitstream/handle/10023/3052/WomenandWillsFrance2012Rollo-KosterandReyerson.pdf?sequence=7&isAllowed=y">just how personal these bequests were</a>: These women assumed that what they had touched, or what had touched their skin, would also touch another’s. Most of all, they expected that their possessions would transmit their memory, their existence, their identity. </p>
<p>What’s more, medieval women could be pretty radical.</p>
<p>At least 10 women whose wills I’ve read asked to be buried in monks’ cassocks, including Guimona Rubastenqui. Widow of an Avignon fishmonger – usually a profitable occupation – she requested that Carmelite brother Johannes Aymerici give her one of his old habits, for which she paid him six florins.</p>
<h2>Asserting their will</h2>
<p>So, what do we make of all this?</p>
<p>It is impossible to completely reconstruct how people lived, loved and died centuries ago. I have spent my adult life thinking “medieval,” yet know I will never get there. But we certainly have clues – and what I call an educated intuition.</p>
<p>By modern standards, these women faced real limits on their power and independence. However, I have argued that they “freed” themselves at death – their wills presenting a rare opportunity to make personal legal decisions and to live on in written records.</p>
<p>Medieval women could have agency. Not all of them, not all the time. But this small sample shows that they could choose whom they wanted to reward and whom they could help. </p>
<p>As for the burial in men’s garb, I have no way of knowing whether their wishes were followed. But from my perspective, there is something extremely satisfying in knowing that at least they tried.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/222690/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Joelle Rollo-Koster does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>European women’s rights expanded in early medieval cities, though they were still limited. Last wills and testaments were some of the few documents women could dictate themselves.Joelle Rollo-Koster, Professor of Medieval History, University of Rhode IslandLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2236852024-02-24T13:52:44Z2024-02-24T13:52:44ZNRA loses New York corruption trial over squandered funds – retired longtime leader Wayne LaPierre must repay millions of dollars<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/576186/original/file-20240216-26-epj9s6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C44%2C4966%2C2832&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Former NRA leader Wayne LaPierre addresses the group's members in 2022.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://newsroom.ap.org/detail/TexasSchoolShootingNRA/e6fa1890d6dd4d5490016795528ceafa/photo?Query=nra&mediaType=photo&sortBy=&dateRange=Anytime&totalCount=26&digitizationType=Digitized&currentItemNo=0&vs=true">AP Photo/Michael Wyke</a></span></figcaption></figure><p><em>A New York jury found on Feb. 23, 2024, that the National Rifle Association and three of its current and former officials had <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2024/02/23/us/nra-trial-verdict-new-york/index.html">broken the state’s laws by misusing charitable assets</a>. It also determined that two of the officials should repay the gun group millions of dollars.</em></p>
<p><em>The verdict followed a six-week corruption trial that came nearly four years after <a href="https://theconversation.com/why-new-york-is-suing-the-nra-4-questions-answered-144108">New York Attorney General Letitia James sued</a> the NRA and almost five years after <a href="https://www.thetrace.org/2024/01/nra-ny-ag-trial-financial-scandal/">investigative journalists reported</a> that the group’s leaders, vendors and contractors had improperly spent the nonprofit’s funds on lavish travel and other personal expenses. The <a href="https://home.nra.org/statements/nra-responds-to-new-york-trial-verdict-decision-validates-nra-s-position-regarding-wrongdoing-by-certain-vendors-and-insiders/">NRA responded to the verdict by saying</a> it had been “victimized by certain former vendors and ‘insiders’ who abused the trust placed in them by the Association” and listing steps it had already taken to get its house in order.</em></p>
<p><em>The Conversation asked <a href="https://scholar.google.com/citations?hl=en&user=FJ9Y6QMAAAAJ">Sarah Webber</a> and <a href="https://www.umass.edu/spp/people/faculty/elizabeth-schmidt">Elizabeth Schmidt</a>, experts on nonprofit accountability at the University of Dayton and UMass Amherst, to answer questions about the complicated case.</em></p>
<h2>What does this verdict mean for the defendants?</h2>
<p>The jury evaluated evidence regarding the NRA and three individual defendants in the case: <a href="https://theconversation.com/longtime-nra-chief-wayne-lapierre-is-leaving-the-gun-group-in-trouble-but-still-powerful-220984">Wayne LaPierre</a>, the longtime head of the NRA; its former treasurer and chief financial officer Wilson Phillips; and John Frazer, who is still serving as the group’s corporate secretary and general counsel.</p>
<p>The jury found that all three defendants had violated state nonprofit statutes and breached their fiduciary duties.</p>
<p>It also found that the NRA had ignored whistleblower complaints and <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2024/02/23/nyregion/lapierre-nra-verdict.html">retaliated against the whistleblowers, submitted false filings</a> and <a href="https://ag.ny.gov/press-release/2024/attorney-general-james-wins-trial-against-nra-and-wayne-lapierre">failed to properly oversee its charitable funds</a>. The NRA was found liable for making false statements in mandatory regulatory filings, as was Frazer.</p>
<p>The jury determined that LaPierre, who announced his retirement days before the trial began and officially stepped down while it was underway, had “violated his statutory obligation to discharge the duties of his position in good faith.” </p>
<p>LaPierre was ordered to repay the <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2024/02/23/nyregion/lapierre-nra-verdict.html">NRA US$5.4 million</a>. Because he has already repaid over $1 million following an internal NRA investigation, he will <a href="https://ag.ny.gov/press-release/2024/attorney-general-james-wins-trial-against-nra-and-wayne-lapierre">only have to pay back $4.35 million</a>, James announced. </p>
<p>Since the jury said that LaPierre should be removed from his job, from which <a href="https://www.npr.org/2024/01/05/1223160632/nra-wayne-lapierre-steps-down-resigns">he had already resigned</a>, it’s possible that he will be barred from ever returning.</p>
<p>Phillips was <a href="https://abcnews.go.com/US/jury-finds-nra-liable-mismanagement-wayne-lapierre-violated/story?id=107269909">ordered to pay $2 million back to the NRA</a>. Although the jury did not find that there was enough evidence against Frazer to remove him from his current position as corporate secretary, it did find both Frazer and Phillips had violated their duties as corporate officers of the NRA. </p>
<p>Another defendant, LaPierre’s former chief of staff Joshua Powell, <a href="https://ag.ny.gov/press-release/2024/attorney-general-james-announces-settlement-former-nra-senior-strategist-eve">settled the case against him on the eve of the trial</a> and agreed to testify against his former employer, the NRA. Powell must repay <a href="https://ag.ny.gov/sites/default/files/settlements-agreements/joshua-powell-settlement-agreement.pdf">the NRA $100,000</a> and is permanently barred from serving in any fiduciary capacity at charitable organizations in New York state.</p>
<h2>What’s wrong with what these NRA leaders did?</h2>
<p>The <a href="https://home.nra.org/about-the-nra/">NRA was chartered in 1871 as a nonprofit in New York</a>. It’s therefore <a href="https://www.councilofnonprofits.org/running-nonprofit/governance-leadership/conflicts-interest">subject to that state’s laws</a>.</p>
<p>New York requires <a href="https://theconversation.com/what-nonprofit-boards-need-to-do-to-protect-the-public-interest-188966">three duties of top nonprofit executives</a>, such as the defendants in this case: the duty of care, the duty of loyalty and the duty of obedience. That means they must care for the NRA and its mission, keep the NRA’s interests ahead of their own and obey, or further, the NRA’s mission while obeying the law.</p>
<p>According to the jury, the defendants breached all three duties. </p>
<p>Asking the NRA to pay for lavish personal trips, flights aboard private jets and helicopters, expensive clothes and hair styling and makeup for LaPierre’s wife – all of which came up during the trial – <a href="https://law.justia.com/codes/new-york/2021/npc/article-7/717">could not be considered fair</a> to the organization. </p>
<p>“In New York, you cannot get away with corruption and greed, no matter how powerful or influential you think you may be,” <a href="https://twitter.com/NewYorkStateAG/status/1761167176868704586">James posted on X</a>, formerly Twitter. “Everyone, even the NRA and Wayne LaPierre, must play by the same rules.”</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/576188/original/file-20240216-26-91bg7k.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Woman with long hair stands at a podium, looking off into the audience." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/576188/original/file-20240216-26-91bg7k.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/576188/original/file-20240216-26-91bg7k.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/576188/original/file-20240216-26-91bg7k.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/576188/original/file-20240216-26-91bg7k.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/576188/original/file-20240216-26-91bg7k.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/576188/original/file-20240216-26-91bg7k.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/576188/original/file-20240216-26-91bg7k.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">New York Attorney General Letitia James declared the verdict ‘a major victory for the people of New York and our efforts to stop the corruption and greed at the NRA.’</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://newsroom.ap.org/detail/MarijuanaNewYork/ccf53de0838341a5a06a11856d85cb01/photo?Query=letitia%20james&mediaType=photo&sortBy=arrivaldatetime:desc&dateRange=Anytime&totalCount=746&currentItemNo=3">AP Photo/Brittainy Newman</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>What will this mean for the NRA?</h2>
<p>Charitable downgrades are now likely by rating organizations. For example, <a href="https://www.charitywatch.org/charities/national-rifle-association-nra">Charity Watch has issued a “?” rating</a> for the NRA due to “concerns about this organization” and its “nondisclosure of financial information.”</p>
<p>Repayment by LaPierre and his former colleague will depend on whether or not they file an appeal, and it is unclear whether they can afford to pay the millions of dollars they owe the NRA. LaPierre’s attorneys have indicated that they <a href="https://www.wbur.org/npr/1232229060/nra-wayne-lapierre-corruption-trial-verdict-new-york">plan to appeal</a>. </p>
<p>Further, in defending the case, the NRA is likely incurring significant legal fees.</p>
<p>And the NRA <a href="https://membership.nra.org/FAQ">relies on dues payments</a> for much of its budget. It has <a href="https://theconversation.com/wayne-lapierre-leaves-a-financial-mess-behind-at-the-nra-on-top-of-the-legal-one-that-landed-him-in-court-220728">reportedly lost 1 million members</a> out of the estimated 5 million that belonged to it before reports of improper spending patterns arose.</p>
<h2>What’s next?</h2>
<p>There will be another trial to determine whether any “<a href="https://ag.ny.gov/press-release/2024/attorney-general-james-wins-trial-against-nra-and-wayne-lapierre">non-monetary</a>” punishment is appropriate for the NRA or the individual defendants, James said.</p>
<p>One key issue the judge will decide is whether <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-68388234">independent monitors and experts should review and assess</a> whether the NRA is now spending its money appropriately. The <a href="https://www.justice.gov/d9/pages/attachments/2021/09/13/review_of_the_use_of_monitors_in_civil_settlement_agreements_and_consent_decrees_involving_state_and_local_government.pdf">monitor would report to the court</a> on its observations.</p>
<p>The judge could also find that an independent governance expert, which would also report directly to the court, should be appointed. But that person would focus on whether the NRA should reform its procedures and policies related to how the organization spends its money and how the board approves management decisions. </p>
<p>The judge will also rule on whether LaPierre and Phillips should be barred from any future appointments as officers at the NRA or other charitable organizations in New York, and if Frazer will be barred from collecting or requesting donations for any charity operating in New York.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/223685/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>The jury’s verdict followed years of allegations that the gun group’s top official and other leaders were spending money meant to benefit its members on their own luxuries.Sarah Webber, Associate Professor of Accounting, University of DaytonElizabeth Schmidt, Professor of Practice, Nonprofit Organizations; Social & Environmental Enterprises, UMass AmherstLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1999552024-02-22T13:43:08Z2024-02-22T13:43:08ZDonors gave $58 billion to higher ed in the 2023 academic year, with mega gifts up despite overall decline<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/576848/original/file-20240220-30-3492mv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C8%2C5362%2C3189&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Jim Simons and his wife, Marilyn Hawrys Simons, made a historic gift to Stony Brook University in 2023.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/mathematician-jim-simons-attends-the-23rd-annual-stars-of-news-photo/1391332846?adppopup=true">Roy Rochlin/Getty Images</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Charitable giving to colleges and universities <a href="https://www.case.org/research/surveys/voluntary-support-education-survey/findings-and-reports">fell 5% in inflation-adjusted terms to US$58 billion</a> in the 2023 academic year, according to the latest <a href="https://www.case.org/resources/giving-us-college-and-universities-58-billion-fiscal-year-2023">Voluntary Support of Education survey</a> from the Council for Advancement and Support of Education, or CASE.</p>
<p>Giving had reached an all-time high of $59.5 billion in the prior 12-month period. Although the 2023 total marked the second-highest for any 12-month period ever, the decline fits into <a href="https://philanthropy.iupui.edu/news-events/news/_news/2023/giving-usa-total-us-charitable-giving-declined-in-2022-to-49933-billion-following-two-years-of-record-generosity.html">ebbing levels of philanthropy</a> seen recently.</p>
<p>As a former fundraiser who now <a href="https://scholar.google.com/citations?hl=en&user=zLBh-YMAAAAJ&view_op=list_works&sortby=pubdate">researches giving to colleges and universities</a>, I see five key trends in the new data. </p>
<h2>1. Higher ed remains a high priority</h2>
<p>Educational causes have long been among the nation’s most popular for charitable donors, and the new data suggests that this has not changed.</p>
<p>Only <a href="https://theconversation.com/us-charitable-donations-fell-to-499-billion-in-2022-as-stocks-slumped-and-inflation-surged-207688">churches and other religious institutions</a> consistently receive more philanthropic dollars. In recent years, educational and social service-related nonprofits, such as food banks and homeless shelters, have <a href="https://theconversation.com/us-charitable-donations-fell-to-499-billion-in-2022-as-stocks-slumped-and-inflation-surged-207688">attracted similar levels of support</a>, according to the annual Giving USA report.</p>
<p>Giving USA, which tracks donations of all kinds, unlike the Council for Advancement and Support of Education, lumps giving to higher education, preschools, K-12 education and libraries into its education category, so it has consistently detected a higher amount of educational giving than CASE.</p>
<p>Among other differences, the Giving USA data covers calendar years, while the CASE survey runs from July 1 of one year through June 30 of the next. In 2022, Giving USA found that Americans made <a href="https://philanthropy.iupui.edu/news-events/news/_news/2023/giving-usa-total-us-charitable-giving-declined-in-2022-to-49933-billion-following-two-years-of-record-generosity.html">$70 billion in education-related donations</a>.</p>
<p><iframe id="C8T8j" class="tc-infographic-datawrapper" src="https://datawrapper.dwcdn.net/C8T8j/5/" height="400px" width="100%" style="border: none" frameborder="0"></iframe></p>
<h2>2. More mega gifts</h2>
<p>Donors provide more donations of $100 million or more <a href="https://theconversation.com/donations-by-top-50-us-donors-dropped-sharply-to-16-billion-in-2022-bill-gates-elon-musk-mike-bloomberg-and-warren-buffett-lead-the-list-of-biggest-givers-199732">related to education than any other cause</a>, including religion, according to The Chronicle of Philanthropy’s annual ranking of America’s biggest donors.
The CASE survey found that colleges and universities received 11 of these gifts in the 2023 academic year, four more than a year earlier. The total money given this way doubled from 2022 to $2.24 billion.</p>
<p>The share of higher ed giving from the biggest donors more than doubled to 3.9% from 1.8% a year earlier. CASE doesn’t name the sources of mega gifts or the schools that received them, but I believe the list may include a historic <a href="https://news.stonybrook.edu/newsroom/press-release/general/simons-foundation-announces-historic-500-million-gift-to-stony-brook-university-endowment/">$500 million gift from the Simons Foundation</a> donated to Stony Brook University.</p>
<p>Donors rarely make gifts that big. This one also stands out because it’s the <a href="https://theconversation.com/what-is-unrestricted-funding-two-philanthropy-experts-explain-164589">largest donation ever to be completely unrestricted</a>. Stony Brook, a New York state public university located on Long Island, may spend or invest the money for whatever purposes it believes make the most sense. </p>
<p><a href="https://www.bestcolleges.com/news/largest-donations-to-colleges-universities/">Most gifts of $100 million or more</a>, in contrast, are designated for specific purposes, such as funding student financial aid, expanding academic programs, constructing or renovating buildings or growing research initiatives.</p>
<p>What’s more common in this case are the close ties between the donor and the school receiving the gift. The <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2023/06/01/nyregion/stony-brook-university-gift.html">foundation was formed by Jim Simons</a>, a former Stony Brook math professor, and his wife, Marilyn Simons, who earned a bachelor’s degree and doctorate there. Jim Simons later made a fortune as a hedge fund manager.</p>
<p>Other massive gifts that coincided with the 12 months covered by the latest CASE survey included <a href="https://www.cuimc.columbia.edu/news/roy-and-diana-vagelos-institute-biomedical-research-education-launched-columbia-university-175-million-gift">$175 million for Columbia University</a>, <a href="https://news.uchicago.edu/story/chicago-booths-phd-program-receives-100-million-gift-celebration-its-100th-anniversary">$100 million for the University of Chicago</a> and <a href="https://uknow.uky.edu/campus-news/historic-100-million-gift-will-catapult-uk-college-agriculture-food-and-environment">$100 million for the University of Kentucky</a>.</p>
<p>To be sure, not all donors to higher education make massive gifts. Roughly 43% of the donations are under $100, according to the CASE survey. But those gifts totaled less than 1% of the dollars overall.</p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/Tk41SnTnOAU?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">The Johns Hopkins Bloomberg Center in Washington, D.C., opened in 2023 – with support given in prior years from the university’s biggest donor, Mike Bloomberg.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>3. No across-the-board decline</h2>
<p>Despite the decline from the 2022 academic year, giving to higher ed remains $8.5 billion above levels seen in the 12 months ending in June 2020 – which coincided with <a href="https://theconversation.com/the-new-coronavirus-is-hitting-colleges-and-universities-hard-but-donors-can-help-133331">the COVID-19 pandemic’s onset</a>. </p>
<p>The decline in 2023 was driven primarily by a reduction in gifts slated to meet long-term needs, such as increasing the size of a university’s endowment or construction. Giving intended to support current needs remained more consistent. </p>
<p>The total amount donated grew for nearly half of the surveyed institutions. It was flat or fell at the rest, CASE found.</p>
<p>This survey also underscores how giving to higher education is unequally distributed: 20 schools, out of more than 750 for which detailed data is collected, accounted for more than one-quarter of the total money raised. That ratio has held steady for the past decade.</p>
<h2>4. Organizations are giving more than individual donors</h2>
<p>Personal donations, whether from alumni or people who didn’t attend a school they’re supporting, fell by more than 13% during the 12-month period when taking inflation into account. That giving totaled $20.5 billion – about one-third of the total donated.</p>
<p>Higher ed giving from foundations, corporations and other institutional donors was flat, rising by an inflation-adjusted 0.1% to $37.5 billion.</p>
<p>CASE attributed the decline in individual donations in the 2023 academic year to the stock market’s relatively weak performance.</p>
<p><a href="https://theconversation.com/stock-indexes-are-breaking-records-and-crossing-milestones-making-many-investors-feel-wealthier-223274">Stock market indexes</a> closed out 2022 at a low point, with the <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2022/12/30/investing/dow-stock-market-2022/index.html">Dow Jones Industrial Average declining 9%</a> for the year and other indexes plunging even more. Wealthy people typically give <a href="https://doi.org/10.1016/j.econlet.2010.10.016">more to charity when the stock market is booming</a> than when it sags.</p>
<h2>5. Role of donor-advised funds is growing</h2>
<p>Many of the gifts that the survey attributes to organizations are indirectly from individuals who have either established their own foundations or are giving through <a href="https://www.nptrust.org/what-is-a-donor-advised-fund/">donor-advised funds</a> – financial accounts often called DAFs.</p>
<p>Donor-advised funds are a way for people to set aside money for giving to charitable causes when they are ready to do so. According to sources like <a href="https://www.nptrust.org/reports/daf-report/">National Philanthropic Trust</a> and Fidelity Charitable, the <a href="https://apnews.com/article/fidelity-charitable-daf-donor-advised-fund-7a483a4f69115f467ecfb1c4348bbdc3">largest DAF grantmaker</a>, these payouts have been increasing over time.</p>
<p>And research indicates that <a href="https://theconversation.com/charitable-gifts-from-donor-advised-funds-favor-education-and-religion-171793">educational causes are the top recipients</a> of giving through DAFs.</p>
<h2>Looking ahead</h2>
<p>Because this survey covered giving through June 2023, it doesn’t include the period of <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2023/10/18/business/upenn-donor-israel/index.html">donor discontent</a> after the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas attack on Israel. <a href="https://theconversation.com/what-do-universities-owe-their-big-donors-less-than-you-might-think-explain-2-nonprofit-law-experts-219902">Some donors</a>, including several with previously strong ties to some of the nation’s most prominent universities, are objecting to policies regarding campus activism in solidarity with Palestinians and criticism of Israel’s bombing of the Gaza Strip. For example, billionaire hedge fund manager Kenneth C. Griffin, who gave Harvard University a $300 million gift, has said <a href="https://www.thecrimson.com/article/2024/1/31/ken-griffin-pausing-harvard-donations/">he will refrain from making new donations</a>. </p>
<p>Donors are also continuing to make groundbreaking donations to higher education. These include two 2024 gifts: a <a href="https://www.spelman.edu/about-us/news-and-events/news-releases/2024/01/18/spelman-college-receives-historic-$100-million-donation">$100 million gift to Spelman College</a> announced in January 2024, from Ronda Stryker and her husband, William Johnston. It’s the largest ever for a historically Black college or university. Also, an anonymous donor made a <a href="https://www.depauw.edu/stories/details/depauw-university-receives-200-million-investment-for-transformational-liberal-arts-education/">$150 million gift to DePauw University</a>, which was the largest donation on record for the small liberal arts college in Indiana.</p>
<p>The data also doesn’t reflect the impact of a more predictable trend: that the stock market ended the 2023 calendar year on an upswing. The <a href="https://www.cbsnews.com/news/stock-market-up-24-percent-2023-rally/">Dow gained more than 13%</a>, with other major indexes racking up even larger gains.</p>
<p>Ultimately, if trends of past support to higher education are any indication of what to expect in the future, giving to colleges and universities will probably hold steady or even increase.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/199955/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Genevieve Shaker receives research funding from the TIAA Institute and the AFP Foundation for Philanthropy.</span></em></p>The stock market’s weak performance at the end of 2022 may have made donors less willing to give.Genevieve Shaker, Associate Professor of Philanthropic Studies, Lilly Family School of Philanthropy, Indiana UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2226772024-02-13T13:23:41Z2024-02-13T13:23:41ZSaving the news media means moving beyond the benevolence of billionaires<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/574711/original/file-20240209-18-vtb36b.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=17%2C26%2C5973%2C3961&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Billionaire media owners can't change inhospitable market dynamics.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/the-los-angeles-times-building-and-newsroom-along-imperial-news-photo/1211874817?adppopup=true">Kent Nishimura/Los Angeles Times via Getty Images</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>For the journalism industry, <a href="https://www.axios.com/2024/01/26/media-layoffs-strikes-journalism-dying">2024 is off to a brutal start</a>. </p>
