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Exempt Organizations

Establishing a Charity

By: A.J. Cook

In this time of unprecedented generosity in America, charities are proliferating rapidly. The number of charitable organizations has increased 18 percent to 819,008 compared with three years ago, says the Internal Revenue Service.

The most popular types of organizations are public charities, operating foundations and supporting foundations.

Also popular, but of limited value, are private foundations, which pay taxes and operate under harsh rules; also, deductions for contributions to them are more restrictive than to these other three charities:

  • Public charities, like the American Red Cross, qualify by receiving at least one-third their support from the public; other public charities like churches, schools and hospitals qualify by conducting one of the activities listed in the tax code.
  • Operating foundations, like Colonial Williamsburg, conduct an activity rather than just make grants, like private foundations and supporting foundations. They have a staff, which supervises or conducts their work. They are strictly regulated, pay no taxes on undistributed income and, if they meet certain tests, aren't subject to the 2 percent tax on net investment income.
  • Supporting organizations, like the Hershey Trust, which supports a school for orphaned boys, make grants to specific public charities. With few exceptions, the governing rules and the limitations on deductions for contributions to them are like those of a public charity. So, they present an opportunity for a nonpublic charity to avoid most of the ills of a private foundation. Through participation as members of the supporting organization's board of directors, the donors and their descendants can remain involved in its affairs and public relations.

When organized, the group's charter lists which public charity or charities it will support. The choice, however, can be delayed by having the supporting organization list a community foundation. This foundation, besides holding assets available for grants to public charities generally, holds funds awaiting the naming of charities by contributors like supporting foundations.

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A proposed charity called Westward Ho, bought Michael Collelo, a homeless man who threw a poinsettia at a bartender, a one-way ticket from Vermont to Oregon. A Westward Ho founder, Timothy Halvoroon, quoted in a Burlington newspaper, said he was all for social services, but there are some people who need to be "somewhere else."

Several businesses had started the organization to furnish one-way travel for "indigent and antisocial persons who may have a strong desire or need to leave the Burlington, Vt., area."

When the Internal Revenue Service received Westward Ho's application for charity status, it said the group had a commercial purpose: to rid the area of people who disrupted businesses. That didn't strike the agency as charitable.

The principal purposes of Westward Ho and the motorsports case discussed later were not to help the poor or educate the public. But these were:

  • Offer marital advise.
  • Provide low-income people with financial counseling.
  • Broadcast educational material on a nonprofit radio station.
  • Operate a day care center for children of low-income working parents.
  • Give information on rights and responsibilities to tenants of public housing.

Bill Wildt - motorsports elder statesman - and Christine Shutz established a charitable organization in Chicago to educate the public and make their sport "part of the fabric of American life." It would bring drag racing to schools and the urban poor. They planned on barnstorming around the country with a "visually spectacular" program: Wildt, on his souped-up motorcycle, and Shutz, with volunteer showgirls in glittering costumes.

The IRS and the Tax Court stopped that charity before it left the starting line. The judge said the proposed charity promoted a particular industry's financial interest and subsidized Wildt and his planned motorcycle: a drag bike with a 6,000 horsepower rocket engine.

A.J. Cook is a lawyer and CPA. His tax column appears weekly in numerous newspapers.  Why isn't it published in your hometown newspaper? Ask its Business Editor to subscribe.

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Released 10-15-01 and 10-22-01