On Friday, November 12, Governor Hochul signed S4817A, repealing certain recently enacted amendments to N.Y. Exec. Law § 172-b that (a) imposed duplicative and burdensome filing requirements on charitable organizations and (b) required public disclosure of previously confidential information about their donors.
Charities that were required to register and file an annual statement on Form CHAR 500 with the New York Attorney General’s Office (Charities Bureau) are still required to do so. However, for most charitable organizations, S4817A eliminates the redundant requirement that they also file their annual statement with the New York Department of State.
501(c)(4) organizations must still file a Financial Disclosure Report with the New York Department of State if they spend more than $10,000 in a calendar year on one or more written lobbying communications, conveyed to 500 or more people. Similarly, 501(c)(3)s that make in-kind donations worth $10,000 or more to certain 501(c)(4)s will also be required to file a Funding Disclosure Report with the New York Department of State, though this scenario seems quite rare.
The bill also repeals the recently enacted requirement that the New York Department of State publish on its website donor information contained on Schedule B of the IRS Form 990, and codifies that Schedule Bs provided to the state as part of the above reporting requirements are not a public record.
S4817A had the strong support of many nonprofit and advocacy organizations throughout New York.
Click here to read our previous blog post on A1141A/S4817A.