<p>Most spectacularly, the Los Angeles Times recently slashed <a href="https://www.latimes.com/entertainment-arts/business/story/2024-01-23/latimes-layoffs-115-newsroom-soon-shiong">more than 20% of its newsroom</a>.</p>
<p>Though trouble had long been brewing, the layoffs were particularly disheartening because many employees and readers hoped the Times’ billionaire owner, <a href="https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2021/11/01/how-patrick-soon-shiong-made-his-fortune-before-buying-the-la-times">Patrick Soon-Shiong</a>, would stay the course in good times and bad – that he would be a steward less interested in turning a profit and more concerned with ensuring the storied publication could serve the public. </p>
<p><a href="https://www.latimes.com/entertainment-arts/business/story/2024-01-23/latimes-layoffs-115-newsroom-soon-shiong#:%7E:text=%E2%80%9CToday's%20decision%20is%20painful%20for,%2C%E2%80%9D%20Soon%2DShiong%20said.">According to the LA Times</a>, Soon-Shiong explained that the cuts were necessary because the paper “could no longer lose $30 million to $40 million a year.” </p>
<p><a href="https://twitter.com/_cingraham/status/1749890710118301751">As one X user pointed out</a>, Soon-Shiong could weather US$40 million in annual losses for decades and still remain a billionaire. You could say the same of another billionaire owner, The Washington Post’s Jeff Bezos, <a href="https://www.axios.com/2023/12/19/washington-post-cut-jobs-voluntary-buyouts">who eliminated hundreds of jobs in 2023</a> after making a long stretch of steady investments. </p>
<p><div data-react-class="Tweet" data-react-props="{"tweetId":"1749890710118301751"}"></div></p>
<p>Of course, it helps if your owner has deep pockets and is satisfied with breaking even or earning modest profits – a far cry from the slash-and-burn, profit-harvesting of the two largest newspaper owners: the hedge fund <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2021/11/alden-global-capital-killing-americas-newspapers/620171/">Alden Global Capital</a> and <a href="https://www.niemanlab.org/2023/03/the-scale-of-local-news-destruction-in-gannetts-markets-is-astonishing/">the publicly traded Gannett</a>. </p>
<p>Yet, as we’ve previously argued, relying on the benevolence of billionaire owners isn’t a viable long-term solution to journalism’s crises. In what we call the “<a href="https://theconversation.com/the-slippery-slope-of-the-oligarchy-media-model-81931">oligarchy media model</a>,” it often creates distinct hazards for democracy. The recent layoffs simply reinforce these concerns. </p>
<h2>Systemic market failure</h2>
<p>This carnage is part of a longer story: <a href="https://localnewsinitiative.northwestern.edu/projects/state-of-local-news/2023/report/">Ongoing research on news deserts</a> shows that the U.S. has lost almost one-third of its newspapers and nearly two-thirds of its newspaper journalists since 2005.</p>
<p>It’s become clear that this downturn isn’t temporary. Rather, it’s a <a href="https://www.niemanlab.org/2018/12/we-will-finally-confront-systemic-market-failure/">systemic market failure</a> with no signs of reversal.</p>
<p>As print advertising continues to decline, Meta’s and Google’s <a href="https://www.wsj.com/articles/google-and-metas-advertising-dominance-fades-as-tiktok-netflix-emerge-11672711107">dominance over digital advertising</a> has deprived news publishers of a major online revenue source. <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2016/11/the-print-apocalypse-and-how-to-survive-it/506429/">The advertising-based news business model has collapsed</a> and, to the extent it ever did, won’t adequately support the public service journalism that democracy requires.</p>
<p>What about digital subscriptions as a revenue source? </p>
<p>For years, <a href="https://doi.org/10.1080/21670811.2013.865967">paywalls have been hailed</a> as an alternative to advertising. While some news organizations have recently stopped requiring subscriptions <a href="https://www.axios.com/2024/02/06/great-subscription-news-reversal">or have created a tiered pricing system</a>, how has this approach fared overall?</p>
<p>Well, it’s been <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2024/02/07/business/media/new-york-times-q4-earnings.html">a fantastic financial success for The New York Times</a> and, actually, almost no one else – while denying millions of citizens access to essential news.</p>
<p>The paywall model has also worked reasonably well for The Wall Street Journal, with its assured audience of business professionals, though its management still felt compelled <a href="https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/companies/wall-street-journal-shakes-up-d-c-bureau-with-big-layoffs/ar-BB1hDv9V?ocid=finance-verthp-feeds">to make deep cuts</a> in its Washington, D.C., bureau on Feb. 1, 2024. And at The Washington Post, even 2.5 million digital subscriptions haven’t been enough for the publication to break even.</p>
<p>To be fair, the billionaire owners of <a href="https://twitter.com/aidanfitzryan/status/1748098450963460180">The Boston Globe</a> and <a href="https://startribunecompany.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/Click-here.pdf">the Minneapolis Star Tribune</a> have sown fertile ground; the papers seem to be turning modest profits, and there isn’t any news of looming layoffs.</p>
<p>But they’re outliers; in the end, billionaire owners can’t change these inhospitable market dynamics. Plus, because they made their money in other industries, the owners often create conflicts of interest that their news outlets’ journalists must continually navigate with care.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="Three female protestors shout, while one holds a sign reading 'Don't cut our future.'" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/574235/original/file-20240207-28-42qqde.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C16%2C5525%2C3755&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/574235/original/file-20240207-28-42qqde.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=410&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/574235/original/file-20240207-28-42qqde.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=410&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/574235/original/file-20240207-28-42qqde.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=410&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/574235/original/file-20240207-28-42qqde.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=515&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/574235/original/file-20240207-28-42qqde.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=515&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/574235/original/file-20240207-28-42qqde.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=515&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Los Angeles Times employees stage a walkout on Jan. 19, 2024, after learning about layoffs.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/los-angeles-times-guild-members-rally-outside-city-hall-news-photo/1945953066?adppopup=true">Mario Tama/Getty Images</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>The way forward</h2>
<p>While the market dynamics for news media are only getting worse, the civic need for quality, accessible public service journalism is greater than ever. </p>
<p>When quality journalism disappears, <a href="https://www.npr.org/transcripts/1170919800">it intensifies a host of problems</a> – from rising corruption to decreasing civic engagement to greater polarization – that threaten the vitality of U.S. democracy.</p>
<p>That’s why we believe it’s urgently important to grow the number of outlets capable of independently resisting destructive market forces.</p>
<p>Billionaire owners willing to release their media properties could help facilitate this process. Some of them already have. </p>
<p>In 2016, the billionaire Gerry Lenfest donated his sole ownership of The Philadelphia Inquirer along with a $20 million endowment to an eponymously named <a href="https://www.lenfestinstitute.org/about/">nonprofit institute</a>, with bylaws preventing profit pressures from taking precedence over its civic mission. Its nonprofit ownership model has enabled the Inquirer to <a href="https://localnewsinitiative.northwestern.edu/projects/state-of-local-news/2023/brightspots/philadelphia-inquirer-jim-friedlich-q-and-a/">invest in news</a> at a time when so many others have cut to the bone.</p>
<p>In 2019, wealthy businessman Paul Huntsman ceded his ownership of The Salt Lake Tribune to a <a href="https://www.sltrib.com/news/2019/11/04/historic-shift-salt-lake/">501(c)(3) nonprofit</a>, easing its tax burden and setting it up to receive philanthropic funding. After continuing as board chairman, in early February he announced that he was permanently <a href="https://www.sltrib.com/opinion/commentary/2024/02/02/paul-huntsman-its-time-step-away/">stepping down</a>. </p>
<p>And in September 2023, the French newspaper <a href="https://www.lemonde.fr/en/about-us/article/2023/09/24/two-major-milestones-for-le-monde-s-independence_6139073_115.html">Le Monde</a>’s billionaire shareholders, led by tech entrepreneur Xavier Niel, officially confirmed a plan to move their capital into an endowment fund that’s effectively controlled by journalists and other employees of the Le Monde Group. </p>
<p>On a smaller and far more precarious scale, U.S. journalists have founded hundreds of <a href="https://www.niemanlab.org/2024/02/many-small-news-nonprofits-feel-overlooked-by-funders-a-new-coalition-is-giving-them-a-voice/">small nonprofits</a> across the country over the past decade to provide crucial public affairs coverage. However, most struggle mightily to generate enough revenues to even pay themselves and a few reporters a living wage. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="Workers sit at a table in a large, open workspace." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/574245/original/file-20240207-18-arb5jw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/574245/original/file-20240207-18-arb5jw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=360&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/574245/original/file-20240207-18-arb5jw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=360&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/574245/original/file-20240207-18-arb5jw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=360&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/574245/original/file-20240207-18-arb5jw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=452&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/574245/original/file-20240207-18-arb5jw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=452&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/574245/original/file-20240207-18-arb5jw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=452&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The Philadelphia Inquirer moved to a new headquarters in May 2023.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://meyerdesigninc.com/news/the-philadelphia-inquirers-hybrid-headquarters/">Jeffrey Totaro/Meyer Design, Inc.</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Donors can still play a role</h2>
<p>The crucial next step is to ensure these civic, mission-driven forms of ownership have the necessary funding to survive and thrive. </p>
<p>One part of this approach can be philanthropic funding.</p>
<p><a href="https://mediaimpactfunders.org/philanthropys-growing-role-in-american-journalism-a-new-study-reveals-increased-funding-and-ethical-considerations/">A 2023 Media Impact Funders report</a> pointed out that foundation funders once primarily focused on providing a bridge to an ever-elusive new business model. The thinking went that they could provide seed money until the operation was up and running and then redirect their investments elsewhere. </p>
<p>However, journalists are increasingly calling for <a href="https://www.niemanlab.org/2024/02/patterns-in-philanthropy-leave-small-newsrooms-behind-can-that-change/">long-term sustaining support</a> as the extent of market failure has become clear. In a promising development, the <a href="https://www.pressforward.news/press-forward-will-award-more-than-500-million-to-revitalize-local-news/">Press Forward initiative</a> recently pledged $500 million over five years for local journalism, including for-profit as well as nonprofit and public newsrooms. </p>
<p>Charitable giving can also make news more accessible. If donations pay the bills – as they do at The Guardian – <a href="https://www.niemanlab.org/2022/10/rich-americans-more-likely-to-pay-for-news/">paywalls</a>, which limit content to <a href="https://www.axios.com/2022/01/11/media-startups-subscriptions-elite">subscribers who are disproportionately wealthy and white</a>, may become unnecessary. </p>
<h2>The limits of private capital</h2>
<p>Still, philanthropic support for journalism falls far short of what’s needed.</p>
<p><a href="https://www.pewresearch.org/journalism/fact-sheet/newspapers/">Total revenues for newspapers have fallen</a> from a historic high of $49.4 billion in 2005 to $9.8 billion in 2022.</p>
<p>Philanthropy could help fill a portion of this deficit but, even with the recent increase in donations, nowhere near all of it. Nor, in our view, should it. Too often, donations come with conditions and potential conflicts of interest. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="Man wearing blue hat sits on a bench reading a newspaper." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/574248/original/file-20240207-27-cqnylz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/574248/original/file-20240207-27-cqnylz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=401&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/574248/original/file-20240207-27-cqnylz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=401&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/574248/original/file-20240207-27-cqnylz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=401&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/574248/original/file-20240207-27-cqnylz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=504&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/574248/original/file-20240207-27-cqnylz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=504&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/574248/original/file-20240207-27-cqnylz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=504&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Philanthropic giving hasn’t made up for the billions lost in advertising revenue over the past two decades.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/man-sitting-on-a-bench-reading-the-newspaper-news-photo/144075964?adppopup=true">Joe Sohm/Visions of America/Universal Images Group via Getty Images</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The same <a href="https://mediaimpactfunders.org/philanthropys-growing-role-in-american-journalism-a-new-study-reveals-increased-funding-and-ethical-considerations/">2023 Media Impact Funders survey</a> found that 57% of U.S. foundation funders of news organizations offered grants for reporting on issues for which they had policy stances. </p>
<p>In the end, philanthropy <a href="https://www.cjr.org/business_of_news/a-qa-with-phil-napoli.php">can’t completely escape oligarchic influence</a>.</p>
<h2>Public funds for local journalism</h2>
<p>A strong, accessible media system that serves the public interest will ultimately require significant public funding. </p>
<p>Along with libraries, schools and research universities, journalism is an essential part of a democracy’s critical information infrastructure. Democracies in western and northern Europe earmark taxes or dedicated fees not only for legacy TV and radio but also for newspapers and digital media – and they make sure there’s always <a href="https://ijoc.org/index.php/ijoc/article/view/4779">an arm’s-length relationship</a> between the government and the news outlets so that their journalistic independence is assured. It’s worth noting that U.S. investment in public media is <a href="https://www.cjr.org/opinion/public-funding-media-democracy.php">a smaller percentage of GDP</a> than in virtually any other major democracy in the world.</p>
<p>State-level experiments in places such as <a href="https://njcivicinfo.org/about/">New Jersey</a>, <a href="https://www.axios.com/2023/10/20/local-news-vouchers-bill-dc">Washington, D.C.</a>, <a href="https://www.niemanlab.org/2022/09/the-state-of-california-will-fund-25-million-in-local-reporting-fellowships/">California</a> <a href="https://www.freepress.net/news/press-releases/free-press-action-applauds-groundbreaking-wisconsin-bills-addressing-local-journalism-crisis">and Wisconsin</a> suggest that public funding for newspapers and online-only outlets can also work in the U.S. Under these plans, news outlets prioritizing local journalism receive various kinds of public subsidies and grants. </p>
<p>The time has come to dramatically scale up these projects, from millions of dollars to billions, whether through “<a href="https://www.poynter.org/business-work/2019/academics-craft-a-plan-to-infuse-billions-into-journalism-give-every-american-50-to-donate-to-news-orgs/">media vouchers</a>” that <a href="https://www.cjr.org/business_of_news/the-local-journalism-initiative.php">allow voters</a> to allocate funds or other ambitious <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/10/17/local-news-crisis-plan-fix-perry-bacon/">proposals</a> for creating tens of thousands of new journalism jobs across the country.</p>
<p>Is it worth it?</p>
<p>In our view, a crisis that imperils American democracy demands no less than a bold and comprehensive civic response.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/222677/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>How can an industry experiencing systemic failure get back on its feet?Rodney Benson, Professor of Media, Culture and Communication, New York UniversityVictor Pickard, C. Edwin Baker Professor of Media Policy and Political Economy, University of PennsylvaniaLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2189092024-02-09T13:33:30Z2024-02-09T13:33:30ZFrom church to the mosque, faith and friends help Iowa’s African immigrants and refugees build a sense of home<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/571979/original/file-20240129-15-3xb35s.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=3%2C0%2C1019%2C683&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Snow covers the replica of the Statue of Liberty outside the Decatur County Courthouse in Leon, Iowa.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/iasnow-covers-the-replica-of-the-statue-of-liberty-outside-news-photo/1918198236?adppopup=true">Joshua Lott/The Washington Post via Getty Images</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Think of Iowa, our home. Many people picture cornfields: the Great Plains of the American heartland. </p>
<p>One thing many outsiders may not know about this agrarian, <a href="https://www.census.gov/quickfacts/fact/table/IA/PST045222">predominantly white state</a> where we teach is that it has become “a home away from home” for <a href="https://qctimes.com/news/state-regional/where-refugees-in-iowa-are-arriving-from/collection_65d7716d-54be-5521-9e8d-c8b78e26335d.html#1">a growing population of African immigrants</a>. These newcomers include migrants, immigrants and a few university students, as well as people fleeing violence in countries such as Sudan, Somalia, <a href="https://www.clingendael.org/pub/2022/conflict-in-the-penta-border-area/introduction/#:%7E:text=Introduction%20%7C%20Conflict%20in%20the%20Penta%2DBorder%20Area&text=Since%20December%202021%2C%20Benin%20has,December%202021%20and%20May%202022.">Benin</a> and <a href="https://www.cfr.org/global-conflict-tracker/conflict/violence-democratic-republic-congo">the Democratic Republic of Congo</a>.</p>
<p>As <a href="https://clas.uiowa.edu/gwss/people/brady-gsell">social scientists</a> <a href="https://clas.uiowa.edu/religion/people/osamamen-oba-eduviere">at the University of Iowa</a> we are both involved in <a href="https://dailyiowan.com/2023/11/01/nigerian-scholar-brings-unique-perspective-to-ui-homebuilding-in-the-heartland-project/">Homebuilding in the Heartland</a>, a community-based research project. Together with <a href="https://law.uiowa.edu/people/amy-weismann">colleague Amy Weismann</a>, we aim to build connections with this population and learn from African immigrants’ experiences as they resettle in Iowa. </p>
<p>Despite their <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2017/05/29/business/economy/storm-lake-iowa-immigrant-workers.html">contributions to the region’s labor force</a>, African immigrants across the Midwest are often overlooked and sometimes struggle to access resettlement services. However, religious institutions frequently play supportive roles as they adjust to their new home.</p>
<h2>From Africa to Iowa</h2>
<p>As of 2019, around 2 million Black immigrants from Africa <a href="https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2022/01/27/key-findings-about-black-immigrants-in-the-u-s/">were living in the United States</a> – a number that has tripled since 2000. The number of African migrants and asylum-seekers apprehended at the southern border of the United States <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2024/01/05/us/africa-migrants-us-border.html">has also increased</a> as people look for alternatives to Europe.</p>
<p>While these 2 million people represent <a href="https://www.migrationpolicy.org/article/sub-saharan-african-immigrants-united-states?gclid=Cj0KCQiAwP6sBhDAARIsAPfK_waCLI8vIpEmY8eNaWT6c6Q9dxomQ-eNMYsLVqhl_6xuHYRNzCeF310aAnviEALw_wcB">a vast number of languages, cultures and religions</a>, about half of sub-Saharan African immigrants come from just five countries: Nigeria, Ethiopia, Ghana, Kenya and Somalia.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/570926/original/file-20240123-29-jcleg3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Three men in casual clothing stand on small rugs outside, facing the same direction, with a tall fence in the background." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/570926/original/file-20240123-29-jcleg3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/570926/original/file-20240123-29-jcleg3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/570926/original/file-20240123-29-jcleg3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/570926/original/file-20240123-29-jcleg3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/570926/original/file-20240123-29-jcleg3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/570926/original/file-20240123-29-jcleg3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/570926/original/file-20240123-29-jcleg3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Muslim immigrants from Senegal pray while waiting to be transported from the U.S.-Mexico border in Lukeville, Ariz.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/immigrants-from-senegal-take-part-in-an-islamic-prayer-at-news-photo/1836551067?adppopup=true">John Moore/Getty Images</a></span>
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</figure>
<p>Overall, most Black immigrants who come to the U.S. from any part of the world <a href="https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2022/01/27/key-findings-about-black-immigrants-in-the-u-s/">settle in the Northeast or the South</a>. However, about 1 in 10 make their home in the Midwest. <a href="https://www.migrationpolicy.org/data/state-profiles/state/demographics/IA">According to the Migration Policy Institute</a>, around 30,000 of the 3.2 million people in Iowa were born in Africa.</p>
<p>Some newcomers are attracted to the region because of <a href="https://www.thegazette.com/article/why-they-come-to-iowa-a-closer-look-at-immigration-in-iowa/">economic opportunities</a>, especially in meatpacking plants. Others come through recommendations from friends and family members already living there.</p>
<p>Most of the people we interviewed are refugees and asylum-seekers fleeing countries with widespread conflict and describe harrowing experiences on their journeys to the U.S. Many came with the aid of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees – the U.N. refugee agency – or <a href="https://www.un.org/en/global-issues/migration">the International Organization for Migration</a>. Some of the refugees first arrived in other states, including California and Michigan, before making their way to Iowa.</p>
<p>Upon arrival, many are excited to settle into the supposedly utopian society they have dreamed of. <a href="https://doi.org/10.1108/AJIM-10-2019-0299">Reality begins to set in</a> as they face <a href="https://www.migrationpolicy.org/data/state-profiles/state/language/IA">challenges with language</a>, <a href="https://doi.org/10.1300/J377v25n01_03">cultural shock</a> <a href="https://www.latimes.com/world-nation/story/2023-09-21/jamaican-immigrant-new-york-struggles-among-black-americans">and racism</a>. Adjusting to the cold climate is also difficult, as are day-to-day difficulties like getting winter clothes and snow boots, and even getting used to how much personal space Americans give each other.</p>
<p>Refugees and immigrants are eligible for short-term aid <a href="https://www.fns.usda.gov/snap/eligibility/citizen/non-citizen-policy">with groceries</a>, <a href="https://hhs.iowa.gov/programs/programs-and-services/cash-assistance/fip-tanf">cash assistance</a>, <a href="https://hhs.iowa.gov/media/2949/download?inline=#:%7E:text=In%20Iowa%2C%20the%20majority%20of,and%20processes%20as%20U.S.%20citizens.">medical care</a> and English classes. Yet these resources are sometimes not enough. </p>
<h2>Safe − and sacred − places</h2>
<p>In interviews, most immigrants are grateful for friends, family, colleagues and the staff of the secular nonprofit and government agencies who help try to make their stay in Iowa comfortable. However, religious organizations also fill gaps in many arrivals’ new lives – not only with goods and services, but spiritually and socially.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/571966/original/file-20240129-17-3fshh3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Several women in robes that cover their heads and bodies watch as a woman with a baby on her back demonstrates how to use a loom." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/571966/original/file-20240129-17-3fshh3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/571966/original/file-20240129-17-3fshh3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=391&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/571966/original/file-20240129-17-3fshh3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=391&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/571966/original/file-20240129-17-3fshh3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=391&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/571966/original/file-20240129-17-3fshh3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=491&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/571966/original/file-20240129-17-3fshh3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=491&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/571966/original/file-20240129-17-3fshh3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=491&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">East African women participate in a program to connect immigrants and refugees with community services in 2019 at the senior center in St. Peter, Minn.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/after-receiving-a-halal-meal-from-the-st-peter-food-club-news-photo/1265660867?adppopup=true">Elizabeth Flores/Star Tribune via Getty Images</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Some of these groups, like Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Service – which recently <a href="https://www.globalrefuge.org/who-we-are/identity/">changed its name to Global Refuge</a> – are <a href="https://hhs.iowa.gov/programs/programs-and-services/refugee-services/resources">official resettlement partners</a> of the U.S. government.</p>
