The COVID-19 pandemic has wreaked havoc all around the nonprofit sector. Among the hardest hit are arts organizations. A recent news item sums up the pain: Brooklyn Museum to Sell 12 Works as Pandemic Changes the Rules (September 16, 2020) Robin Pogrebin, The New York Times. “Selling off work from a museum — known as deaccessioning — to pay for operating costs has long been taboo.” Under well-established rules of The Association of Art…

As COVID-19 quickly engulfed the United States in mid-March, the normal world of work as we knew it evaporated.  Faced with lockdowns and quarantines, much of the activity in the for-profit, nonprofit, and government sectors shut down entirely or abruptly switched off-site.  The sudden move to remote operations was just one aspect of this enormous pandemic calamity. Initially, the focus was on the daunting details of hooking up and configuring electronic and communications hardware and…

There have been cyber attacks for as long as there’s been an internet.  Experts have long run around with their hair on fire to warn all of us about the serious dangers lurking in the shadows by hackers and fraudsters. As we now know well, cyber attack victims are not only huge, for-profit businesses and wealthy individuals. Nonprofit organizations, large and small, are the targets. “Hackers do not care what you do, only whether you …

Once upon a time, there was an American billionaire who amassed a fortune in retail but continued to live frugally despite his enormous wealth. He said long ago that he wanted to “die broke.” Unlike most other philanthropists in the kingdom, he created a foundation with a name – gasp! – that did not include his own. And many years ago, he let it be known throughout the land that this organization would not hover…

Not to put too fine a point on it: The Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017 was a mess.  At the time the Senate majority rushed it through Congress in late December 2017, we reported in detail on the chaos, confusion, speed, and rancor that dominated the process. Making matters worse, the leadership omitted the customary transition period between a presidential signature and the law’s taking effect. Even in legislation that is well-crafted…

On March 31, 2020 – just about two weeks into the catastrophe that has enveloped the world – staff writer Dan Parks of The Chronicle of Philanthropy interviewed nonprofit heavyweights to gain their assessment of what it might take to survive this crisis.  Brian Gallagher, CEO of United Way Worldwide, characterized the COVID-19 crisis is like “a slow-moving hurricane hitting every country in the world simultaneously.” Although early data showed that in those first…

Throughout the United States, the summer months were a frenzy of rushed “reopenings” followed by all-too-predictable rollbacks as COVID-19 outbreaks surged.  Disease hotspots erupted even in some locations like California that had been early-lockdown states. Now, in September 2020, state and local governments around the nation face wrenching decisions on whether and when to attempt a new round of more careful reopenings. In this post, we’ll focus on California. But there are a number…