<p>Others, including <a href="https://catholicworker.org/directory/ia-iowa-city-cw-html/">Catholic Worker</a>, <a href="https://lsiowa.org/who-we-are/">Lutheran Services in Iowa</a>, <a href="https://dailyiowan.com/2019/12/09/local-nonprofit-ic-compassion-launches-new-refugee-counseling-program/">Iowa City Compassion</a> and the Catherine McAuley Center, a charity founded by Catholic nuns, help provide basic supplies, clothing and food, as well as help enrolling migrant kids in school. Religious groups also organize food drives for Thanksgiving and Christmas.</p>
<p>Some individual members of congregations take it upon themselves to help. One interviewee recalled, “It was snowing, and this elderly woman saw me and my baby around the church. She talked to me and helped to get items like an iron, table, and some sheets, and dropped me off after the shopping. She helped me so much.”</p>
<p>Religious places are also used as <a href="https://www.iowapublicradio.org/ipr-news/2019-08-27/refugee-communities-seek-out-iowa-to-put-down-roots">safe spaces for African migrants’ stories</a>, highlighting the problems they are facing as individuals and as a community, and thinking of ways to proffer solutions. </p>
<p>For this research, our focus was on Christian and Muslim religious communities. Once in Iowa, many Christians and Muslims come to feel at home by forming groups in religious spaces such as choirs, women’s groups and Bible study – helping them build networks with people with similar experiences, while also connecting with non-African Iowans. Women we’ve interviewed in Des Moines, for example, say that chatting in mosque after prayers is an important part of their lives.</p>
<p>Some interviewees comment on their congregations’ inclusivity, which allows for their native languages to be used in songs and sermons, even in religious services with nonimmigrants. A few congregations also open up their spaces for African attendees to hold cultural events and get-togethers with familiar music and food. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/571977/original/file-20240129-19-66dhwr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="The hand of someone wearing a white coat and a silver ring holds an orange and brown string of beads." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/571977/original/file-20240129-19-66dhwr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/571977/original/file-20240129-19-66dhwr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/571977/original/file-20240129-19-66dhwr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/571977/original/file-20240129-19-66dhwr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/571977/original/file-20240129-19-66dhwr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/571977/original/file-20240129-19-66dhwr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/571977/original/file-20240129-19-66dhwr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">An immigrant from Mauritania fingers prayer beads while waiting to be processed by U.S. border authorities on Dec. 5, 2023, in Lukeville, Ariz.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/an-immigrant-from-mauritania-fingers-prayer-beads-while-news-photo/1833429149?adppopup=true">John Moore/Getty Images</a></span>
</figcaption>
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<h2>Change ahead</h2>
<p>However, during one of the interview sessions in one of the churches in Iowa City, a few respondents hoped for an increased sense of belonging in other kinds of social circles as well: community gatherings, workplaces and their children’s schools, for example.</p>
<p>Many of our interviewees complain about lack of assistance from the government during the assimilation process and advocate for additional support such as more citizenship education for newly resettled immigrants.</p>
<p>Yet, they are confident that with time, Iowa will diversify, making it feel more like home: a state where they can put down roots, worship among friends and even access African foods such as “ugali” cornmeal, pilau and jollof rice.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/218909/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Osamamen Oba Eduviere is affiliated with Refugee Alliance of Johnson County. </span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Brady G'Sell is affiliated with the Immigrant Welcome Network of Johnson County, IC Compassion and the Refugee Alliance of Johnson County. </span></em></p>Immigration may be concentrated on America’s coasts, but newcomers are putting down roots in Midwestern communities as well.Osamamen Oba Eduviere, Ph.D. Candidate in Religious Studies, University of IowaBrady G'Sell, Assistant Professor of Gender, Women's, and Sexuality Studies and Anthropology, University of IowaLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2209842024-01-30T13:33:12Z2024-01-30T13:33:12ZLongtime NRA chief Wayne LaPierre is leaving the gun group in trouble but still powerful<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/571724/original/file-20240126-19-1jx8uh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C474%2C5484%2C3311&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Wayne LaPierre led the NRA for more than three decades.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://newsroom.ap.org/detail/NRALaPierreResignation/b28199a40abc423abb22901b5fe60e87/photo?boardId=37be9465fcce45d283d5431cccb20a6a&st=boards&mediaType=audio,photo,video,graphic&sortBy=&dateRange=Anytime&totalCount=492&currentItemNo=0">AP Photo/Darron Cummings</a></span></figcaption></figure><p><a href="https://thereload.com/nra-claims-lapierre-wont-be-on-payroll-after-resignation-has-chronic-lyme-disease/">Wayne LaPierre</a> will resign from the National Rifle Association at the end of January 2024. During most of the <a href="https://www.reuters.com/world/us/wayne-lapierre-step-down-national-rifle-association-leader-nra-says-2024-01-05/">33 years he spent at its helm</a> as its executive vice president, the gun group’s membership, revenue and clout grew sharply. </p>
<p>I am a <a href="https://s-usih.org/2023/03/usih-iupui-community-scholars-spotlight-cari-s-babitzke/">historian of firearms politics</a> and have researched the NRA’s long history. LaPierre’s legacy as leader includes an increasingly polarized political debate around the utility of guns and how easy it should be for Americans to buy them.</p>
<p>LaPierre, 74, cited “<a href="https://home.nra.org/statements/nra-evp-wayne-lapierre-announces-resignation-from-nra/">health reasons</a>” as his rationale for resigning. The group announced his impending departure shortly before the NRA’s <a href="https://apnews.com/article/nra-national-rifle-association-wayne-lapierre-lawsuit-42f90bf1690c326afcd0b6cdc4234ef8">civil fraud trial</a> began in New York City.</p>
<p>A few days later, the NRA clarified that he had <a href="https://theconversation.com/chronic-lyme-disease-does-it-exist-129288">chronic Lyme disease</a>, and a <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2024/01/26/nyregion/wayne-lapierre-nra-chief-testimony.html">filing from his doctor</a> stated that he was experiencing “cognitive decline with difficulty performing daily tasks.”</p>
<h2>From defeat to victory</h2>
<p>Wayne LaPierre became the NRA’s executive vice president, its most powerful official, in 1991. Previously, he’d led the <a href="https://ballotpedia.org/National_Rifle_Association">NRA’s lobbying arm</a>, the Institute for Legislative Action.</p>
<p>He joined the NRA as a state lobbyist after <a href="https://roanoke.com/archive/a-statesman-dies/article_4d9e8663-8d65-57de-b2d7-13d47282e72c.html">working as a legislative aide</a> to Virginia state Delegate Alfred Victor “Vic” Thomas, a conservative Democrat. <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/post-politics/wp/2012/12/21/who-is-wayne-lapierre/">Often described as bookish</a> and quiet, LaPierre brought to the NRA his considerable skills as a political strategist. </p>
<p>But his first few years at the helm coincided with some significant legislative defeats. </p>
<p>In 1993, then-President Bill Clinton signed into law the <a href="https://www.thetrace.org/2023/11/background-checks-gun-purchasing-brady/">Brady Handgun Violence Prevention Act</a>, which established a system of background checks for people who buy guns from federally licensed dealers. The following year, Clinton signed <a href="https://www.ncjrs.gov/txtfiles/billfs.txt">the assault weapons ban</a> into law. </p>
<p>That measure <a href="https://www.npr.org/2019/08/13/750656174/the-u-s-once-had-a-ban-on-assault-weapons-why-did-it-expire">instituted a 10-year ban on</a> the manufacturing of a small number of specific “military-style assault weapons,” such as the Colt AR-15, and <a href="https://wisevoter.com/state-rankings/states-with-magazine-restrictions/">high-capacity ammunition magazines</a>. The law did not, however, ban guns that were already on the market or in private hands prior to its enactment.</p>
<p>Partly because of the <a href="https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2023/4/20/us-legislators-banned-assault-weapons-in-94-why-cant-they-now">NRA’s relentless opposition</a>, Congress failed to renew that ban a decade later.</p>
<p>Over the course of his leadership, <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2015/08/14/the-nra-ification-of-the-republican-party/">LaPierre cemented the NRA’s relationship with the Republican Party</a> and made unwavering commitment to gun rights a politically viable, if volatile, strategy.</p>
<p>He also developed a <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/nras-lapierre-the-force-behind-the-nations-gun-lobby/2012/12/21/599e8b96-4b98-11e2-a6a6-aabac85e8036_story.html">pugnacious public persona</a>, memorably calling federal agents “<a href="https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2024/jan/05/wayne-lapierre-nra-resigns-corruption-scandal">jack-booted government thugs</a>” in a 1995 fundraising letter.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/571728/original/file-20240127-17-7ggeyj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Men in caps examine pistols in a crowded convention." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/571728/original/file-20240127-17-7ggeyj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/571728/original/file-20240127-17-7ggeyj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/571728/original/file-20240127-17-7ggeyj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/571728/original/file-20240127-17-7ggeyj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/571728/original/file-20240127-17-7ggeyj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/571728/original/file-20240127-17-7ggeyj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/571728/original/file-20240127-17-7ggeyj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Men check out pistols on display at the National Rifle Association’s annual meeting in Indianapolis in 2023.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/guests-check-out-pistols-on-display-at-the-national-rifle-news-photo/1251837074?adppopup=true">Jeremy Hogan/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images</a></span>
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<h2>Fighting gun control</h2>
<p>During LaPierre’s reign, the NRA’s messaging <a href="https://press.princeton.edu/books/hardcover/9780691230399/merchants-of-the-right">celebrated armed individualism</a>. He advocated for loosening gun regulations and denounced what he believed were partisan plots to confiscate guns from “law-abiding citizens.”</p>
<p>The NRA’s pitches to its members under LaPierre’s leadership, and the advertisements on the pages of its flagship publication, American Rifleman, reflected a change in <a href="https://theconversation.com/how-the-nra-evolved-from-backing-a-1934-ban-on-machine-guns-to-blocking-nearly-all-firearm-restrictions-today-183880">tone from the NRA’s earlier culture</a>. Though it occasionally celebrated and supported hunting or shooting sports, it increasingly emphasized the importance of firearms for self-defense.</p>
<p>At the same time, LaPierre’s NRA engaged in a concerted effort to change state laws regarding the concealed carrying of handguns.</p>
<p>Today, Idaho, Florida and 25 other <a href="https://www.thetrace.org/2023/04/permitless-concealed-carry-gun-law-map/">states allow people to carry firearms without a permit</a>: Nearly any adult can legally carry a concealed handgun without undergoing training or applying for a license.</p>
<p>With LaPierre at the helm of the NRA, congressional action toward gun control ground to a near halt. For <a href="https://press.princeton.edu/books/hardcover/9780691207445/firepower">lawmakers on both sides of the aisle</a>, but especially for the NRA’s Republican allies, it became a political third rail, much like attempting to cut Social Security spending. </p>
<p>LaPierre also led the NRA through a sea change in the prevailing legal interpretation of the <a href="https://www.law.cornell.edu/constitution/second_amendment">Second Amendment</a> as its long effort to enshrine gun ownership as a constitutional right came to fruition.</p>
<p><a href="https://www.ojp.gov/ncjrs/virtual-library/abstracts/effect-nra-national-rifle-association-citizens-special-interest">This work began</a> <a href="https://searchworks.stanford.edu/view/12213511">in the late 1970s</a> – prior to LaPierre’s tenure at the top of the organization. But two landmark Supreme Court rulings, <a href="https://www.oyez.org/cases/2007/07-290">District of Columbia v. Heller</a> in 2008 and <a href="https://www.oyez.org/cases/2021/20-843">New York State Rifle & Pistol Association v. Bruen</a> in 2022, held that the Second Amendment guaranteed the civilian right to own guns and be armed outside the home.</p>
<p>Those rulings have forced states to reassess gun regulations already on their books.</p>
<h2>Losing members, waning influence</h2>
<p>An explosive <a href="https://www.thetrace.org/2019/04/nra-financial-misconduct-ackerman-mcqueen/">2019 report</a> by The Trace in partnership with The New Yorker brought alleged <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/investigations/nra-money-flowed-to-board-members-amid-allegedly-lavish-spending-by-top-officials-and-vendors/2019/06/09/3eafe160-8186-11e9-9a67-a687ca99fb3d_story.html">misuse of the group’s funds</a> to the attention of New York Attorney General Letitia James.</p>
<p>James has accused LaPierre of using the NRA as his “<a href="https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/wayne-lapierre-allegedly-used-nra-personal-piggy-bank-n-y-n1236068">personal piggy bank</a>.” He’s being sued, along with three other current and former NRA employees and the gun group itself, although <a href="https://ag.ny.gov/press-release/2024/attorney-general-james-announces-settlement-former-nra-senior-strategist-eve">one individual plaintiff</a> already has reached a US$100,000 settlement. All told, they allegedly <a href="https://ag.ny.gov/press-release/2020/attorney-general-james-files-lawsuit-dissolve-nra">misused $64 million</a> of the funds in the NRA’s coffers.</p>
<p>When he took the stand in the trial on Jan. 26, LaPierre confirmed that hundreds of thousands of dollars spent for his own private jet travel and for trips by his relatives were paid for by the NRA. He also acknowledged multiple jaunts on a <a href="https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/nra-head-wayne-lapierre-testifying-corruption-trial-confirms-details-l-rcna135842">luxury yacht with one of the group’s vendors</a>.</p>
<p>LaPierre <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/investigations/nra-money-flowed-to-board-members-amid-allegedly-lavish-spending-by-top-officials-and-vendors/2019/06/09/3eafe160-8186-11e9-9a67-a687ca99fb3d_story.html">retained the support</a> of most of the <a href="https://www.americanrifleman.org/content/2023-nra-board-election-results/">NRA’s 76-member board</a> in the early period following the first reports of misuse of its funds, but the costs of the trial and these travails for the association are growing beyond <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2024/01/national-rifle-association-wayne-lapierre-trial/677056/">dollars and cents</a>.</p>
<p>The NRA is reportedly hemorrhaging members, a key source of its operating revenue and the heart of its political power.</p>
<p>According to a report by Stephen Gutowski in The Reload, the NRA had <a href="https://thereload.com/nra-has-lost-over-a-million-members-since-corruption-allegations-surfaced/">lost over 1 million members</a> – out of around 5 million – since the allegations of corruption inside the leadership ranks came to light. That drop occurred even as more than <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2021/dec/20/us-gun-purchases-2020-2021-study">5 million</a> additional Americans became first-time gun owners and gun sales hit <a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/joewalsh/2022/01/05/us-bought-almost-20-million-guns-last-year---second-highest-year-on-record/?sh=412204a413bb">record numbers</a> in 2020 and 2021.</p>
<p>Tumbling revenue has also led to <a href="https://abcnews.go.com/US/nra-membership-dues-spending-continue-shrink-report-shows/story?id=85147897">staff and program cuts</a>, including hunter and shooter safety training programs that serve as important recruiting opportunities for gun owners who do not belong to the NRA. For the moment, it’s still the largest gun advocacy organization, though the <a href="https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/frontline/article/how-gun-control-groups-are-closing-the-spending-gap-with-the-nra/">spending gap</a> between gun rights and gun control groups continues to narrow.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/571727/original/file-20240127-19-b6dkbl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Kids speak out at a rally, with one holding a sign saying 'protect kids, not the NRA.'" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/571727/original/file-20240127-19-b6dkbl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/571727/original/file-20240127-19-b6dkbl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/571727/original/file-20240127-19-b6dkbl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/571727/original/file-20240127-19-b6dkbl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/571727/original/file-20240127-19-b6dkbl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/571727/original/file-20240127-19-b6dkbl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/571727/original/file-20240127-19-b6dkbl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Students demonstrate for stricter gun control legislation as part of a March for Our Lives rally at the Iowa State Capitol on Jan. 8, 2024, in Des Moines.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/students-demonstrate-for-stricter-gun-control-legislation-news-photo/1917940354?adppopup=true">Scott Olson/Getty Images</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>No permanent replacement yet</h2>
<p>The NRA’s <a href="https://www.thetrace.org/2024/01/nra-lapierre-corruption-trial-arguments">courtroom strategy</a> appears to be an attempt to distance itself from LaPierre. During opening arguments, <a href="https://www.courthousenews.com/lawyer-not-perfect-nra-had-cleaned-up-its-act-before-state-probe/">NRA counsel Sarah Rogers acknowledged</a> that Wayne LaPierre “was not always a meticulous corporate executive.”</p>
<p>The NRA’s attorneys are arguing that LaPierre’s resignation is one of many steps the association has taken to tidy up its house.</p>
<p>And yet his influence will remain in the short run, as <a href="https://nrawatch.org/filing/deposition-of-nra-spokesperson-andrew-arulanandam/">longtime confidant</a> Andrew Arulanandam will step into his shoes on an interim basis.</p>
<p>The NRA’s board will decide on a permanent replacement in May, when the group holds its <a href="https://www.nraam.org/">annual meeting in Dallas</a>.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/220984/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Cari Babitzke does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Under his watch, congressional action toward gun control ground to a near halt that lasted for many years.Cari Babitzke, Lecturer of History, Boston UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2198972024-01-29T13:36:54Z2024-01-29T13:36:54ZNonprofit hospitals have an obligation to help their communities, but the people who live nearby may see little benefit<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/571244/original/file-20240124-27-pprmzs.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C0%2C4708%2C3016&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Scholars interviewed people living near the University of Colorado Hospital to assess whether it's a good neighbor.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/university-of-colorado-hospital-news-photo/586104222?adppopup=true">John Greim/LightRocket via Getty Images</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Does living near a hospital make you more likely to get the health care you need?</p>
<p>Even though the <a href="https://www.irs.gov/charities-non-profits/community-health-needs-assessment-for-charitable-hospital-organizations-section-501r3">federal government requires nonprofit hospitals</a> to regularly assess the health needs of their surrounding communities and publicly post a plan to address those concerns, many people living nearby struggle to get basic health care.</p>
<p>We are a <a href="https://www.ohio.edu/experts/expert/daniel-skinner">political scientist</a> and an <a href="https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=vAgVzVAAAAAJ&hl=en&oi=ao">urban sociologist</a> who study how hospitals interact with and shape the communities in which they are located. As we explain in our book, “<a href="https://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/C/bo206056945.html">The City and the Hospital</a>,” most top-ranked hospitals in the U.S. <a href="https://lowninstitute.org/us-news-best-hospitals-still-falling-short-on-equity/">aren’t doing enough in this regard</a>.</p>
<h2>A paradox for local communities</h2>
<p>Despite living in the shadow of world-class medical facilities, people residing in these communities often have poor health.</p>
<p>We call this the paradox of medically overserved communities.</p>
<p>Many nonprofit hospitals amass <a href="https://www.definitivehc.com/resources/healthcare-insights/top-non-profit-hospitals-net-patient-revenue">revenues in the millions and even billions</a>. This <a href="https://www.kff.org/health-costs/issue-brief/most-nonprofit-hospitals-and-health-systems-analyzed-had-adequate-or-strong-days-of-cash-on-hand-in-2022-though-about-one-in-ten-did-not/">economic power</a>, coupled with their stated missions to take care of their local community, positions most of them well to benefit the neighborhoods surrounding their campuses.</p>
<p>Urban hospitals tend to be centrally located; residents of <a href="https://www.brookings.edu/articles/three-charts-showing-you-poverty-in-u-s-cities-and-metro-areas">these city centers tend to be low income</a>, and many of them are disproportionately Black and Latino. Using census data, we found that the neighborhoods around our case sites were, overall, less white, had lower household incomes, lower property values and greater vacancy rates than the rest of their cities. They also had worse health. </p>
<h2>Worse off in terms of health</h2>
<p>To better understand how hospitals serve local populations, we and our colleague, medical sociologist <a href="https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=gZG5HAQAAAAJ&hl=en">Berkeley Franz</a>, conducted over 200 interviews.</p>
<p>We spoke with local residents, hospital administrators, business owners and health care advocates. Our conversations focused on three American hospitals: the Cleveland Clinic in Ohio, Hartford Hospital in Connecticut and the University of Colorado Hospital in Aurora. Like these three, about <a href="https://www.aha.org/statistics/fast-facts-us-hospitals">half of U.S. hospitals are nonprofits</a>.</p>
<p>In all three cities, these neighborhoods had lower rates of health insurance compared with citywide and national averages. And so, when looking at a map, these neighborhoods might appear to have greater access to health care than, for example, those living in rural communities. This is not the case. </p>
<p>We found that Americans residing in a <a href="https://www.census.gov/geographies/reference-maps/2020/geo/2020pl-maps/2020-census-tract.html">census tract</a> next to those three hospitals were actually more likely to be in poorer health than their fellow city dwellers.</p>
<p>We examined 12 key health conditions, including heart disease, high blood pressure, diabetes, high cholesterol and mental illness. Local residents were faring worse than city averages 64% of the time and worse than national averages 80% of the time. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/571300/original/file-20240124-21-3mm8f4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A multiracial group of people fill out their paperwork in the doctor's waiting room." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/571300/original/file-20240124-21-3mm8f4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/571300/original/file-20240124-21-3mm8f4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/571300/original/file-20240124-21-3mm8f4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/571300/original/file-20240124-21-3mm8f4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/571300/original/file-20240124-21-3mm8f4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/571300/original/file-20240124-21-3mm8f4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/571300/original/file-20240124-21-3mm8f4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Sometimes low-income people living near prominent hospitals fear getting care at them because of billing concerns.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/photo/diverse-people-fill-out-forms-in-doctors-waiting-royalty-free-image/1745157924?phrase=nonprofit+hospitals&adppopup=true">SDI Productions/E+ via Getty Images</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Vague mandate</h2>
<p>Nonprofit hospitals get <a href="https://www.gao.gov/assets/gao-23-106777.pdf">tax exemptions</a> because the Internal Revenue Service recognizes that the promotion of health is a <a href="https://www.gao.gov/products/gao-23-106777">charitable mission that serves the public good</a>. Because for-profit hospitals pay all applicable taxes, they are <a href="https://www.healthaffairs.org/doi/10.1377/hlthaff.2022.01542">not subject to these IRS requirements</a>.</p>
<p>Nonprofit hospitals <a href="https://www.kff.org/health-costs/issue-brief/the-estimated-value-of-tax-exemption-for-nonprofit-hospitals-was-about-28-billion-in-2020/">save billions every year</a> in federal, state and local taxes. But they are required to spend some of their money to provide what the government calls “<a href="https://nchh.org/tools-and-data/financing-and-funding/healthcare-financing/hospital-community-benefits/">community benefit</a>.”</p>
<p>How much should these hospitals spend?</p>
<p>Until now, the authorities have not specified an amount or percentage of a hospital’s revenues or profits. The <a href="https://www.irs.gov/charities-non-profits/charitable-hospitals-general-requirements-for-tax-exemption-under-section-501c3">IRS test for community benefit</a> is vague. It requires that hospitals make “investments” that are “broad enough to benefit the community” and must “serve a public rather than a private interest.”</p>
<p>Although <a href="https://www.kff.org/health-costs/issue-brief/hospital-charity-care-how-it-works-and-why-it-matters/">providing charity care</a> isn’t the only contribution hospitals make to their communities, it’s an important one. And in 2020, when the question was last looked at closely, nonprofit hospitals’ charity care totaled US$16 billion – during a year <a href="https://www.kff.org/health-costs/issue-brief/the-estimated-value-of-tax-exemption-for-nonprofit-hospitals-was-about-28-billion-in-2020/">when they got $28.1 billion in tax breaks</a>.</p>
<p>Some hospitals do little to nothing to meet this goal. The U.S. Government Accountability Office, a government watchdog, found 30 nonprofit hospitals that got tax breaks in 2016 <a href="https://www.gao.gov/products/gao-23-106777">despite reporting no spending on community benefits</a> at all.</p>
<p>And although hospitals are required to report their community benefit activities to the IRS every three years, the government agency “was unable to provide evidence that it did so because it did not have a well-documented process to ensure those activities were being reviewed,” the GAO said in 2023.</p>
<h2>Community benefit</h2>
<p>People living near hospitals complained, as you might expect, about blaring sirens, helicopters and traffic. We also heard confusion over hospitals’ responsibilities toward their local community. </p>
<p>Local residents often told us they expected more from hospitals than other neighborhood institutions. As Mansfield Frazier, a Cleveland community advocate, put it, the Cleveland Clinic is “not in the business of making widgets. They’re in the business of promoting health.”</p>
<p>On the other hand, hospital administrators at the three hospitals we studied insist that they spend generously to improve their local communities. One Cleveland Clinic administrator, for example, lamented, “There are some people who think it is our job to repair potholes on their streets.” </p>
<p>In terms of “how well hospitals invest in community health,” a health-focused think tank, <a href="https://lownhospitalsindex.org">the Lown Institute</a>,
graded our three hospitals as <a href="https://lownhospitalsindex.org/rankings/compare/?hospitals=070025,060024,360180">average</a>: Hartford Hospital earned a B grade, and the University of Colorado Hospital and the vaunted Cleveland Clinic both earned a C.</p>
<p>The American Hospital Association has responded to these assessments by <a href="https://www.aha.org/news/blog/2023-04-11-lown-institute-once-again-cherry-picks-data-fit-their-preconceived-notions-about-hospitals">criticizing Lown’s methods and data</a>. Most notably, it accuses Lown of “cherry-picking,” insisting that delivering “life-saving treatments” and educating newly graduated physicians should be considered part of “community benefit.” Such activities are generally not considered part of hospitals’ broader nonprofit obligations because they are paid for the medical care they deliver and the <a href="https://crsreports.congress.gov/product/pdf/IF/IF10960">physicians they train</a>.</p>
<h2>‘Appetite for land’</h2>
<p>Residents of the three neighborhoods where we conducted our research often noted their local hospital’s prominence. But they also said they felt unwelcome there, using words like “behemoth,” “intimidating” and “imposing” when describing them.</p>
<p>They also told us they were upset when the hospitals purchased neighborhood homes and other buildings and razed them for new facilities. In Hartford, residents pointed to an example of how the hospital bought a family-run funeral home that had catered to the local Latino community and then turned it into a parking lot. </p>
<p>The local community expressed similar concerns about the Cleveland Clinic’s “<a href="https://www.cleveland.com/business/2012/01/historic_churches_near_clevela.html">appetite for land</a>,” which threatened the future of the neighborhood’s historic churches.</p>
<p>We also heard concerns over unfair billing practices that echoed what The New York Times has found – that overcharging patients entitled to free care is <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2022/10/04/business/providence-hospital-poor-patients.html">perhaps more common than previously believed</a>.</p>
<p>In all three communities, people told us they avoided their local, prominent hospitals because of fears of the financial burden a visit would yield. Many local residents said they saw less celebrated hospitals that were farther from home as safer options in terms of what they expected to pay.</p>
<h2>An unfulfilled promise</h2>
<p>When Congress passed the <a href="https://www.healthaffairs.org/do/10.1377/hpb20160225.954803/">Affordable Care Act in 2010, it reasserted</a> the idea that nonprofit hospitals should provide substantial benefits to communities in exchange for their tax exemptions. That hasn’t happened.</p>
<p>Scholars widely agree there’s <a href="https://doi.org/10.1101/2022.08.17.22278878">no evidence</a> that nonprofit hospitals have generally <a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK241401/">done more to benefit their local communities</a> with the ACA than they did without it.</p>
<p>Yet a lack of oversight has meant that hospitals have rarely faced penalties for noncompliance.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/219897/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Standards are vague, and the IRS, which is tasked with enforcement, hasn’t provided much oversight.Jonathan Wynn, Department Chair and Professor of Sociology, UMass AmherstDaniel Skinner, Associate Professor of Health Policy, Ohio UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2205682024-01-18T13:28:25Z2024-01-18T13:28:25ZUS law permits charities to encourage voting and help voters register, making GOP concerns about this assistance unfounded<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/569650/original/file-20240116-27-7pcz6q.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=1375%2C1184%2C3166%2C1954&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Volunteers register voters in Santa Fe, N.M. </span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/volunteers-register-voters-at-a-table-set-up-at-a-fourth-of-news-photo/997809612?adppopup=true">Robert Alexander/Getty Images</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>U.S. charities <a href="https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/26/501">aren’t allowed to campaign for or against specific political candidates</a>. But they can <a href="https://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-tege/rr2007-41.pdf">legally engage</a> in nonpartisan <a href="https://www.eac.gov/sites/default/files/electionofficials/QuickStartGuides/Voter_Education_EAC_Quick_Start_Guide_508.pdf">voter education</a> and candidate-neutral efforts to get out the vote, as well as voter registration drives.</p>
<p>I’m an <a href="https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/cf_dev/AbsByAuth.cfm?per_id=2057780">expert on charitable tax law</a> who used to work at the Internal Revenue Service. </p>
<p>While <a href="https://gop-waysandmeans.house.gov/event/oversight-subcommittee-hearing-on-growth-of-the-tax-exempt-sector-and-the-impact-on-the-american-political-landscape/">testifying before a House subcommittee</a> in December 2023, I explained that these electoral-related activities are consistent with a healthy democracy and <a href="https://gop-waysandmeans.house.gov/wp-content/uploads/2023/12/Hackney-Testimony.pdf">don’t violate any U.S. laws</a>. </p>
<h2>Voter assistance</h2>
<p>Some nonprofits like the <a href="https://www.lwv.org/elections/increasing-voter-registration">League of Women Voters</a> have engaged in these nonpartisan efforts for decades. Others, like <a href="https://www.nonprofitvote.org/">Nonprofit Vote</a> and <a href="https://www.rockthevote.org/">Rock the Vote</a>, seek to motivate people of color and young voters to cast their ballots.</p>
<p>It’s hard to find data on how much charitable money funds these causes. But there’s no shortage of conjecture about its possible impact.</p>
<p>The Republican Party has long seen nonpartisan voter registration and get-out-the-vote campaigns as being somehow tied to the Democratic Party or more helpful for turning out votes for Democratic candidates than Republican hopefuls. As far back as the 1960s, Republican representatives accused the <a href="https://capitalresearch.org/article/the-ford-foundation-the-1967-cleveland-mayoral-election-and-the-1969-tax-reform-act/">Ford Foundation of using voter registration</a> in what they alleged was a partisan manner. </p>
<p>Today, <a href="https://www.philanthropy.com/article/the-house-gop-wants-to-probe-nonprofits-both-left-and-right-have-pushed-back">Republican objections</a> <a href="https://gop-waysandmeans.house.gov/wp-content/uploads/2023/09/UPDATED-RFI-on-501c3-and-c4-Activities-FINAL.docx87.pdf">and concerns</a> are getting louder. There are <a href="https://tenney.house.gov/media/press-releases/congresswoman-tenney-reintroduces-end-zuckerbucks-act">GOP efforts underway</a> to make some of these donations illegal. </p>
<h2>Charity constraints</h2>
<p>Because it’s against the law for charities to overtly engage in political activity, any direct politicking tied to these nonpartisan registration drives could <a href="https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/26/501">jeopardize their tax-exempt status</a>.</p>
<p>These “organizations may encourage people to participate in the electoral process through voter registration and get-out-the-vote drives, conducted in a non-partisan manner,” the <a href="https://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-tege/rr2007-41.pdf">Internal Revenue Service states</a>. “On the other hand, voter education or registration activities conducted in a biased manner that favors (or opposes) one or more candidates is prohibited.”</p>
<p>In practice, that means it’s OK if a charity sets up a voter registration booth at a state fair and registers anyone who comes to the booth, regardless of their political leanings. But if a charitable organization runs a phone bank that encourages people to vote only if they agree with a particular candidate’s position, that would break the law.</p>
<p>The Americans who can <a href="https://theconversation.com/whats-the-charitable-deduction-an-economist-explains-162647">deduct their contributions to charities</a> from their taxable income – an option generally available today for only the highest earners – can’t do that with the money they <a href="https://blog.turbotax.intuit.com/tax-deductions-and-credits-2/are-your-political-campaign-contributions-tax-deductible-11380/">donate to political candidates</a>.</p>
<p>The <a href="https://projects.propublica.org/nonprofits/organizations/300126510">Center for American Progress</a>, a progressive think tank, isn’t allowed to endorse President Joe Biden’s reelection bid. Nor is <a href="https://projects.propublica.org/nonprofits/organizations/237327730">The Heritage Foundation</a>, a conservative think tank, at liberty to urge voters to support his Republican rival.</p>
<p>Although <a href="https://projects.propublica.org/nonprofits/organizations/300126510">both of these groups produce political analysis</a>, they <a href="https://projects.propublica.org/nonprofits/organizations/237327730">are charities</a> and must comply with section <a href="https://www.501c3.org/what-is-a-501c3">501(c)(3)</a> of the tax code.</p>
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<figcaption><span class="caption">Professor Philip Hackney testifies before the House Ways and Means oversight subcommittee on Dec. 13, 2023.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Johnson amendment</h2>
<p>This restriction, on the books since 1954, is known as the <a href="https://theconversation.com/trump-says-the-irs-regulates-churches-too-much-heres-why-hes-wrong-77605">Johnson amendment</a> because of Lyndon B. Johnson’s insistence on its passage when he was serving in Congress.</p>
<p>Former President Donald Trump tried and failed to get rid of the Johnson amendment for churches and other houses of worship, which the U.S. government <a href="https://theconversation.com/whats-a-church-that-can-depend-on-the-eye-of-the-beholder-or-paperwork-filed-with-the-irs-130517">lumps together with all other charities</a>. </p>
<p>House Speaker Mike Johnson and other Republican lawmakers would like to go even further than Trump’s proposed change. They have backed the <a href="https://slate.com/business/2023/11/mike-johnson-speaker-johnson-amendment-religious-leaders-taxes.html">Free Speech Fairness Act</a>, <a href="https://www.councilofnonprofits.org/trends-and-policy-issues/protecting-johnson-amendment-and-nonprofit-nonpartisanship">which would practically eliminate restrictions on politicking</a> for not just churches but all charities.</p>
<p>Some conservative preachers, meanwhile, have been <a href="https://www.keranews.org/politics/2022-11-03/many-churches-use-their-pulpit-to-support-or-oppose-political-candidates">flouting the Johnson amendment</a> without eliciting much of a <a href="https://www.texastribune.org/2022/10/30/johnson-amendment-elections-irs/">response from the IRS</a>.</p>
<h2>Republican lawmakers</h2>
<p>At the same time Republicans are trying to significantly weaken restrictions on the use of charitable money for politicking, they are also calling out nonpartisan voter registration and get-out-the-vote efforts as unfair uses of tax-deductible charitable dollars.</p>
<p>The <a href="https://gop-waysandmeans.house.gov/event/oversight-subcommittee-hearing-on-growth-of-the-tax-exempt-sector-and-the-impact-on-the-american-political-landscape/">House Ways and Means subcommittee hearing</a> in which I testified focused on the role that some nonprofits are playing in American politics.</p>
<p>Republicans expressed their concerns that charities are engaging in voter registration and get-out-the-vote efforts in communities that might boost the electoral chances of Democratic candidates. Because contributions to charities can be tax deductible, those lawmakers said they are concerned that the federal government is thus being used to further Democratic interests.</p>
<p><a href="https://www.vox.com/recode/2020/1/7/21055340/mind-the-gap-silicon-valley-donors-democrats-2020-plan-140-million">Some of them highlighted a memo</a> from <a href="https://www.opensecrets.org/political-action-committees-pacs/mind-the-gap/C00683649/summary/2022">Mind the Gap</a>, a Democratic <a href="https://www.fec.gov/press/resources-journalists/political-action-committees-pacs/">super PAC</a>. According to the memo, donating to charities for voter registration in the 2020 election cycle was “the single most effective tactic for ensuring Democratic victories.”</p>
<p>But as political scientists Daron R. Shaw and John R. Petrocik have observed, seven decades of survey data and election returns “<a href="https://www.nationalaffairs.com/publications/detail/does-high-voter-turnout-help-one-party">suggest that turnout has no systematic partisan consequences</a>.” </p>
<h2>‘Zuckerbucks’ contributions</h2>
<p>Republican lawmakers are particularly incensed by the over <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/09/08/zuckerberg-2020-election-republicans/">US$400 million in contributions Mark Zuckerberg</a> and his wife, <a href="https://www.techandciviclife.org/100m/">Priscilla Chan</a>, made to two charities to make grants to state and local election administrations to aid those authorities during the COVID-19 crisis.</p>
<p>Conservatives have dubbed this support aimed at ensuring a well-run election system “<a href="https://apnews.com/article/2022-midterm-elections-united-states-government-and-politics-78e0e0d548df9023aeac1c9c690b48f8">Zuckerbucks</a>.” A Republican bill pending in Congress <a href="https://www.foxnews.com/politics/end-zuckerbucks-gop-bill-aims-to-ban-mark-zuckerberg-style-election-funding">would outlaw this kind of spending</a> in the future.</p>
<p>And more than 20 Republican-led states have already <a href="https://apnews.com/article/2022-midterm-elections-united-states-government-and-politics-78e0e0d548df9023aeac1c9c690b48f8">barred this private spending on elections</a> within their borders.</p>
<p>However, the Federal Elections Commission, which is responsible for this kind of oversight, has found no cause for concern. In a rare unanimous decision in 2022, three Republican and three Democratic commissioners <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/09/08/zuckerberg-2020-election-republicans/">determined that all complaints of violations of campaign finance law</a> in the case of the Zuckerberg grants were without merit.</p>
<h2>Concerns moving forward</h2>
<p>As I advised House lawmakers, I believe that drafting any restrictions on the nonprofit sector requires proceeding with great care. Charities make up a part of civil society – a place outside of government and business – where we all have an opportunity to generate important information, develop our opinions and share those with government representatives. </p>
<p>In my view, Congress needs to assess whether any cure it seeks to implement will be better or worse than the disease that it thinks afflicts the U.S. electoral system. Clamping down on nonpartisan voter registration and get-out-the-vote efforts seems to me to be misguided at best.</p>
<p>Congress can, if it wishes to take action, appropriate more funds to ensure that all local and state authorities have the money they need for a well-run election system. That could eliminate the need for donors to step in.</p>
<p>In any case, Congress can help by supporting increases in the IRS budget, especially for the tax agency’s capacity to enforce compliance with the laws pertaining to tax-exempt organizations.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/220568/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Philip Hackney is a member of the Democratic Party. </span></em></p>A professor of nonprofit law explains why drafting any restrictions on charities requires proceeding with great care.Philip Hackney, Associate Professor of Law, University of PittsburghLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2210762024-01-18T13:27:58Z2024-01-18T13:27:58ZNicaragua released imprisoned priests, but repression is unlikely to relent – and the Catholic Church remains a target<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/569921/original/file-20240117-20-1jrits.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=4%2C1%2C1017%2C656&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">A priest and Catholic worshippers pray in front of an image of 'Sangre de Cristo,' burned in a fire on July 2020, at the Metropolitan Cathedral in Managua.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/priest-and-catholic-faithful-pray-in-front-of-an-image-of-news-photo/1242786617?adppopup=true">Oswaldo Rivas/AFP via Getty Images</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Bad news has been the norm for Catholics in Nicaragua, where clergy and church groups have been frequent targets of a wide-ranging crackdown for years. But on Jan. 14, 2024, they received a happy surprise: The government unexpectedly released two bishops, 15 priests and two seminary students from prison and <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2024/01/14/nicaragua-bishop-rolando-alvarez/">expelled them</a> to the Vatican.</p>
<p>Those released included <a href="https://www.uscirf.gov/religious-prisoners-conscience/forb-victims-database/rolando-alvarez">Bishop Rolando Álvarez</a>, a high-profile political prisoner who was detained in 2022 for criticizing the government and then sentenced to 26 years in prison for <a href="https://confidencial.digital/english/nicaraguan-bishop-rolando-alvarez-receives-26-year-sentence/">alleged treason</a>.</p>
<p><a href="https://confidencial.digital/english/dictatorship-banishes-monsignor-rolando-alvarez-and-18-other-religious-political-prisoners-to-the-vatican/">They also included</a> priests <a href="https://www.reuters.com/world/americas/nicaragua-arrests-four-more-priests-intensifies-crackdown-catholic-church-2023-12-30/">detained by</a> President Daniel Ortega’s government in late December 2023 <a href="https://www.vaticannews.va/en/church/news/2024-01/priest-arrested-in-nicaragua-following-mass-on-new-year-s-eve.html">for expressing solidarity</a> with Álvarez and other political prisoners. Days later, Pope Francis <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2024/01/01/world/europe/nicaragua-pope-francis-church.html">criticized the regime</a> in his New Year’s message and then <a href="https://confidencial.digital/english/pope-francis-reiterates-concerns-about-crisis-in-nicaragua/">called for</a> “respectful diplomatic dialogue.”</p>
<p>Nearly six years after <a href="https://infobuero-nicaragua.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/09/PUBLICADO-200908.-FUNIDES.-Nicaragua-en-movimiento-2016-2020-SEI_2020_01-2.pdf">mass protests erupted</a> against Ortega and then were brutally repressed, these prisoner releases offer some hope to Nicaragua’s opposition. As <a href="https://www.global.ucsb.edu/people/kai-m-thaler">my research</a> <a href="https://www.taylorfrancis.com/chapters/oa-edit/10.4324/9781003197614-16/nicaragua-rachel-schwartz-kai-thaler">has shown</a>, however, <a href="https://drive.google.com/file/d/1IICx95ZZzKjfHqiU-oVEityK70vwBv5f/view?usp=sharing">the Ortega regime is unrelenting</a> in trying to <a href="https://doi.org/10.1353/jod.2022.0023">retain power</a>, which suggests this is not necessarily a turning point. In fact, the government reportedly <a href="https://confidencial.digital/nacion/dictadura-secuestra-al-sacerdote-ezequiel-buenfil-tras-el-destierro-de-19-religiosos/">took yet another priest into custody</a> on Jan. 16.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/569652/original/file-20240116-25-c9w6ji.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Several rows of people seated in church pews, all looking ahead." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/569652/original/file-20240116-25-c9w6ji.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/569652/original/file-20240116-25-c9w6ji.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/569652/original/file-20240116-25-c9w6ji.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/569652/original/file-20240116-25-c9w6ji.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/569652/original/file-20240116-25-c9w6ji.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/569652/original/file-20240116-25-c9w6ji.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/569652/original/file-20240116-25-c9w6ji.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Nicaraguans attend mass in San Juan de Oriente on June 24, 2023.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/people-attend-a-mass-during-celebrations-in-honour-of-san-news-photo/1259026822?adppopup=true">Stringer/AFP via Getty Images</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Why target the church?</h2>
<p>Ortega first led Nicaragua from 1979 to 1990, after his left-wing revolutionary organization, the Sandinista National Liberation Front, or FSLN, spearheaded the overthrow of dictator Anastasio Somoza Debayle. In the 1980s, the <a href="https://doi.org/10.16993/ibero.38">FSLN clashed with the Vatican</a> and church hierarchy over the group’s socialist politics, even as many <a href="https://doi.org/10.2307/3712105">poorer Nicaraguan Catholics embraced them</a>.</p>
<p>When Ortega took office again in 2007, however, he did so <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/20788575">with the blessing of Christian leaders</a>. During the 2006 elections, he had turned to <a href="https://doi.org/10.16993/ibero.38">alliances with Catholic</a> and <a href="https://doi.org/10.1007/s41603-017-0005-6">Protestant elites</a> to <a href="https://doi.org/10.1353/jod.2017.0032">return to power</a> in exchange for <a href="https://doi.org/10.1177/0094582X08326020">adopting</a> conservative social policies like <a href="https://doi.org/10.1016/S0140-6736(09)61545-2">banning abortion</a>.</p>
<p>Over the next decade, <a href="https://doi.org/10.5129/001041522X16281740895086">Ortega remained popular</a>, presiding over economic growth in collaboration <a href="https://doi.org/10.15517/aeca.v43i0.31556">with business leaders</a> and developing new public infrastructure and services.</p>
<p>Yet he and the <a href="https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1548-2456.2010.00099.x">FSLN party he controlled</a> were also <a href="https://doi.org/10.1017/lap.2019.64">consolidating power</a> and <a href="https://search.worldcat.org/title/regimen-de-ortega-una-nueva-dictadura-familiar-en-el-continente/oclc/967515148">governing in an increasingly authoritarian</a> manner. Ortega won <a href="https://www.cartercenter.org/resources/pdfs/peace/americas/nicaragua_2011_report_post.pdf">reelection in 2011</a> and then retained power in <a href="http://doi.org/10.1353/jod.2017.0032">fraudulent elections</a> in 2016. Opposition candidates were disqualified, and Ortega’s running mate was his wife, <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2016/10/31/world/americas/nicaragua-daniel-ortega-rosario-murillo-house-of-cards.html">Rosario Murillo</a>.</p>
<p><a href="https://doi.org/10.3917/pal.112.0083">Unexpectedly</a>, Ortega’s popularity and his relationship with the church came crashing down in April 2018, when the government announced cutbacks in social security benefits for retirees. Nicaraguans from <a href="https://doi.org/10.5129/001041522X16281740895086">all backgrounds</a> <a href="https://dialnet.unirioja.es/servlet/articulo?codigo=7549585">took to the streets</a>, and Ortega and Murillo responded with a <a href="https://gieinicaragua.org/#section04">furious crackdown</a>, unleashing police and pro-government paramilitaries <a href="https://www.amnesty.org/en/documents/amr43/9213/2018/en/">armed with military-grade weapons</a>.</p>
<p>Cathedrals and churches <a href="https://www.ncronline.org/news/bishops-journalists-attacked-church-nicaragua">tried to</a> <a href="https://www.proquest.com/openview/41597a7a2b9356e668ff2b579dc7cb1d/1">offer refuge</a> to protesters, but <a href="https://www.oas.org/en/iachr/jsForm/?File=/en/iachr/media_center/preleases/2021/302.asp">over 300 people were killed</a>. Church leaders facilitated a national dialogue between the government and an opposition coalition, <a href="https://www.ncronline.org/news/nicaraguan-bishops-end-role-mediators-national-dialogue">but withdrew</a> as <a href="https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2018/06/nicaragua-aumenta-la-violencia-y-la-represion-estatal-a-pesar-de-los-multiples-esfuerzos-de-dialogo/">repression continued</a>.</p>
<p>When popular Catholic leaders <a href="http://d-scholarship.pitt.edu/38768/">criticized violence</a> against protesters, the regime began viewing the church <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2018/07/22/world/americas/nicaragua-protests-catholic-church.html">as a rival</a> threatening Ortega’s waning legitimacy. Police, paramilitaries and FSLN supporters started <a href="https://english.elpais.com/international/2023-12-23/exiles-arrests-and-740-attacks-nicaragua-redoubles-its-persecution-of-the-catholic-church.html">harassing and attacking</a> clergy and <a href="https://apnews.com/article/virus-outbreak-religion-arson-rosario-murillo-latin-america-82bb721aa3ec25e4af34a26e75568599">Catholic institutions</a>.</p>
<p>In 2019, the pope <a href="https://apnews.com/general-news-9016f14a1a9b476ab5cb1d61397fc273">recalled Silvio Báez</a>, the auxiliary bishop of Managua and a prominent critic of Ortega, from Nicaragua. Yet other bishops and priests still found themselves <a href="https://www.nbcnews.com/news/latino/nicaraguan-president-daniel-ortega-goes-catholic-church-latest-effort-rcna44618">in the regime’s crosshairs</a>. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/569647/original/file-20240116-15-mbn4il.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Two people in baseball hats hold posters with pictures of a man in clerical robes." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/569647/original/file-20240116-15-mbn4il.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/569647/original/file-20240116-15-mbn4il.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/569647/original/file-20240116-15-mbn4il.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/569647/original/file-20240116-15-mbn4il.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/569647/original/file-20240116-15-mbn4il.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/569647/original/file-20240116-15-mbn4il.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/569647/original/file-20240116-15-mbn4il.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Nicaraguan citizens in Costa Rica demonstrate in front of the Nicaraguan Embassy in August 2022 to protest the detention of Bishop Rolando Alvarez.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/nicaraguan-citizens-hold-a-demonstration-in-front-of-the-news-photo/1242597067?adppopup=true">Oscar Navarrete/AFP via Getty Images</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Some <a href="https://apnews.com/article/nicaragua-catholic-priests-exile-ortega-f5ae508a4295f7ae5b359f96064eea46">fled into exile</a> or were blocked <a href="https://confidencial.digital/nacion/sacerdote-desterrado-silencio-de-los-obispos-no-ha-detenido-la-persecucion/">from entering</a> Nicaragua if they traveled abroad. Others who stayed were kept under surveillance. Priests who expressed support for political prisoners or continued to criticize the regime, even in vague terms, could be <a href="https://www.reuters.com/world/americas/catholic-clergy-report-surveillance-beatings-amid-nicaraguas-crackdown-2023-07-07/">arrested or beaten</a>. </p>
<p>The government expelled 12 formerly detained priests to the Vatican <a href="https://www.reuters.com/world/americas/nicaragua-sends-catholic-priests-rome-after-talks-with-vatican-2023-10-19/">in October 2023</a> after what the regime called “<a href="https://www.reuters.com/world/americas/nicaragua-sends-catholic-priests-rome-after-talks-with-vatican-2023-10-19/">fruitful conversations</a>.” But Álvarez, the highest-profile political prisoner, was still held by the government and was stripped of his citizenship after <a href="https://apnews.com/article/politics-united-states-government-caribbean-daniel-ortega-rosario-murillo-c7930c6340472867148ca7e79e09f1eb">refusing to go into exile</a> in February 2023.</p>
<h2>Broader patterns of repression</h2>
<p>Attacks on the church <a href="https://www.usip.org/publications/2022/10/nicaragua-crackdown-religious-actors-further-imperils-return-democracy">are a symptom</a> of the Ortega regime’s absolute intolerance for dissent.</p>
<p>With <a href="https://www.hrw.org/world-report/2024/country-chapters/nicaragua">over 3,000 nongovernmental organizations</a> <a href="https://theconversation.com/nicaragua-has-kicked-out-hundreds-of-ngos-even-cracking-down-on-catholic-groups-like-nuns-from-mother-teresas-order-190222">shut down</a> since 2018, the church has become Nicaragua’s only <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2022/08/23/world/americas/nicaragua-catholic-church-daniel-ortega.html">major nonstate institution</a> with nationwide reach. </p>
<p>In a country where <a href="https://www.state.gov/reports/2022-report-on-international-religious-freedom/Nicaragua/#report-toc__section-1">over 40% of the people</a> identify as Catholic, many normally turn to the church in times <a href="https://popolna.org/realidades-municipales-presentadas-en-informe-de-red-local/">of need</a>. Suppressing Catholic institutions means Nicaraguans must turn to the state for aid, which <a href="https://www.divergentes.com/nicaragua-un-espia-en-cada-esquina/">monitors citizens</a> and <a href="https://doi.org/10.1057/pol.2013.10">has been accused of denying</a> services for perceived disloyalty.</p>
<p><a href="https://www.vozdeamerica.com/a/universidad-de-jesuitas-en-nicaragua-suspende-operaciones-tras-ser-acusada-de-ser-un-centro-de-terrorismo-/7227873.html">At least 27</a> Catholic and <a href="https://www.ohchr.org/en/news/2023/09/group-experts-nicaragua-finds-escalating-persecution-against-dissent-and-crackdown?sub-site=HRC">secular universities</a> have also <a href="https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2023/8/17/nicaragua-seizes-catholic-university-accused-of-being-centre-of-terrorism">been closed or seized</a> by the government, as have <a href="https://latamjournalismreview.org/news/daniel-ortegas-war-against-journalism-54-media-outlets-have-been-shut-down/">more than 50</a> <a href="https://www.reuters.com/world/americas/nicaragua-shuts-catholic-radio-stations-led-by-bishop-critical-regime-2022-08-02/">media outlets</a>.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/569651/original/file-20240116-22672-62jpa1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="T-shirts with pictures of a man in a blue jacket making a 'V' sign with his fingers, and shirts that say 'FSLN,' hang on display outside." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/569651/original/file-20240116-22672-62jpa1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/569651/original/file-20240116-22672-62jpa1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/569651/original/file-20240116-22672-62jpa1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/569651/original/file-20240116-22672-62jpa1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/569651/original/file-20240116-22672-62jpa1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/569651/original/file-20240116-22672-62jpa1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/569651/original/file-20240116-22672-62jpa1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">T-shirts depicting Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega for sale in Managua in July 2023.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/shirts-depicting-nicaraguan-president-daniel-ortega-are-news-photo/1539099812?adppopup=true">Oswaldo Rivas/AFP via Getty Images</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The government’s decision to expel clergy on Jan. 14 is also in line with its tendency to either <a href="https://www.articulo66.com/2022/09/29/estos-son-los-nicaraguenses-desterrados-por-el-regimen-ortega-murillo-en-lo-que-va-de-2022/">block opponents’ reentry</a> into Nicaragua or force them <a href="https://confidencial.digital/english/husband-and-son-of-former-miss-nicaragua-director-expelled-and-banished/">into exile</a>. In many cases, Nicaragua has then revoked critics’ citizenship, as when it expelled 222 political prisoners <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/feb/09/nicaragua-frees-222-political-prisoners-flies-to-us">in February 2023</a> to the United States.</p>
<p>When imprisonment or threats have not shaken critics’ resolve, Ortega and Murillo appear to have decided that <a href="https://www.lawfaremedia.org/article/nicaraguas-political-repression-will-continue-despite-prisoner-release">keeping them abroad is best</a>. Not only does this reduce the risks of anti-regime action in Nicaragua, but it may diminish international scrutiny of <a href="https://www.hrw.org/news/2022/03/10/government-critics-languish-nicaraguan-prisons">political prisoners’ mistreatment</a>.</p>
<h2>Cautious criticism</h2>
<p>Since 2018, repression in Nicaragua has come in waves, with the brutal violence that repressed the protests shifting toward <a href="https://www.hrw.org/world-report/2024/country-chapters/nicaragua">an environment</a> of <a href="https://confidencial.digital/english/five-years-of-police-state-in-nicaragua-ban-on-assembly-protests-free-speech-and-elections/">constant surveillance</a>, legal actions against independent institutions and opponents, and periodic arrests. Moments of seeming calm, however, have often been followed by <a href="https://www.amnesty.org/en/documents/amr43/4631/2021/en/">harsh crackdowns</a>, such as <a href="https://www.hrw.org/news/2021/09/20/nicaragua-trumped-charges-against-critics">a slew of arrests</a> <a href="https://doi.org/10.1353/jod.2022.0023">ahead of the 2021 elections</a>.</p>
<p>Even as repression has mounted, the Vatican has <a href="https://www.voanews.com/a/pope-worried-about-nicaraguan-bishop-s-prison-sentence-/6959873.html">been cautious</a> about criticizing Ortega and Murillo, and some Nicaraguans and <a href="https://www.pillarcatholic.com/p/why-is-pope-francis-quiet-about-nicaragua">Catholics abroad</a> <a href="https://cruxnow.com/church-in-the-americas/2022/08/nicaraguan-ngos-urge-pope-francis-to-speak-out-on-oppression">have urged the pope to do more</a>. Yet the Vatican’s restraint has not appeared to decrease <a href="https://confidencial.digital/english/ortega-represses-151-priests-and-nuns-imprisonment-banishment-and-exile/">threats against clergy</a> or limits on activities <a href="https://www.reuters.com/world/americas/nicaragua-police-ban-catholic-procession-church-crackdown-2022-08-12/">like religious processions</a>.</p>
<p>In January 2024, however, Francis pointedly <a href="https://confidencial.digital/english/pope-francis-reiterates-concerns-about-crisis-in-nicaragua/">called attention to the crisis</a> during two speeches, days after <a href="https://www.reuters.com/world/americas/nicaragua-arrests-four-more-priests-intensifies-crackdown-catholic-church-2023-12-30/">a dozen priests</a> were arrested. One week later came the release of Álvarez and his colleagues – free to leave Nicaragua, but not to come back. </p>
<p>Catholic leaders remain Nicaragua’s <a href="https://confidencial.digital/nacion/obispos-alvarez-brenes-y-baez-con-mas-alta-opinion-favorable-en-nicaragua/">most popular figures</a>, according to independent polling. This makes them a continued threat to Ortega and Murillo’s quest for <a href="https://confidencial.digital/nacion/ortega-a-nicas-en-redes-sociales-si-publican-contra-mi-van-presos/">total control</a>. Ezequiel Buenfil Batún, the priest detained Jan. 16, belonged to a religious order <a href="https://confidencial.digital/nacion/dictadura-secuestra-al-sacerdote-ezequiel-buenfil-tras-el-destierro-de-19-religiosos/">whose legal status was revoked</a> that same day, along with several other nongovernment organizations.</p>
<p>As many Nicaraguans <a href="https://confidencial.digital/english/luis-haug-nicaraguans-feel-they-are-hitting-rock-bottom/">lose hope</a> of conditions improving and dozens of political prisoners <a href="https://confidencial.digital/nacion/dictadura-mantiene-tortura-a-presos-politicos-que-realizaron-huelga-de-hambre-en-la-modelo/">remain jailed</a>, any positive news like the priests’ release is welcome. But it holds no guarantees of broader change ahead.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/221076/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Kai M. Thaler does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>When President Daniel Ortega returned to power in 2006, church figures supported him. Violent repression after the 2018 protests has soured the relationship and made clergy targets for intimidation.Kai M. Thaler, Assistant Professor of Global Studies, University of California, Santa BarbaraLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2207282024-01-12T18:29:42Z2024-01-12T18:29:42ZWayne LaPierre leaves a financial mess behind at the NRA − on top of the legal one that landed him in court<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/568942/original/file-20240111-29-i3s8bx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C0%2C4442%2C3072&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Former NRA Leader Wayne LaPierre arrives for his civil trial at New York State Supreme Court on Jan. 8, 2024, in New York City.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/former-nra-leader-wayne-lapierre-arrives-for-his-civil-news-photo/1917197606?adppopup=true">Michael M. Santiago/Getty Images</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Wayne LaPierre, the National Rifle Association’s longtime leader, <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2024/01/05/nyregion/wayne-lapierre-resigns-nra.html">plans to retire by the end of January 2024</a>. He cited “<a href="https://home.nra.org/statements/nra-evp-wayne-lapierre-announces-resignation-from-nra/">health reasons</a>” when he announced his departure three days before the organization’s <a href="https://apnews.com/article/nra-national-rifle-association-wayne-lapierre-lawsuit-42f90bf1690c326afcd0b6cdc4234ef8">civil fraud trial</a> got underway in Manhattan.</p>
<p><a href="https://ag.ny.gov/press-release/2024/attorney-general-james-announces-settlement-former-nra-senior-strategist-eve">New York authorities have accused the NRA</a>, LaPierre and three of his current or former colleagues of squandering millions of dollars the gun group had obtained from its members. </p>
<p>As a <a href="https://fisher.osu.edu/people/mittendorf.3">nonprofit accounting scholar</a> who has <a href="https://theconversation.com/the-nras-financial-weakness-explained-108582">followed the NRA’s finances</a> for years, I believe the organization is not only at a legal crossroads but also at a financial one.</p>
<h2>NRA business model</h2>
<p>To see why the NRA finds itself in this difficult spot, it helps to first see how its business model allows for only a small margin of error. Despite the nonprofit’s <a href="https://home.nra.org/about-the-nra/">long history</a>– it was founded in 1871 by <a href="https://theconversation.com/how-the-nra-evolved-from-backing-a-1934-ban-on-machine-guns-to-blocking-nearly-all-firearm-restrictions-today-183880">Civil War veterans who fought for the Union</a> – the NRA has never had enough money stowed away to inoculate it from financial problems.</p>
<p>Consider the NRA’s circumstances in terms of its <a href="https://theconversation.com/the-nras-financial-weakness-explained-108582">unrestricted net assets</a>, which reflect the money an organization has available to spend after accounting for its commitments to donors.</p>
<p>Comparing this with the scale of an organization’s annual budget can provide a sense of how much of a rainy day fund is on hand.</p>
<p>In 2015, the NRA <a href="https://projects.propublica.org/nonprofits/organizations/530116130/201623149349300602/full">had unrestricted net assets</a> that constituted just 9% of its total expenses. In contrast, that same year, the AARP, another long-standing <a href="https://theconversation.com/hillary-clinton-is-starting-a-social-welfare-group-what-does-that-mean-78221">social welfare organization</a> with millions of members, <a href="https://projects.propublica.org/nonprofits/organizations/951985500/201622429349300037/full">had unrestricted net assets</a> that amounted to 87% of its expenses.</p>
<p>In other words, the NRA’s coffers reflected a circumstance more in line with an employee living paycheck to paycheck than an heir living off a trust fund. For this reason, the NRA has always relied on its members’ annual dues to cover its costs, and it is less able to weather financial storms that can last years.</p>
<p><a href="https://www.cnn.com/2019/07/19/politics/nra-2020-campaign/index.html">The controversies over the NRA’s spending</a> and <a href="https://apnews.com/article/donald-trump-campaigns-gun-politics-election-2020-lawsuits-949361ea529ea37139f401a64c7fa362">the organization’s political entanglements that have swirled around</a> since 2016 constitute that kind of turbulence.</p>
<h2>Declining financial fortunes</h2>
<p>Following its substantial spending spree during the 2016 election cycle, the NRA found itself needing to dig out of a hole, with a budget deficit of <a href="https://www.opensecrets.org/news/2017/11/audit-shows-nra-spending-surged-100-million-amidst-pro-trump-push-in-2016/">more than US$40 million</a>.</p>
<p>Subsequent years saw <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/inside-the-nras-finances-deepening-debt-increased-spending-on-legal-fees--and-cuts-to-gun-training/2019/06/14/ac9dc488-8e30-11e9-b08e-cfd89bd36d4e_story.html">fluctuations in spending</a> along with ongoing <a href="https://www.cbsnews.com/news/nra-national-rifle-association-membership-revenue-2022/">challenges to generate sufficient revenues</a> to keep up with spending.</p>
<p>In recent years, the organization’s approach to its budget shortfall has been to cut costs, or at least some of its costs.</p>
<p>Spending on programming went from <a href="https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/4823792-NRA-Audit-FY-2017">nearly $176 million in 2017</a> to just <a href="https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/24074735-nra-audit-2021-2022">$73 million in 2022</a>, its most recent reporting year.</p>
<p>Its traditionally core programs have taken the biggest hit: Spending on education and training fell from <a href="https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/4823792-NRA-Audit-FY-2017">$7.7 million</a> to <a href="https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/24074735-nra-audit-2021-2022">$3.2 million</a>; law enforcement support dropped from <a href="https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/4823792-NRA-Audit-FY-2017">$3.8 million</a> to <a href="https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/24074735-nra-audit-2021-2022">$1.8 million</a>; recreational shooting slipped from <a href="https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/4823792-NRA-Audit-FY-2017">$7.2 million</a> to <a href="https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/24074735-nra-audit-2021-2022">$5.1 million</a>; and field services declined from <a href="https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/4823792-NRA-Audit-FY-2017">$11.9 million</a> to <a href="https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/24074735-nra-audit-2021-2022">$1.3 million</a>. </p>
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<h2>Back in the red</h2>
<p>The NRA hasn’t cut all of its spending, however.</p>
<p>During the same time frame, the NRA’s budget for <a href="https://theconversation.com/nras-path-to-recovery-from-financial-woes-leaves-the-gun-group-vulnerable-to-new-problems-201144">administrative legal costs ballooned</a>, from $4 million in 2017 to over $40 million in each of the past three reporting years, with this amount hitting $43.7 million in 2022.</p>
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<p>The organization’s shrinking programming budget helped eliminate its deficit, at least for a time.</p>
<p>Thanks to its reduced spending, the NRA was able to finish the year with a <a href="https://theconversation.com/nras-path-to-recovery-from-financial-woes-leaves-the-gun-group-vulnerable-to-new-problems-201144">surplus in both 2020 and 2021</a>. However, that surplus, which came from slashing costs – particularly those geared toward core programs for members – proved short-lived.</p>
<p>The organization has also seen the ranks of its members dwindle. Fewer members mean less revenue from dues. In 2022, <a href="https://thereload.com/nra-has-lost-over-a-million-members-since-corruption-allegations-surfaced/">revenues were down by more than $100 million</a> from their 2017 levels, a drop of more than one-third.</p>
<p>The declining revenues meant that, despite its trimmed-down budget, the NRA was back <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2024/01/national-rifle-association-wayne-lapierre-trial/677056/">in the red in 2022</a> and again facing a <a href="https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/24074735-nra-audit-2021-2022">negative unrestricted balance in net assets</a>.</p>
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<h2>What’s next?</h2>
<p>The NRA, in short, is in a financial spiral. Its shrinking budget has begotten a shrinking member base, leading to an even smaller budget. It may be hard to stem.</p>
<p>The organization has <a href="https://www.thetrace.org/2023/11/nra-budget-spending-cuts-4h-boy-scouts/">pared what it spends on its programs</a> to the bone. </p>
<p>While there are no easy answers for what the organization can do about its financial predicament, it’s not the only pressing question the organization faces.</p>
<p>How long will the <a href="https://www.thetrace.org/2023/02/nra-membership-decline-corruption/">NRA’s remaining members</a> stay loyal to it? When will <a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-11-05/nra-spending-more-on-lawyers-as-revenue-falls-membership-lags?embedded-checkout=true">high legal costs</a> subside enough to ease the budgetary pressures? What does a smaller NRA mean for its <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/nov/17/nra-gun-lobby-gun-control-congress">ability to flex its political muscle</a>?</p>
<p>Despite its many challenges, the NRA’s imminent changing of the guard does <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2024/01/national-rifle-association-wayne-lapierre-trial/677056/">offer an opportunity</a> to make more drastic shifts in its priorities, spending approaches and the pitches it makes to members and donors.</p>
<p>Further, with its large legal budget being the last remaining area ripe for cost cutting, perhaps the NRA’s next generation of leaders will set the stage for the organization to <a href="https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/nra-distances-longtime-leader-wayne-lapierre-opening-remarks-civil-tri-rcna133076">rid itself of its oversized legal burdens</a> and refocus on core programs.</p>
<p>What is clear, however, is that financial constraints will dictate much of whatever course the new leadership seeks to chart.</p>
<p><em>Earlier versions of these charts ran in a related article on <a href="https://theconversation.com/nras-path-to-recovery-from-financial-woes-leaves-the-gun-group-vulnerable-to-new-problems-201144">March 23, 2023</a>.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/220728/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Brian Mittendorf does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>The NRA’s new leaders have to make important decisions as they confront a shaky financial future.Brian Mittendorf, Professor of Accounting, The Ohio State UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2205322024-01-05T13:46:53Z2024-01-05T13:46:53ZWhy does Claudine Gay still work at Harvard after being forced to resign as its president? She’s got tenure<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/567952/original/file-20240104-19-mhl9wd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=195%2C0%2C5465%2C3700&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Former Harvard President Claudine Gay, left, speaks as former University of Pennsylvania President Liz Magill listens during a House hearing in December 2023 − before they both resigned.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://newsroom.ap.org/detail/CongressEducationCollegesAntisemitism/fbb72e215baa4326943637b44c623e52/photo?boardId=37be9465fcce45d283d5431cccb20a6a&st=boards&mediaType=audio,photo,video,graphic&sortBy=&dateRange=Anytime&totalCount=495&currentItemNo=0">AP Photo/Mark Schiefelbein</a></span></figcaption></figure><p><em><a href="https://www.thecrimson.com/article/2024/1/3/claudine-gay-resign-harvard/">Harvard University President Claudine Gay</a> <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2024/01/03/opinion/claudine-gay-harvard-president.html">resigned on Jan. 2, 2024</a>, less than one month after University of Pennsylvania President <a href="https://www.thedp.com/article/2023/12/penn-president-liz-magill-resigns">Liz Magill stepped down</a>. They called it quits amid uproar among conservative lawmakers and <a href="https://theconversation.com/what-do-universities-owe-their-big-donors-less-than-you-might-think-explain-2-nonprofit-law-experts-219902">several major donors</a> regarding what they saw as Gay’s and Magill’s underwhelming responses to antisemitism on their campuses. In Gay’s case, there were also <a href="https://www.nbcboston.com/news/local/harvard-presidents-resignation-highlights-new-conservative-weapon-against-colleges-plagiarism/3234455/">accusation of plagiarism</a>.</em></p>
<p><em>Some members of the public have been surprised to see that <a href="https://apnews.com/article/harvard-president-claudine-gay-resigns-841575b89bcdc062cdf979e647a2539e">both Gay</a> and <a href="https://whyy.org/articles/university-of-pennsylvania-president-liz-magill-resigns-amid-firestorm-over-house-testimony/">Magill remain employed</a> by their universities as professors and researchers. Ray Gibney, <a href="https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=EQEoODAAAAAJ&hl=en&oi=sra">a management scholar</a> who studies labor relations, explains why university presidents with tenure can remain on faculty and resume their teaching jobs after they leave or lose their administrative positions.</em></p>
<h2>What does having tenure mean?</h2>
<p>Tenure, as the American Association of University Professors defines it, is “<a href="https://www.aaup.org/issues/tenure">an indefinite appointment</a>” that protects academic jobs. Obtaining it is hard and takes years. Universities can fire a tenured professors only <a href="https://www.bestcolleges.com/blog/what-is-tenure/">for cause</a> or under what the association calls “extraordinary circumstances” – such as if their school experiences a financial crisis or their department gets eliminated.</p>
<p>Tenure is <a href="https://theconversation.com/academic-tenure-what-it-is-and-why-it-matters-162325">university specific</a>. If a tenured professor gets hired by another school, they lose those protections unless their new academic institution grants them again.</p>
<p>Scholars who serve as the president, provost or deans have different responsibilities than regular faculty. </p>
<p>Regardless of whether an administrator comes from a traditional academic background or a nontraditional background such as business or politics, the <a href="https://gbirnlaw.com/blog/no-tenure-no-contract-the-importance-of-tenure-and-retreat-rights-for-college-and-university-presidents-part-1/#:%7E:text=A%20prime%20example%20of%20the,a%20grant%20of%20academic%20tenure.">employment offer usually includes</a> a <a href="https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2015/09/09/should-nonacademics-who-become-college-presidents-also-get-tenured-faculty-positions">tenured faculty position</a>.</p>
<p>University presidents serve at the pleasure of their institution’s board of trustees. The board can revoke their administrative role. But revoking a scholar’s tenure and the job security that goes with it requires a formal process and investigation.</p>
<p>However, <a href="https://www.repository.law.indiana.edu/ilj/vol91/iss1/4/">universities rarely end tenure</a>, even when they find evidence that a tenured professor is incompetent. </p>
<h2>Does it matter that Gay and Magill stepped down instead of being fired?</h2>
<p><a href="https://www.harvard.edu/blog/2024/01/02/statement-from-the-harvard-corporation-president-gay/">Gay</a> and <a href="https://www.cnn.com/business/live-news/liz-magill/index.html">Magill</a> both resigned as president of their universities. Because neither quit their faculty jobs, they remain employed by Harvard and Penn, respectively.</p>
<p>Whether administrators quit or are fired has little bearing on whether they can hang on to their tenured faculty position. When administrators are fired it can justify an investigation of whether there’s cause for their dismissal as tenured faculty too. But it’s not a guarantee.</p>
<p>To remove either from the faculty roles, the university-specific process of revocation of tenure would need to be initiated. Every college and university defines its own reasons for tenure revocation, with moral turpitude and excessive absenteeism common <a href="https://www.independent.org/store/book.asp?id=14">grounds for dismissal</a>.</p>
<h2>What might happen to their salaries and other compensation?</h2>
<p>University administrators generally do not teach classes. The culture of the academy is to provide administrators who are returning to faculty ranks with a short period – typically one semester – to review and update course teaching materials to get ready to teach again.</p>
<p>During this time period, they are often paid their administrator salaries. However, compensation is usually adjusted back to comparable faculty salaries upon their <a href="https://dc.swosu.edu/aij/vol3/iss2/8">return to faculty ranks</a>. </p>
<p>Neither former president’s salary has been made public, since they were both recent hires and those details are typically released with a significant delay. Gay, according to media reports, <a href="https://finance.yahoo.com/news/much-money-college-university-presidents-214953719.html">earns at least US$880,000 a year</a>. <a href="https://www.inquirer.com/education/liz-magill-university-pennsylvania-contract-severance-20231214.html">Magill’s predecessor made $1.56 million</a>, plus millions more in deferred compensation.</p>
<h2>What’s the purpose of tenure?</h2>
<p>It’s primarily supposed to <a href="https://doi.org/10.1017/S0140525X06009125">foster academic research</a> and <a href="https://doi.org/10.1086/707211">academic freedom</a>. Once granted tenure, professors and other faculty members may feel more free to research topics that might not be politically popular or that their superior might not approve.</p>
<p>Having tenure also makes it easier for professors to discuss sensitive but appropriate topics with their students without fear of reprisal. </p>
<h2>What would it take for them to be fired?</h2>
<p>Firing any tenured faculty member is a lengthy process.</p>
<p>Even if it doesn’t involve a professor who got caught up in a contentious news cycle, the school would <a href="https://catalog.upenn.edu/faculty-handbook/ii/ii-e/">form a committee</a> to evaluate any possible charges. The process can take <a href="https://www.psucollegian.com/news/campus/penn-state-aaup-chapter-releases-statement-regarding-firing-process-against-penn-state-professor/article_a15eeaba-74c5-11ec-b265-ff940de6a9a3.html">months</a> or <a href="https://www.westword.com/news/ward-churchills-return-to-cu-boulder-9008153">years</a>.</p>
<p>Given the <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2023/12/20/business/harvard-president-claudine-gay-plagiarism/index.html">allegations of plagarism</a> in Gay’s case, she would appear to be in a more precarious situation, but by no means would her dismissal be guaranteed.</p>
<h2>What’s changing with tenure?</h2>
<p>The share of <a href="https://www.insightintodiversity.com/aaup-releases-first-study-on-tenure-since-2004-revealing-major-changes-in-faculty-career-tracks/">nontenured faculty is growing quickly</a>. Those professors and lecturers, who outnumber professors with tenure on U.S. campuses, generally teach more courses and <a href="https://doi.org/10.1177/0160449X221142618">earn less money</a>.</p>
<p>This creates a double incentive for universities, which essentially get more labor at a cheaper price. This arrangement can leave academics scrambling with little notice due to a <a href="https://www.aaup.org/article/end-faculty-tenure-and-transformation-higher-education">lack of job security</a>.</p>
<p>Tenure, for now, is keeping Gay and Magill on the payrolls of Harvard and Penn. It is possible, but highly unlikely, that proceedings will be initiated to dismiss either for cause.</p>
<p>I’m anticipating <a href="https://www.aaup.org/article/erosion-support-education-and-tenure-iowa">a resurgence</a> in the calls to do away with tenure.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/220532/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Ray Gibney does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Barring evidence of moral turpitude or excessive absenteeism, former administrators are very hard to force out.Ray Gibney, Associate Professor of Management, Penn StateLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2193032024-01-05T13:45:13Z2024-01-05T13:45:13Z‘Designated contrarians’ could improve nonprofit boards by disrupting the kind of consensus and groupthink that contributed to the NRA’s woes<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/567910/original/file-20240104-25-39ssms.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C0%2C5820%2C3565&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Sometimes it just takes one naysayer to illuminate a problem everyone else is ignoring.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/illustration/standing-out-from-the-crowd-think-royalty-free-illustration/1479678749?adppopup=true">CreativeDesignArt/DigitalVision Vectors via Getty Images</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>More than three years after New York authorities sued the <a href="https://theconversation.com/why-new-york-is-suing-the-nra-4-questions-answered-144108">National Rifle Association</a> and <a href="https://nrawatch.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/09/Motion-and-Memorandum-of-Law-Willes-Lee-Depo.pdf">four of its current and former leaders</a>, the trial will begin on Jan. 8, 2024. </p>
<p>In her complaint, New York Attorney General <a href="https://ag.ny.gov/sites/default/files/final_nra_summons_complaint_08.06.20.pdf">Letitia James alleges that</a> <a href="https://www.npr.org/2024/01/05/1223160632/nra-wayne-lapierre-steps-down-resigns">outgoing NRA Executive Vice President Wayne LaPierre</a> “exploited the organization for his financial benefit, and the benefit of a close circle of NRA staff, board members, and vendors,” ultimately diverting over US$63 million from legitimate uses.</p>
<p>And yet, the NRA had a <a href="https://www.americanrifleman.org/content/2023-nra-board-election-results/">76-member board of directors</a>, as well as a <a href="https://home.nra.org/corporate-ethics/">designated audit committee</a>, which both had mandates to monitor the organization’s financial health. By reviewing transactions involving the NRA and its leaders more skeptically, the board might have helped the NRA avert some of its current legal troubles. </p>
<p>I’m a <a href="https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=Z1Ap8CMAAAAJ&hl=en&oi=ao">nonprofit law scholar</a>. Together with <a href="https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=c5Mkq0IAAAAJ&hl=en&oi=ao">Claire Hill</a>, a University of Minnesota law professor, I’ve explored one way nonprofits might theoretically avert debacles, both large and small, in the future. We believe nonprofit boards should require their members to take turns serving as “<a href="https://www.gsb.stanford.edu/insights/do-you-have-contrarian-your-team">designated contrarians</a>.” When it’s their turn for this role, board members would be responsible for asking critical questions and pushing for deeper debate about organizational decisions.</p>
<h2>Board culture</h2>
<p>State law in New York, where the NRA is chartered, tasks boards of directors with the <a href="https://www.nysenate.gov/legislation/laws/NPC/701">ultimate oversight</a> over nonprofits and their leaders.</p>
<p>They’re responsible for everything from weighing in on strategies to advance the organization’s mission to hiring and evaluating top executives and setting their salaries.</p>
<p>Directors aren’t supposed to manage a nonprofit’s everyday affairs. But they are supposed to be on the lookout for major problems and speak up if its resources are being wasted – or worse. </p>
<p>The NRA’s board, like all nonprofit boards, had an <a href="https://theconversation.com/what-nonprofit-boards-need-to-do-to-protect-the-public-interest-188966">obligation to detect the alleged wrongdoing</a> and intervene to stop it.</p>
<p><a href="https://nrawatch.org/filing/oliver-norths-submission-to-nra-hearing-board/">Some NRA leaders did object</a> to what they perceived as wasteful spending by the nonprofit and its leaders, according to James’ complaint. In some cases, concerned trustees <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2019/08/20/politics/richard-childress-national-rifle-association-resignations/index.html?utm_term=image&utm_content=2019-08-20T16%3A26%3A16&utm_source=twCNNp&utm_medium=social">resigned</a> or were <a href="https://nrawatch.org/filing/nyag-files-motion-to-take-deposition-of-nra-board-member-willes-lee/">forced out</a>.</p>
<p>But in general, it appears that NRA board members <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2024/01/02/nyregion/nra-lapierre-trial.html">did little to oversee or restrain LaPierre</a>, even when <a href="https://www.pbs.org/newshour/nation/north-says-he-wont-serve-second-term-as-president-of-nra">one top leader unsuccessfully sought</a> big changes. </p>
<p>On Jan. 5, three days before the trial was scheduled to begin, LaPierre announced his <a href="https://apnews.com/article/nra-national-rifle-association-wayne-lapierre-resigns-a7cfcd45fc5406c86f186f403da83849">resignation − effective Jan. 31</a>. The 74-year-old NRA leader cited “health reasons” rather than board pressure for his exit from the organization he had led since 1991.</p>
<p><a href="https://twitter.com/NewYorkStateAG/status/1743362856051961895">James responded to the news</a> by promising that this move “will not insulate [LaPierre] from accountability.”</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/567911/original/file-20240104-21-5wt3bz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/567911/original/file-20240104-21-5wt3bz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/567911/original/file-20240104-21-5wt3bz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/567911/original/file-20240104-21-5wt3bz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/567911/original/file-20240104-21-5wt3bz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/567911/original/file-20240104-21-5wt3bz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/567911/original/file-20240104-21-5wt3bz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/567911/original/file-20240104-21-5wt3bz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Wayne LaPierre was still calling the shots at the NRA until January 2024, long after serious allegations against him came to light.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/executive-vice-president-and-ceo-wayne-lapierre-speaks-to-news-photo/1251837046?adppopup=true">Jeremy Hogan/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Too passive</h2>
<p>Not every nonprofit board needs to rein in leaders <a href="https://ag.ny.gov/sites/default/files/final_nra_summons_complaint_08.06.20.pdf">squandering millions on personal travel</a> and hundreds of thousands on <a href="https://abovethelaw.com/2021/04/wayne-lapierre-admits-living-high-on-nras-dime-but-claims-only-he-can-keep-charity-solvent/">bespoke suits</a>, as LaPierre allegedly did. But it’s too easy for their members to be too passive.</p>
<p>That is, board members often fail to ask hard questions and challenge the organization’s paid staff – especially when there are more than a dozen or so people serving as directors. </p>
<p>One reason for this is that nonprofit directors usually volunteer their time and <a href="https://www.councilofnonprofits.org/running-nonprofit/governance-leadership/can-board-members-be-paid">don’t get paid</a> for their contributions. In fact, they often donate their own money to their organizations because they value their charitable missions.</p>
<p>The NRA strayed from <a href="https://www.asaecenter.org/resources/articles/an_plus/2015/december/should-board-members-of-nonprofit-organizations-be-compensated">this norm</a>. The group was <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/investigations/nra-money-flowed-to-board-members-amid-allegedly-lavish-spending-by-top-officials-and-vendors/2019/06/09/3eafe160-8186-11e9-9a67-a687ca99fb3d_story.html">paying 18 of its board members</a> when much of the alleged wrongdoing occurred.</p>
<p>It’s only natural for nonprofit directors to presume that their colleagues on the board share their good intentions. What’s more, it’s natural to show deference in the presence of the executives leading the organization full time and the major donors upon whose generosity the group may depend.</p>
<p>No matter the context, many people will simply find it uncomfortable to rock the boat. Sometimes, overly passive and deferential boards <a href="https://ssir.org/articles/entry/spotting_and_fixing_dysfunctional_nonprofit_boards">turn into rubber stamps</a> that fail to challenge sloppy bookkeeping or question unwise hires.</p>
<h2>What should they do?</h2>
<p>We propose that trustees take turns being a designated contrarian, temporarily becoming a devil’s advocate obliged to challenge proposed board actions.</p>
<p>To be clear, they wouldn’t be naysayers out to block everything. They would instead ask probing questions and offer feedback on reports by executives and officers. They would also initiate critical discussions by challenging conventional wisdom.</p>
<p>The goal would be to encourage debate and reflection about the nonprofit’s decisions, slowing – or halting, if necessary – the approval of business as usual.</p>
<p>Board members might serve as the designated contrarian for only a few meetings. The duration of this role would probably depend on how big a given board is and how often it meets.</p>
<p>While this is primarily just a theory at this point, we anticipate that over time, as more and more directors have served as designated contrarians, boards will become more open to constructive dissent.</p>
<h2>Rare examples among nonprofits</h2>
<p>Although using designated contrarians is not yet a widely used practice, a few nonprofit boards may have already embraced this concept.</p>
<p>For example, I’ve been told but have been unable to confirm that one major grantmaker’s investment committee tasks one of its members with challenging particular investment decisions. </p>
<p>This technique may have been gleaned from experiences in finance, where <a href="https://mrzepczynski.blogspot.com/2020/10/does-your-investment-committee-have.html">some fund managers rely</a> on a <a href="https://acquirersmultiple.com/2019/05/successful-investors-need-a-devils-advocate-to-try-to-kill-potential-investment-ideas/">devil’s advocate to test investment decisions</a>, and <a href="https://doi.org/10.5465/255859">at least one study</a> found that this practice can improve outcomes. </p>
<p>Harvard Business Review has published guidelines recommending the designation of “<a href="https://hbr.org/2020/09/7-strategies-for-better-group-decision-making">strategic dissenters</a>,” and experts from <a href="https://www.mckinsey.com/capabilities/strategy-and-corporate-finance/our-insights/boards-and-decision-making">the McKinsey consulting firm</a> cite the value of assigning devil’s advocates on high-functioning, for-profit boards.</p>
<p>I’ve also heard about another unnamed nonprofit tasking a board member as a “<a href="https://www.bassberry.com/wp-content/uploads/Effective_SEC_Rulemaking_Letters2.pdf">process observer</a>.” They were responsible for speaking up when their board was either overly passive or the opposite – micromanaging staff. </p>
<h2>No sure thing</h2>
<p>Of course, embracing a rotating contrarian alone would not be enough to convert the NRA’s <a href="https://www.missionmet.com/blog/what-size-should-your-nonprofit-board-be">unusually large board</a> into a lean and engaged governing body able to detect and prevent all of its alleged wrongdoing. And even for nonprofit boards in less dire circumstances, using rotating contrarians has its challenges. </p>
<p>Most serious among these is whether rotating contrarians will offer only inauthentic dissent, <a href="http://charlannemeth.com/in-defense-of-troublemakers/">which studies show provides limited benefits</a>. Serving a term as contrarian will not magically transform a passive and deferential person into someone who actively challenges dominant voices or forcefully advocates alternatives. And directors wearing the contrarian hat may be too easily discounted if others perceive them as merely mouthing their assigned lines.</p>
<p>To be sure, organizations that adopt this approach would need to be patient.</p>
<p>I doubt that they will be able to summon authentic dissent right away. And newly designated contrarians will be no match for long-standing organizational leaders willing to <a href="https://theconversation.com/why-i-use-the-nra-as-a-case-study-for-how-nonprofits-shouldnt-operate-160430">deceive their boards and punish dissenters</a>.</p>
<p>But I do believe that once board members who have served as contrarians get the hang of articulating authentic dissent, they could begin to make the nonprofits that they oversee more accountable.</p>
<p><em>This article was updated on Jan. 5, 2024, with news of Wayne LaPierre’s resignation.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/219303/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Dana Brakman Reiser does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>A legal scholar argues that assigning a designated contrarian and rotating this role over time will help nonprofit boards resist the dangerous pull toward passivity and deference.Dana Brakman Reiser, Professor of Law, Brooklyn Law SchoolLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2199022023-12-20T15:59:44Z2023-12-20T15:59:44ZWhat do universities owe their big donors? Less than you might think, explain 2 nonprofit law experts<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/566742/original/file-20231219-15-day70k.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=348%2C274%2C3807%2C2455&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Billionaire investor and Harvard alum Bill Ackman has voiced his objections to the school's current president.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://newsroom.ap.org/detail/UniversalMusicPershing/a5060a0466d84e179d3bcbfde643e66a/photo?Query=ackman&mediaType=photo&sortBy=arrivaldatetime:desc&dateRange=Anytime&totalCount=45&currentItemNo=4">AP Photo/Andrew Harnik</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Exchanging gifts with family and friends can become fraught with contradictory emotions. Instead of gratitude, the recipients of expensive gifts may wind up feeling indebted to the givers. And the givers can have regrets too.</p>
<p>The same kinds of complicated <a href="https://doi.org/10.1080/10495142.2021.1905134">motivations and expectations</a> can sour relations between big donors and the institutions they support.</p>
<p>This dynamic has been playing out in a very public fashion lately with some <a href="https://www.npr.org/2023/12/11/1218556147/heres-the-latest-fallout-at-harvard-mit-and-penn-after-the-antisemitism-hearing">high-profile donors to prestigious U.S. universities</a>. At issue for these donors is the schools’ response to debates and demonstrations on their campuses after Hamas’ terrorist attacks on Israel and the Israeli government’s military campaign in Gaza that followed.</p>
<h2>Disappointed donors</h2>
<p>Notably, hedge fund manager <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2023/12/12/business/bill-ackman-harvard-antisemitism.html">Bill Ackman has complained</a> that Harvard University officials, including President Claudine Gay, have not “heeded his advice on a variety of topics,” including Harvard’s handling of antisemitism and how it should invest his donations.</p>
<p><a href="https://www.wsj.com/us-news/education/university-of-pennsylvania-president-liz-magill-congressional-testimony-antisemitism-backlash-97376d49">Ross Stevens, another financier</a>, threatened on Dec. 7, 2023, to <a href="https://www.axios.com/2023/12/07/upenn-antisemitism-magill-100-million-donation">take back the US$100 million</a> he gave the University of Pennsylvania through a complex transaction in 2017 “absent a change in leadership and values at Penn.”</p>
<p>In a letter <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/ross-stevens-letter-pull-penn-donation-president-2023-12">Stevens released to the media, he alleged</a> that Liz Magill, who was serving as the university’s president, had “enabled and encouraged antisemitism and a climate of fear and harassment at Penn.” </p>
<p>Magill, also on Dec. 7, <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/education/2023/12/07/liz-magill-university-of-pennsylvania-antisemitism/">defended herself from those accusations</a> and related criticism from members of Congress, saying: “A call for genocide of Jewish people is … evil, plain and simple.” She <a href="https://penntoday.upenn.edu/announcements/message-from-scott-bok">resigned on Dec. 9</a>.</p>
<p>Other high-profile donors who have also voiced their dissatisfaction regarding Penn include <a href="https://www.thedp.com/article/2023/10/penn-jon-huntsman-jr-wharton-halts-donations-magill">Jon Huntsman Jr.</a>, a former U.S. ambassador to China and Utah governor, and cosmetics tycoon <a href="https://www.thedp.com/article/2023/10/penn-lauder-reexamining-support">Ronald S. Lauder</a>.</p>
<p>As <a href="https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=l-vyPm0AAAAJ&hl=en&oi=ao">scholars of how the law</a> <a href="https://scholar.google.com/citations?hl=en&user=dgewAGoAAAAJ">governs nonprofits</a>, we think these developments suggest that now is a good time to review what donors do and don’t have a right to demand.</p>
<p><div data-react-class="Tweet" data-react-props="{"tweetId":"1732881220927902140"}"></div></p>
<h2>What restrictions apply</h2>
<p><a href="https://law.justia.com/cases/massachusetts/supreme-court/1986/397-mass-820-2.html">All donations</a> to a charity <a href="https://www.ali.org/publications/show/charitable-nonprofit-organizations/">must support its overall purposes</a>. That is, a hospital can’t take the money it receives from donors and give it to, say, an <a href="https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=410504">animal shelter operating 500 miles away</a>.</p>
<p>Donors may request specific restrictions on the use of their charitable gifts in an agreement negotiated before the donation is made. And when gifts are solicited through a specific fundraising campaign, such as a bid to raise money for a new building or for scholarships, that money must be spent accordingly.</p>
<p>State attorneys general and, ultimately, the courts <a href="https://scholarship.kentlaw.iit.edu/cklawreview/vol85/iss2/3/?utm_source=scholarship.kentlaw.iit.edu">have the power to regulate charities</a>. But donors have some tools to police adherence to the restriction they placed on their gifts. </p>
<p>One way they can do this is by threatening to withhold gifts that they had planned to make unless the charity they have been funding changes course. Depending on the state laws that <a href="https://www.ali.org/publications/show/charitable-nonprofit-organizations/">apply to charities</a>, donors may be able to sue for enforcement or reserve the right to do so in gift agreements. </p>
<p>Some donors include in their gift agreements a “<a href="https://www.ali.org/publications/show/charitable-nonprofit-organizations/">gift-over</a>.” This kind of provision redirects the gift to another charity of the donor’s choice if the original recipient violates specified terms.</p>
<p>Promises of future donations from past donors have always allowed donors to informally exercise some degree of influence.</p>
<p>But in the current wrangling between donors and universities over claims of antisemitism on campus, threats to forgo future donations have been explicitly tied to all sorts of university actions, such as the <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2023/10/26/us/university-of-pennsylvania-donors-israel-hamas.html">statements universities either make or do not make</a> regarding international relations.</p>
<p>The threats have become angrier and more public than in the past. Some of the regret and dissatisfaction is being expressed via <a href="https://ejewishphilanthropy.com/marc-rowan-to-funders-show-upenn-that-words-matter/">op-eds and open letters</a>. And the lengths donors have taken to assert leverage have grown more extreme.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/566747/original/file-20231219-21-s59jfi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Two women in professional attire speak into microphones." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/566747/original/file-20231219-21-s59jfi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/566747/original/file-20231219-21-s59jfi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/566747/original/file-20231219-21-s59jfi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/566747/original/file-20231219-21-s59jfi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/566747/original/file-20231219-21-s59jfi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/566747/original/file-20231219-21-s59jfi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/566747/original/file-20231219-21-s59jfi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Harvard President Claudine Gay, left, testified alongside Penn President Liz Magill before a House committee on Dec. 5, 2023, regarding antisemitism on college campuses. Magill resigned four days later.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/dr-claudine-gay-president-of-harvard-university-liz-magill-news-photo/1833206910?adppopup=true">Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>What charities can do</h2>
<p>Charities can take some solace in the law.</p>
<p>When donors make charitable gifts, they must irrevocably transfer that property to the charity receiving it. Except in <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/1995/03/15/us/yale-returns-20-million-to-an-unhappy-patron.html">very rare exceptions</a>, disappointed donors <a href="https://theconversation.com/disappointed-donors-cant-count-on-getting-their-charitable-money-back-93635">can’t get their assets back</a>.</p>
<p>In 1995, for example, Yale returned a $20 million gift to Lee Bass, an heir to a Texas oil fortune. Bass objected to the way the university was using that donation, which was supposed to <a href="http://archives.yalealumnimagazine.com/issues/95_07/bass.htmlBass">support the study of Western civilization</a>. He reached an impasse with Yale after surprising the school’s leaders with a demand they refused to accommodate: that he would personally get to approve four new professors.</p>
<p>And if a <a href="https://www.wealthmanagement.com/philanthropy/no-charitable-deduction-incomplete-gift">donor attaches too many strings</a> to a gift, that can render it ineligible for the <a href="https://theconversation.com/whats-the-charitable-deduction-an-economist-explains-162647">charitable deduction</a>, missing out on a tax break. Just as with personal gifts, gifts with too many strings aren’t really gifts at all.</p>
<p>Although donors who have negotiated special conditions in a gift agreement may assert their rights to sue over a charity’s broken promises, that can take a lot of time and energy, while <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/11/education/11princeton.html">squandering money on legal costs</a>. This process can also anger other donors, causing the benefactor to ultimately lose influence with the charity.</p>
<h2>A few tips</h2>
<p>In the University of Pennsylvania case, about two months after the donors began their public pressure campaign, <a href="https://penntoday.upenn.edu/news/update-penn-leadership">Penn’s president</a> and the chair of its board of trustees <a href="https://www.npr.org/2023/12/09/1218415525/penn-president-liz-magill-resigns-antisemitism-hearing">had stepped down</a>. They resigned in the wake of a <a href="https://theconversation.com/why-university-presidents-find-it-hard-to-punish-advocating-genocide-college-free-speech-codes-are-both-more-and-less-protective-than-the-first-amendment-219566">contentious congressional hearing</a>.</p>
<p>In this case, some of the disappointed donors got their wish – with an assist from conservative lawmakers. Congress doesn’t usually get involved in these disputes, and with good reason. <a href="https://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/non-profit_organizations#">Nonprofits are private institutions using private assets</a>, even if the assets are meant to advance purposes that are, ultimately, in the public interest.</p>
<p>So here is our practical advice for donors and the institutions that rely on them.</p>
<p>Donors shouldn’t try to control a charity through their gifts after the fact. The time to establish limits is before you’ve signed off on those gifts.</p>
<p>Charities should reject gifts that are offered with strings attached that they aren’t happy about. If <a href="https://www.501c3.org/kb/what-are-restricted-funds/">gifts have restrictions</a>, charities should <a href="https://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-pdf/p3833.pdf">be aware of that and adhere to them</a>.</p>
<p>We fear that the failure on either side in the controversy now affecting several prestigious schools to abide by this basic guidance can potentially harm not only the <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2023/10/24/business/philanthropy-colleges-harvard-upenn-israel/index.html">freedom and academic integrity</a> of a university, as many observers have noted, but also the freedom and integrity of the entire nonprofit sector.</p>
<p>The best charitable gifts, like the best personal gifts, are not meant as a means to control the recipients.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/219902/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Threats from disappointed donors over the language used during campus protests about the Israel-Hamas conflict have become angrier and more public than in the past.Ellen P. Aprill, Professor of Tax Law Emerita, Loyola Law School Los AngelesJill Horwitz, Professor of Law and Medicine, University of California, Los AngelesLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2193372023-12-15T13:19:20Z2023-12-15T13:19:20ZSandra Day O’Connor saw civics education as key to the future of democracy<p>Beyond her trailblazing role as the first woman appointed to the U.S. Supreme Court, Justice Sandra Day O’Connor considered <a href="https://www.icivics.org/">iCivics</a> – a civics education nonprofit founded after she retired from the court – to be her “<a href="https://www.icivics.org/our-founder">most important legacy</a>.”</p>
<p>“The practice of democracy is not passed down through the gene pool,” O’Connor <a href="https://www.govtrack.us/congress/bills/118/sres333/text">once stated</a>. “It must be taught and learned by each new generation.”</p>
<p>iCivics is the toolkit she assembled to do just that. Fulfilling O’Connor’s call to action, iCivics <a href="https://www.icivics.org/games">provides games</a> and activities designed to help students learn about American democracy. iCivics is predicated on getting students to actively apply what they’re learning through interaction and simulation. The website <a href="https://www.icivics.org/who-we-are">serves 9 million students annually</a>, in all 50 states.</p>
<p>O’Connor’s dedication to civics education was motivated by her keen awareness of its vital importance. <a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/marianneschnall/2023/12/01/reflections-from-my-interview-with-trailblazing-supreme-court-justice-sandra-day-oconnor/?sh=6c18e3f356ff">She once noted</a>, “Without basic civic education, we cannot expect to preserve or improve our system of government.”</p>
<p>As <a href="https://joshuajansa.com/">researchers</a> who <a href="https://www.everingsmuth.com/">examine the impact of civics coursework</a>, we agree. The evidence shows that civics education generally – and the iCivics initiative specifically – has proven an effective tool for preparing citizens, especially when instructors get their students to actively engage with the material and one another.</p>
<p>One study found that elementary, middle and high school students <a href="https://www.researchgate.net/publication/264346878_The_Impact_of_iCivics_on_Students%27_Core_Civic_Knowledge">exhibited substantial growth in political knowledge</a> after interacting with iCivics for just 30 minutes twice per week.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="Two boys look at the screen of a digital tablet in a classroom." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/565630/original/file-20231213-27-6nbt9c.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/565630/original/file-20231213-27-6nbt9c.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/565630/original/file-20231213-27-6nbt9c.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/565630/original/file-20231213-27-6nbt9c.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/565630/original/file-20231213-27-6nbt9c.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/565630/original/file-20231213-27-6nbt9c.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/565630/original/file-20231213-27-6nbt9c.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Students gain more from active learning approaches.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/photo/children-looking-at-tablet-together-in-classroom-royalty-free-image/1049271140?phrase=social+studies+class&adppopup=true">Klaus Vedfelt/DigitalVision via Getty Images</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>While iCivics targets K-12 students, O’Connor considered <a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/marianneschnall/2023/12/01/reflections-from-my-interview-with-trailblazing-supreme-court-justice-sandra-day-oconnor/?sh=6c18e3f356ff">the need for civics education to extend more broadly</a>. She once observed that polls have shown that <a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/marianneschnall/2023/12/01/reflections-from-my-interview-with-trailblazing-supreme-court-justice-sandra-day-oconnor/?sh=2b1c945e56ff">only a third of the public could name the three branches of government</a>. “Compare that to the … nearly three-quarters who can name two of the Three Stooges, and the numbers are disheartening,” O’Connor stated.</p>
<h2>The quest for what works</h2>
<p>Like O’Connor, we are interested in identifying strategies for effective instruction. We study civics education at the college level. Specifically, we survey the thousands of students who take Introduction to American Government – a required general education and foundational civics education course -— each year at Oklahoma State University. We ask students to answer basic political knowledge questions at the beginning and end of each semester. We also ask students to assess their confidence in understanding politics and their ability to effectively participate.</p>
<p>While students who take Introduction to American Government <a href="https://doi.org/10.1080/15512169.2022.2097916">grow significantly</a> in their belief that they can understand and effectively engage with the political process, we find that – similar to the impact of iCivics activities – students experienced even more growth when their instructors used strategies that were actively engaging. These strategies include analyzing data and current events, group discussions and posting on online discussion boards.</p>
<p><a href="https://doi.org/10.1080/15512169.2015.1090905">Like others</a>, our analyses also show students gain knowledge about government and politics through civics coursework. Importantly, these outcomes and civics education more generally have been shown to be significant predictors of future political participation. This includes <a href="https://doi.org/10.1016/j.electstud.2017.11.005">regularly talking politics with peers</a>, <a href="https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jssr.2018.09.006">voting</a>, <a href="https://doi.org/10.1017/S104909650300221X">petitioning and protesting</a>.</p>
<p>Our research also uncovers that there is flexibility in how to deliver effective civics education. Online classes promote as much or greater gains for students. Additionally, instructors can use technology to ensure learning about democracy persists <a href="https://doi.org/10.1017/S1049096522001305">even if the class format must shift unexpectedly</a>, such as from in person to online.</p>
<p>Broader research from the <a href="https://doi.org/10.1111/j.0038-4941.2004.00269.x">middle</a>, <a href="https://doi.org/10.1007/s11109-008-9063-z">high school</a> and <a href="https://doi.org/10.1023/B:IHIE.0000047415.48495.05">college</a> levels, and <a href="https://doi.org/10.1017/S1049096502001233">across formats</a>, echoes these findings. Giving students opportunities to actively apply course material and engage with peers equips them with the knowledge and skills to be active citizens.</p>
<h2>Changing futures</h2>
<p>Civics education is especially useful for lifting students who did not grow up talking about politics and discussing its importance onto equal footing with those who did. <a href="https://doi.org/10.1017/S0003055414000227">Women</a> and <a href="https://doi.org/10.1017/S0003055416000368">racial and ethnic minorities</a>, for example, are on average less likely to be socialized by parents into learning about and taking part in politics. <a href="https://doi.org/10.1007/s11109-016-9341-0">Civics education can compensate</a> for <a href="https://doi.org/10.1207/S1532480XADS0604_7">these disparities</a>, creating a pathway for all to understand how government works and how they can take part.</p>
<p>O’Connor was committed to empowering and engaging young citizens through civics education. She <a href="https://parade.com/125604/davidgergen/30-sandra-day-oconnor-i-can-make-a-difference/">noted</a>, “We have a complex system of government. You have to teach it to every generation. We want young people to continue to be part of it. We need ’em more than ever.” </p>
<p>Though O’Connor made those comments in 2012, the need to encourage participation among younger generations persists. A recent <a href="https://iop.harvard.edu/youth-poll/46th-edition-fall-2023?utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email">poll</a> indicates that the number of young Americans planning to vote in 2024 may be lower than in the 2020 election.</p>
<p>With more and more young Americans <a href="https://qz.com/848031/harvard-research-suggests-that-an-entire-global-generation-has-lost-faith-in-democracy">questioning whether it is essential to live in a democracy</a>, O’Connor’s efforts to increase access to civics education continue to light a path forward on how to reinvigorate democracy in the U.S.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/219337/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>The late Justice Sandra Day O'Connor’s iCivics curriculum has been shown to boost knowledge of the political process.Joshua Jansa, Associate Professor of Political Science, Oklahoma State UniversityEve Ringsmuth, Associate Professor of Political Science, Oklahoma State UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2169732023-12-08T13:34:35Z2023-12-08T13:34:35ZGovernment and nonprofit workers are getting billions in student loan debt canceled through a public service program<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/563452/original/file-20231204-15-zm4iap.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=565%2C125%2C6308%2C2609&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">The cost of that diploma could fall, depending on this little piggy's career path.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/photo/piggy-bank-with-college-graduate-cap-grey-royalty-free-image/1358219903?adppopup=true">Rawf8/iStock via Getty Images Plus</a></span></figcaption></figure><p><em>The <a href="https://apnews.com/article/pslf-public-service-loan-forgiveness-program-student-loans-e840af29f8879512199ed6fce226c722">Public Service Loan Forgiveness program</a>, which the <a href="https://independentsector.org/resource/public-service-loan-forgiveness-informatio">George W. Bush administration created</a> in 2007 to encourage people to work for the government and nonprofits, has grown significantly during Joe Biden’s presidency. The Conversation asked <a href="https://scholar.google.com/citations?hl=en&user=eP0xZ1kAAAAJ&view_op=list_works&sortby=pubdate">economist William Chittenden</a> to explain what this student loan program is, who is eligible and what has changed lately.</em></p>
<h2>How does the Public Service Loan Forgiveness program work?</h2>
<p>To qualify, borrowers must currently work for the government or a nonprofit.</p>
<p><a href="https://www.laurelroad.com/public-service-loan-forgiveness/what-jobs-qualify-for-pslf/">Americans getting this debt relief</a> include many nurses, teachers, first responders, <a href="https://www.peacecorps.gov/volunteer/benefits/student-loan-information/">Peace Corps volunteers</a> and social workers.</p>
<p>Once enrolled, borrowers can have their remaining student loan balance forgiven if they remain employed in public service and <a href="https://apnews.com/article/pslf-public-service-loan-forgiveness-program-student-loans-e840af29f8879512199ed6fce226c722">make 10 years of monthly on-time payments</a>.</p>
<p>The government can <a href="https://studentaid.gov/manage-loans/forgiveness-cancellation/public-service#eligible-loans">cancel only the balance of the direct loans</a> the Department of Education makes through this program. Any student debt that borrowers <a href="https://www.salliemae.com/student-loans/private-student-loans/">owe private lenders remains</a> outstanding.</p>
<h2>Why are many more loans being forgiven now?</h2>
<p>Borrowers began to apply in 2017, after the requisite decade of on-time payments, for their remaining balances to be forgiven. However, <a href="https://www.cnbc.com/2018/05/31/heres-what-you-need-to-qualify-for-public-service-loan-forgiveness.html">nearly all of these applications</a> were <a href="https://repository.uclawsf.edu/hastings_law_journal/vol72/iss3/6/">rejected – about 98% of them</a>. </p>
<p>The <a href="https://theconversation.com/what-is-public-service-loan-forgiveness-and-how-do-i-qualify-to-get-it-106138">vast majority of these denials</a> were <a href="https://www.cnbc.com/2018/08/30/this-man-joins-a-small-crowd-of-public-servants-to-get-their-student-loans-forgiven.html">due to technicalities</a>. <a href="https://protectborrowers.org/public-service-loan-forgiveness-2/">Many borrowers felt cheated</a> after holding up their end of the deal but <a href="https://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/2021/03/18/biden-student-loan-forgiveness-column/6944144002/">still finding themselves burdened</a> with debts they didn’t believe they should have to repay. Some of them filed a class-action lawsuit, which <a href="https://www.aft.org/news/aft-settles-student-debt-lawsuit-wins-big-gains-borrowers">the Biden administration settled</a> in 2021.</p>
<p>Recognizing these concerns, the government <a href="https://www.ed.gov/news/press-releases/fact-sheet-public-service-loan-forgiveness-pslf-program-overhaul">streamlined and overhauled</a> the Public Service Loan Forgiveness program.</p>
<p>The Department of Education <a href="https://www.ed.gov/news/press-releases/fact-sheet-public-service-loan-forgiveness-pslf-program-overhaul">announced several important changes</a> in 2021. The federal government expanded the types of loans that are eligible for forgiveness and <a href="https://www.ed.gov/news/press-releases/fact-sheet-public-service-loan-forgiveness-pslf-program-overhaul">gave borrowers a way to get credit for past payments</a>.</p>
<p>However, most student loan borrowers did not see the impact of this change until October 2023, when <a href="https://studentaid.gov/manage-loans/repayment/prepare-payments-restart">student loan payments resumed</a> for other borrowers after being paused starting in March 2020 because of the COVID-19 pandemic.</p>
<h2>How much debt has been forgiven so far?</h2>
<p>An estimated <a href="https://finance.yahoo.com/news/student-loans-biden-administration-discharges-additional-48-billion-in-student-debt-205956077.html">750,000 Americans have gotten US$53.5 billion in student debt erased</a> through this program. That’s more than one-third of the roughly <a href="https://www.ed.gov/news/press-releases/biden-harris-administration-prepares-third-student-debt-relief-negotiation-session">$132 billion in student debt relief</a> the Biden administration says it has approved through late 2023 for <a href="https://finance.yahoo.com/news/student-loans-biden-administration-discharges-additional-48-billion-in-student-debt-205956077.html">3.6 million borrowers</a>, through several programs.</p>
<p>But the deleted debt has chipped less than one-tenth of the total outstanding debt off the government’s ledgers. About <a href="https://studentaid.gov/sites/default/files/fsawg/datacenter/library/PortfolioSummary.xls">43.6 million Americans owe a total of $1.64 trillion</a> in federal student loan debt. Some of the Biden administration’s efforts to cancel larger chunks of this debt have <a href="https://theconversation.com/now-that-president-bidens-student-loan-cancellation-program-has-been-canceled-heres-whats-next-208551">failed because of legal challenges</a> that went all the way to the Supreme Court. </p>
<p>The total amount of student debt, including both the federal and private varieties, <a href="https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/SLOAS">declined slightly in the second and third quarters of 2023</a> because the value of the student loans paid off or forgiven exceeded the value of new student loans being issued. </p>
<p>There is currently no expiration date for the Public Service Loan Forgiveness program. However, some borrowers have only <a href="https://studentaid.gov/announcements-events/idr-account-adjustment">until Dec. 31, 2023</a>, to try to consolidate their student loans so they can qualify for this program and some other kinds of student loan forgiveness.</p>
<p><iframe id="bIb06" class="tc-infographic-datawrapper" src="https://datawrapper.dwcdn.net/bIb06/2/" height="400px" width="100%" style="border: none" frameborder="0"></iframe></p>
<h2>What about people in college now or going soon?</h2>
<p>Current and future college students will also be able to apply to the program if they embark on public service careers.</p>
<p>There are also several <a href="https://studentaid.gov/manage-loans/repayment/plans/income-driven">income-driven repayment plans</a> that student loan borrowers can apply for. The monthly student loan payment under these plans is typically <a href="https://studentaid.gov/articles/faqs-idr-plan/">between 5% and 20% of the borrower’s</a> monthly discretionary income, depending on the specific plan.</p>
<p>Any remaining loan balances will be forgiven <a href="https://www.nerdwallet.com/article/loans/student-loans/idr-waiver">after 20 to 25 years</a> of on-time monthly payments. People who participate in an income-driven repayment plan can also apply to the Public Service Loan Forgiveness program.</p>
<p>An estimated <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2023/11/11/business/student-loans-debt-cancellation.html">855,000 borrowers currently qualify to have $42 billion</a> in loans forgiven based on making their student loan payments for the past 20 years.</p>
<h2>What else is going on with student debt forgiveness?</h2>
<p>Over the past few decades, many Americans took out student loans to attend a <a href="https://www.cnbc.com/2023/04/17/who-qualifies-for-6-billion-student-loan-class-action-settlement.html">college or technical school that defrauded them</a>. Others took out loans to enroll in schools that went out of business before those borrowers could complete their degrees. The Biden administration has made it easier for these people to have their loans canceled through the <a href="https://www.nerdwallet.com/article/loans/student-loans/borrower-defense-repayment">borrower defense to repayment program</a>.</p>
<p>And the Biden administration has canceled $11.7 billion in debt owed by almost 513,000 borrowers with a <a href="https://studentaid.gov/manage-loans/forgiveness-cancellation/disability-discharge">total and permanent disability</a>.</p>
<p>In addition, many borrowers have loan balances that have <a href="https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/white-house/biden-administration-revamps-student-debt-forgiveness-plan-rcna122935">grown to a sum that exceeds</a> what they originally borrowed. And there are Americans who have been paying on their <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2023/10/30/politics/biden-student-loan-forgiveness/index.html">student loans for at least 25 years</a>. The Department of Education is also considering making these former students eligible for loan forgiveness.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/216973/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>William Chittenden does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Many of the Americans getting this debt relief are nurses, teachers, first responders, Peace Corps volunteers and social workers.William Chittenden, Associate Professor of Finance, Texas State UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2168972023-12-04T13:27:26Z2023-12-04T13:27:26ZTexas is suing Planned Parenthood for $1.8B over $10M in allegedly fraudulent services it rendered – a health care economist explains what’s going on<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/562238/original/file-20231128-21-zr2ypf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C1087%2C5094%2C2238&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Texas authorities have long sought to kick Planned Parenthood out of the state.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://newsroom.ap.org/detail/PlannedParenthoodMedicaid/61c31f85fab64d1893cc49aa2c9444ae/photo?boardId=37be9465fcce45d283d5431cccb20a6a&st=boards&mediaType=audio,photo,video,graphic&sortBy=&dateRange=Anytime&totalCount=469&currentItemNo=2">AP Photo/Eric Gay</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Planned Parenthood no longer provides abortions in Texas, Louisiana and the other 10 <a href="https://www.guttmacher.org/2023/01/six-months-post-roe-24-us-states-have-banned-abortion-or-are-likely-do-so-roundup">states that have essentially banned abortion</a> <a href="https://theconversation.com/one-year-after-the-fall-of-roe-v-wade-abortion-care-has-become-a-patchwork-of-confusing-state-laws-that-deepen-existing-inequalities-207390">since the Supreme Court handed down its Dobbs v. Jackson decision</a> in June 2022.</p>
<p>But the nonprofit is still providing other services for patients in those places, including cancer screening, contraception and the treatment of HIV and sexually transmitted infections. And <a href="https://www.texastribune.org/2023/08/15/texas-abortion-planned-parenthood-lawsuit/">Texas hasn’t given up</a> on its long-running quest to force the group, which <a href="https://apnews.com/article/abortion-planned-parenthood-states-layoffs-equity-8ca79602fd28226538e5f6148a202646">provides reproductive health care</a> in its nearly 600 U.S. clinics, to stop operating within its borders.</p>
<p>Alongside an anonymous whistleblower identified as “Alex Doe,” <a href="https://www.texastribune.org/2022/01/13/texas-medicaid-planned-parenthood-lawsuit/">Texas authorities are suing Planned Parenthood</a> <a href="https://www.texastribune.org/2023/08/15/texas-abortion-planned-parenthood-lawsuit/">for more than US$1.8 billion</a> in penalties and fees over what they allege are fraudulent Medicaid reimbursements. </p>
<p><a href="https://www.plannedparenthood.org/about-us/newsroom/press-releases/the-facts-on-united-states-ex-rel-doe-v-planned-parenthood-federation-of-america-the-meritless-case-that-could-shut-down-planned-parenthood">Planned Parenthood denies</a> having committed Medicaid fraud. It calls the lawsuit “<a href="https://apnews.com/article/health-texas-medicaid-planned-parenthood-14379403b715dd838b0d18efab629db3">another political attack</a>.”</p>
<p>As an economist who <a href="https://www.grahamgardnerecon.com/">studies the health effects of restricted abortion access</a>, I believe that if Texas prevails in this federal lawsuit, Texans will have even less access to sexual and reproductive health care. Notably, <a href="https://www.texmed.org/Template.aspx?id=59688">the state ranked 50th</a> in access to high-quality prenatal and maternal health care in 2022, and maternal mortality rates in the state more than <a href="https://www.axios.com/local/dallas/2023/07/24/maternal-mortality-in-texas">doubled between 1999 and 2019</a>. The elimination of Planned Parenthood facilities across Texas will likely exacerbate the dismal conditions of reproductive care in the state.</p>
<h2>Blocking Medicaid funds</h2>
<p>Medicaid, a government program that helps low-income people get health care, <a href="https://www.kff.org/medicaid/issue-brief/medicaid-financing-the-basics/.">provides roughly $728 billion in services</a> annually. The federal and state governments split its costs.</p>
<p>In 2016, Texas <a href="https://www.texastribune.org/2016/12/20/texas-kicks-planned-parenthood-out-medicaid/">removed Planned Parenthood from its list of qualified Medicaid</a> providers, blocking Planned Parenthood clinics across the state from receiving any federal or state dollars to pay for expenses covered by Medicaid. Lower courts <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2017/02/21/us/texas-planned-parenthood-medicaid.html">initially prevented this policy from going into effect</a>. </p>
<p>But in 2020, the <a href="https://www.texasattorneygeneral.gov/sites/default/files/images/admin/2020/Press/EnBancOpinion.pdf">5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled</a> that the state may exclude Planned Parenthood from receiving Medicaid reimbursement. Since then, Planned Parenthood has continued to operate in Texas, but the availability of health services to the nearly <a href="https://www.plannedparenthood.org/planned-parenthood-gulf-coast/checkup-2021/texas-medicaid-exclusion">8,000 Planned Parenthood patients who rely on Medicaid</a> in the state has been put at risk. </p>
<h2>New legal salvo</h2>
<p>Texas now alleges that Planned Parenthood defrauded the state by billing expenses through Medicaid between 2016 and 2020 while its litigation was pending. The group counters that it legitimately billed Medicaid while the law was blocked by pending legal challenges. </p>
<p>Although Texas doesn’t dispute that the nonprofit provided the health care services for which it billed the state, and which the state paid for, Texas seeks the repayment of <a href="https://www.texastribune.org/2022/01/13/texas-medicaid-planned-parenthood-lawsuit/">$10 million in Medicaid reimbursements</a>.</p>
<p>The potential liability is far larger because it also includes interest, legal fees and civil penalties adding up to more than $1.8 billion. Planned Parenthood says <a href="https://www.plannedparenthood.org/about-us/newsroom/press-releases/statement-from-planned-parenthood-texas-affiliates-and-ppfa-following-oral-arguments-in-baseless-medicaid-false-claims-act-case">the financial burden of the lawsuit</a>, if the state wins, would significantly limit its ability to continue to operate in Texas. </p>
<p>This litigation originated in 2021, when the anonymous whistleblower brought a case against Planned Parenthood under the <a href="https://www.justice.gov/civil/false-claims-act">False Claims Act</a>, which allows an individual to file a lawsuit on behalf of the government.</p>
<p>The <a href="https://clearinghouse.net/case/43987/">state of Texas joined the lawsuit</a> under the direction of Attorney General Ken Paxton in 2022. The case was filed in Amarillo, an area without a Planned Parenthood facility – a jurisdiction that might seem an unlikely choice. There’s one good explanation, however: All cases filed there are heard by <a href="https://apnews.com/article/texas-judge-matthew-kacsmaryk-abortion-pill-fda-75964b777ef09593a1ad948c6cfc0237">U.S. District Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk</a>.</p>
<p>The Trump-appointed judge made headlines in early 2023 when he <a href="https://www.reuters.com/legal/us-judge-hands-anti-abortion-groups-partial-win-over-abortion-pill-2023-04-07/">suspended the approval of a common abortion-inducing pill</a>. Kascmaryk’s anti-abortion history on the bench makes him a strategic choice to rule on the case against Planned Parenthood.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/562240/original/file-20231128-29-q9upvc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Man in a suit and tie looks askance." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/562240/original/file-20231128-29-q9upvc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/562240/original/file-20231128-29-q9upvc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/562240/original/file-20231128-29-q9upvc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/562240/original/file-20231128-29-q9upvc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/562240/original/file-20231128-29-q9upvc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/562240/original/file-20231128-29-q9upvc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/562240/original/file-20231128-29-q9upvc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Texas is suing Planned Parenthood as directed by Ken Paxton, the state’s attorney general.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://newsroom.ap.org/detail/TexasAttorneyGeneralIndictment/64e2bf2f0f2547eab6935851fb542be2/photo?Query=ken%20paxton&mediaType=photo&sortBy=arrivaldatetime:desc&dateRange=Anytime&totalCount=868&currentItemNo=1">AP Photo/Eric Gay</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Reduced health care access</h2>
<p>Texas has been curtailing public funding to Planned Parenthood clinics since at least 2011, when the state cut its family planning budget from <a href="https://doi.org/10.1056%2FNEJMp1207920">$111 million to $38 million</a>.</p>
<p>Following those cuts, <a href="https://www.tpr.org/government-politics/2023-09-15/after-a-decade-of-state-led-attacks-texas-seeks-to-bankrupt-planned-parenthood">82 Texas clinics subsequently closed</a> or stopped providing family planning services, about one-third of which were Planned Parenthood affiliates. Many that remained open <a href="https://www.nejm.org/doi/10.1056/NEJMp1207920">reduced their hours</a> under the financial strain.</p>
<p>Texas’ publicly funded family planning clinics <a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4386528/">served 54% fewer patients after the budget cuts</a>. Then, in 2013, Texas stopped letting abortion providers and affiliates get any funding through the Texas Women’s Health Program – a decision that caused the federal government to remove all financial support to it.</p>
<p>In response, Texas restructured the program under a new name: “<a href="https://www.texastribune.org/2017/05/05/healthy-texas-women-program-billboards-are-not-enough/">Healthy Texas Women</a>,” entirely funded through the state.</p>
<p>Having lost those funds, <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/posteverything/wp/2017/02/07/defunding-planned-parenthood-was-a-disaster-in-texas-congress-shouldnt-do-it-nationally/">31 of Texas’ remaining 74 Planned Parenthood-affiliated clinics closed</a> by 2017.</p>
<h2>Trial slated for April 2024</h2>
<p>This case, which <a href="https://www.reuters.com/legal/planned-parenthood-must-face-trial-over-texas-medicaid-fraud-claims-2023-10-24/">goes to trial in April 2024</a>, targets the three remaining Texas Planned Parenthood affiliates that operate roughly 35 clinics – <a href="https://www.plannedparenthood.org/planned-parenthood-gulf-coast/patients/locations-hours">two of which are in Louisiana</a>.</p>
<p>By late 2023, <a href="https://www.guttmacher.org/state-policy/explore/state-family-planning-funding-restrictions">18 states had abortion-related laws</a> on their books restricting state funds for family planning. Most of these laws target abortion providers, but in only six states does this restriction apply to clinics affiliated with those organizations.</p>
<p>Currently, only Texas prevents Planned Parenthood from receiving any Medicaid funds. Louisiana had an opportunity to join the lawsuit in Texas but instead <a href="https://www.vox.com/politics/2023/5/24/23725897/abortion-planned-parenthood-matthew-kacsmaryk-supreme-court-medical-progress-medicaid">settled with Planned Parenthood</a>, which allowed the organization to continue to receive Medicaid funds in the state.</p>
<p>But legislation in Texas often spurs copycat bills elsewhere. A 2022 Texas restriction on abortion procedures after six weeks of gestation was <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2022/04/28/politics/oklahoma-heartbeat-act/index.html">quickly copied by Oklahoma</a>, <a href="https://www.austinwomenshealth.com/copycat-bans-follow-after-texas-sb-8/">South Dakota</a> and <a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/alisondurkee/2022/03/23/idaho-enacts-law-copying-texas-abortion-ban---and-these-states-might-be-next/?sh=1a93969525c0">Idaho</a>. </p>
<p>It’s reasonable to expect that other states may pass similar restrictions on Medicaid funding to Planned Parenthood. Already, <a href="https://www.thecentersquare.com/national/article_88fa51ca-1146-11ee-a769-b3bafe8d2051.html">related litigation filed in South Carolina</a> <a href="https://governor.sc.gov/news/2023-06/governor-henry-mcmaster-releases-statement-following-us-supreme-courts-ruling-kerr-v">is pending</a>.</p>
<h2>IUDs and cancer screening</h2>
<p>Planned Parenthood clinic closures and the reimbursement restrictions it faces are reducing the availability of reproductive health services, particularly for low-income people.</p>
<p>After the change in the Healthy Texas Women program, the provision of Medicaid-funded, long-acting reversible contraceptives – a category that includes intrauterine devices (IUDs) and contraceptive implants – fell by 35%, and <a href="https://doi.org/10.1056%2FNEJMsa1511902">Medicaid-paid obstetric care for people giving birth increased by 27%</a>. </p>
<p>In 2015, Texas prohibited Planned Parenthood from receiving <a href="https://www.texastribune.org/2015/08/10/planned-parenthood-be-cut-cancer-screening-program/">state funds for breast and cervical cancer screenings</a> and terminated a contract with Planned Parenthood Gulf Coast to <a href="https://www.texastribune.org/2015/12/22/texas-drops-planned-parenthood-hiv-prevention-prog/">financially support its HIV prevention program</a>.</p>
<p>If the court rules against Planned Parenthood, and the ruling stands after the appeals process that would certainly follow such a decision, access to sexual and reproductive health services in Texas will decline further. </p>
<p>While the lawsuit could bankrupt Planned Parenthood affiliates in the state, driving the organization out at last, it does not appear likely that the national organization would have to foot this massive legal bill and face jeopardy on a larger scale.</p>
<p>And I have no doubt that Texas’ remaining reproductive health care clinics would surely experience an overwhelming demand for their services while trying to fill the gaps left behind.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/216897/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Graham Gardner is affiliated with the Society of Family Planning. </span></em></p>This lawsuit is only the latest chapter in a battle between the state and the reproductive health care provider that heated up in 2011.Graham Gardner, Assistant Professor of Economics, Texas Christian UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2183402023-11-30T13:36:07Z2023-11-30T13:36:07ZOpenAI is a nonprofit-corporate hybrid: A management expert explains how this model works − and how it fueled the tumult around CEO Sam Altman’s short-lived ouster<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/562217/original/file-20231128-22-e58d24.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C0%2C4610%2C2153&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">OpenAI CEO Sam Altman had a tumultuous November.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/openai-chief-executive-officer-sam-altman-speaks-during-an-news-photo/1497792564?adppopup=true">omohiro Ohsumi/Getty Images</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>The board of OpenAI, creator of the popular ChatGPT and DALL-E artificial intelligence tools, <a href="https://theconversation.com/who-is-sam-altman-openais-wunderkind-ex-ceo-and-why-was-he-fired-218111">fired Sam Altman, its chief executive officer</a>, in late November 2023.</p>
<p>Chaos ensued as investors and employees rebelled. By the time the mayhem had subsided five days later, <a href="https://apnews.com/article/altman-openai-chatgpt-31187f7f6eca8ff9d0eef7585aac6ace">Altman had returned triumphantly</a> to the OpenAI fold amid staff euphoria, and <a href="https://www.cnbc.com/2023/11/22/sam-altmans-back-heres-whos-on-the-new-openai-board-and-whos-out.html">three of the board members</a> who had sought his ouster had resigned.</p>
<p>The structure of the board – a nonprofit board of directors overseeing a for-profit subsidiary – seems to have played a role in the drama. </p>
<p>As a management scholar who researches <a href="https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=_-YZrXgAAAAJ&hl=en&oi=ao">organizational accountability, governance and performance</a>, I’d like to explain how this hybrid approach is supposed to work.</p>
<p><div data-react-class="Tweet" data-react-props="{"tweetId":"1727206187077370115"}"></div></p>
<h2>Hybrid governance</h2>
<p><a href="https://openai.com/blog/introducing-openai">Altman co-founded OpenAI</a> in 2015 as a <a href="https://openai.com/our-structure">tax-exempt nonprofit with a mission</a> “to build artificial general intelligence (AGI) that is safe and benefits all of humanity.” To raise more capital than it could amass through charitable donations, OpenAI later established a holding company that enables it to take money from investors for a for-profit subsidiary it created.</p>
<p>OpenAI’s leaders chose this “<a href="https://openai.com/our-structure">hybrid governance</a>” structure to enable it to stay true to its social mission while harnessing the power of markets to grow its operations and revenues. Merging profit with purpose has enabled OpenAI to raise billions from investors seeking financial returns while balancing “<a href="https://openai.com/our-structure">commerciality with safety and sustainability</a>, rather than focusing on pure profit-maximization,” according to an explanation on its website. </p>
<p>Major investors thus have a large stake in the success of its operations. That’s especially true for Microsoft, which owns 49% of OpenAI’s for-profit subsidiary after <a href="https://www.cnbc.com/2023/04/08/microsofts-complex-bet-on-openai-brings-potential-and-uncertainty.html">investing US$13 billion in the company</a>. But those investors aren’t entitled to board seats as they would be in typical corporations.</p>
<p>And the profits OpenAI returns to its investors are capped at approximately <a href="https://techcrunch.com/2023/11/20/openai-governance-model-investors/">100 times</a> what the initial investors put in. This structure calls for it to <a href="https://www.wired.com/story/openai-boardroom-drama-sam-altman-could-mess-up-your-future/">revert to a nonprofit</a> once that point is reached. At least in principle, this design was intended to prevent the company from veering from its purpose of benefiting humanity safely and to avoid compromising its mission by recklessly pursuing profits.</p>
<h2>Other hybrid governance models</h2>
<p>There are more <a href="https://doi.org/10.1016/j.riob.2014.09.001">hybrid governance models</a> than you might think. </p>
<p>For example, the <a href="https://www.inquirer.com/about/">Philadelphia Inquirer</a>, a for-profit newspaper, is owned by the <a href="https://www.lenfestinstitute.org/our-work/the-philadelphia-inquirer/">Lenfest Institute</a>, a nonprofit. The structure allows the newspaper to attract investments without compromising on its purpose – journalism serving the needs of its local communities.</p>
<p><a href="https://theconversation.com/why-patagonias-purpose-driven-business-model-is-unlikely-to-spread-190889">Patagonia</a>, a designer and purveyor of outdoor clothing and gear, is another prominent example. Its founder, Yvon Chouinard, and his heirs have permanently <a href="https://www.patagonia.com/ownership/">transferred their ownership to a nonprofit trust</a>. All of Patagonia’s profits now fund environmental causes. </p>
<p>Anthropic, one of OpenAI’s competitors, also has a hybrid governance structure, but it’s set up differently than OpenAI’s. It has two distinct governing bodies: a corporate board and what it calls a <a href="https://www.anthropic.com/index/the-long-term-benefit-trust">long-term benefit trust</a>. Because Anthropic is a <a href="https://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/public_benefit_corporation">public benefit corporation</a>, its corporate board may consider the interests of other stakeholders besides its owners – including the general public.</p>
<p>And <a href="https://www.brac.net/enterprises">BRAC</a>, an international development organization founded in Bangladesh in 1972 that’s <a href="https://www.humanrightscareers.com/issues/biggest-ngos-in-the-world/">among the world’s largest NGOs</a>, controls several for-profit social enterprises that benefit the poor. BRAC’s model resembles OpenAI’s in that a nonprofit owns for-profit businesses.</p>
<h2>Origin of the board’s clash with Altman</h2>
<p>The primary responsibility of the nonprofit board is to ensure that the mission of the organization it oversees is upheld. In hybrid governance models, the board has to ensure that market pressures to make money for investors and shareholders don’t override the organization’s mission – a <a href="https://doi.org/10.1016/j.riob.2014.09.001">risk known as mission drift</a>.</p>
<p><a href="https://theconversation.com/what-nonprofit-boards-need-to-do-to-protect-the-public-interest-188966">Nonprofit boards have three primary duties</a>: the duty of obedience, which obliges them to act in the interest of the organization’s mission; the duty of care, which requires them to exercise due diligence in making decisions; and the duty of loyalty, which commits them to avoiding or addressing conflicts of interest.</p>
<p>It appears that OpenAI’s board <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2023/11/19/tech/sam-altman-open-ai-firing-board/index.html">sought to exercise the duty of obedience</a> when it decided to sack Altman. The official reason given was that he was “<a href="https://apnews.com/article/openai-sam-altman-firing-saga-explained-51ae332acc18a41b51df5a39efa146d3">not consistently candid in his communications</a>” with its board. Additional rationales raised anonymously by people identified as “<a href="https://gist.github.com/matthewlilley/96ad6208d39b14c7e133ac456680fd2d">Concerned Former OpenAI Employees</a>” have not been verified.</p>
<p>In addition, <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2023/nov/23/who-is-helen-toner-australian-woman-openai-chatgpt-board">board member Helen Toner</a>, who left the board amid this upheaval, <a href="https://cset.georgetown.edu/wp-content/uploads/CSET-Decoding-Intentions.pdf">co-authored a research paper</a> just a month before the failed effort to depose Altman. Toner and her co-authors praised Anthropic’s precautions and criticized OpenAI’s “frantic corner-cutting” around the release of its popular ChatGPT chatbot.</p>
<h2>Mission v. money</h2>
<p>This wasn’t the first attempt to oust Altman on the grounds that he was straying from mission.</p>
<p>In 2021, the organization’s head of AI safety, Dario Amodei, unsuccessfully tried to persuade the board to <a href="https://www.ft.com/content/8de92f3a-228e-4bb8-961f-96f2dce70ebb">oust Altman because of safety concerns</a>, just after Microsoft invested $1 billion in the company. Amodei later left OpenAI, along with about a dozen other researchers, and <a href="https://www.cnbc.com/2023/10/27/google-commits-to-invest-2-billion-in-openai-competitor-anthropic.html">founded Anthropic</a>.</p>
<p>The seesaw between mission and money is perhaps best embodied by Ilya Sutskever, an OpenAI co-founder, its chief scientist and <a href="https://www.cnbc.com/2023/11/22/sam-altmans-back-heres-whos-on-the-new-openai-board-and-whos-out.html">one of the three board members who were forced out or stepped down</a>.</p>
<p><a href="https://www.wsj.com/tech/openai-employees-threaten-to-quit-unless-board-resigns-bbd5cc86">Sutskever first defended the decision</a> to oust Altman on the grounds that it was necessary for protecting the mission of making AI beneficial to humanity. But he later <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2023/11/20/microsoft-sam-altman-hire/">changed his mind</a>, tweeting: “I deeply regret my participation in the board’s actions.” </p>
<p>He eventually signed the employee letter calling for Altman’s reinstatement and remains the company’s chief scientist.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/562222/original/file-20231128-19-9h8w57.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Man in blue button-down shirt gesticulates with one arm outstretched against a backdrop with the words TechCrunch and DISRUPT" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/562222/original/file-20231128-19-9h8w57.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/562222/original/file-20231128-19-9h8w57.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/562222/original/file-20231128-19-9h8w57.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/562222/original/file-20231128-19-9h8w57.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/562222/original/file-20231128-19-9h8w57.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/562222/original/file-20231128-19-9h8w57.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/562222/original/file-20231128-19-9h8w57.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Former OpenAI executive Dario Amodei co-founded Anthropic, another AI company with a nonprofit board. He now serves as its CEO.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/anthropic-co-founder-ceo-dario-amodei-speaks-onstage-during-news-photo/1692536220?adppopup=true">Kimberly White/Getty Images for TechCrunch</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>AI risks</h2>
<p>An equally important question is whether the board exercised its duty of care.</p>
<p>I believe it’s reasonable for OpenAI’s board to question whether <a href="https://www.axios.com/2023/11/28/chatgpt-big-tech-microsoft-google-apple-meta-amazon">the company released ChatGPT</a> with sufficient guardrails in November 2022. Since then, large language models have wreaked havoc in many industries.</p>
<p>I’ve seen this firsthand as a professor.</p>
<p>It has become nearly impossible in many cases to tell whether students are cheating on assignments by using AI. Admittedly, this risk pales in comparison to AI’s ability to do even worse things, such as by helping design <a href="https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/23671304/artificial-intelligence-biotechnology-covid-pandemics-existential-risks-gain-of-function">pathogens of pandemic potential</a> or create <a href="https://ai100.stanford.edu/gathering-strength-gathering-storms-one-hundred-year-study-artificial-intelligence-ai100-2021-1-0">disinformation and deepfakes</a> that undermine social trust and endanger democracy. </p>
<p>On the flip side, AI has the potential to provide huge <a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/forbesbusinesscouncil/2021/02/09/artificial-intelligence-for-good-how-ai-is-helping-humanity/">benefits to humanity</a>, such as speeding the development of lifesaving vaccines.</p>
<p>But the potential risks are catastrophic. And once this powerful technology is released, there is no known “<a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2023/11/22/opinion/openai-sam-altman.html">off switch</a>.” </p>
<h2>Conflicts of interest</h2>
<p>The third duty, loyalty, depends on whether board members had any conflicts of interest.</p>
<p>Most obviously, did they stand to make money from OpenAI’s products, such that they might compromise its mission in the expectation of financial gain? Typically the members of a <a href="https://www.501c3.org/who-really-owns-a-nonprofit/">nonprofit board are unpaid</a>, and those who aren’t working for the organization have no financial stake in it. CEOs report to their boards, which have the authority to hire and fire them.</p>
<p>Until OpenAI’s recent shake-up, however, <a href="https://openai.com/our-structure">three of its six board members were paid executives</a> – the CEO, the chief scientist and the president of its profit-making arm.</p>
<p>I’m not surprised that while the three independent board members all voted to oust Altman, all of the paid executives ultimately backed him. Earning your paycheck from an entity you are supposed to oversee is considered a <a href="https://cullinanelaw.com/nonprofit-law-basics-can-the-executive-director-serve-on-the-board-of-directors/">conflict of interest</a> in the nonprofit world.</p>
<p>I also believe that even if OpenAI’s reconfigured board manages to fulfill the mission of serving the needs of society, rather than maximizing its profits, it would not be enough.</p>
<p>The tech industry is dominated by the likes of Microsoft, Meta and Alphabet – massive for-profit corporations, not mission-driven nonprofits. Given the stakes, I think <a href="https://theconversation.com/ai-the-world-is-finally-starting-to-regulate-artificial-intelligence-what-to-expect-from-us-eu-and-chinas-new-laws-217573">regulation with teeth</a> is required – leaving governance in the hands of AI’s creators will not solve the problem.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/218340/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Alnoor Ebrahim has served on advisory boards to the impact investing industry, including the Global Impact Investing Network and Acumen. He has previously made a charitable contribution to BRAC, an NGO mentioned in the article. </span></em></p>The board is supposed to stop OpenAI from veering from its mission of building technology that benefits humanity.Alnoor Ebrahim, Professor of Management, Tufts UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.