On Wednesday, former Vice President Joe Biden and his wife Dr. Jill Biden launched their new charitable foundation, the Biden Foundation. This will be a continuation of the couple’s work on equal rights, which they focused on during their years in office. The new organization will prioritize fighting cancer, ending violence against women and children, supporting military families, and achieving equal rights for all.

The fight against cancer became particularly important to the Biden family after Joe’s oldest son Beau passed away from the disease in May 2015. The foundation will continue to support the Cancer Moonshot Initiative–the White House anti-cancer effort that Biden headed–which aims to find the cure. Jill Biden is a college professor and will keep working on her longtime goal to increase people’s access to affordable, high-quality education. In a video promoting the new foundation, the former vice president said, “As long as we have a breath in us, we’re going to be working on it.”

Joe and Jill Biden announce The Biden Foundation in new vid, plan to focus on cancer research, violence against women, foreign policy issues pic.twitter.com/z6296Cp8wi

— Kyle Griffin (@kylegriffin1) February 1, 2017

The foundation’s executive director will be Louisa Terrell, who used to work for Facebook, Yahoo, and for Joe Biden when he was a senator. The board will also consist of several former Biden aides and advisers. It will accept donations from private foundations, donor-advised funds, and corporate foundations, but not from foreign citizens, entities, or any other foreign sources. In a statement the Bidens said:

We look forward to this new chapter where we will continue our work to ensure that everyone—no matter their income level, race, gender, age, or sexuality—is treated with dignity and gets a fair shot at achieving the American Dream.

In the promotional video, Biden also said he has high hopes for the millennial generation, calling it the most open, most tolerant, and most generous generation in American History. He said that we now have the power to change the culture, “Just as we did when we spoke up and said that the only criteria for who you marry should be who you love.”

From fighting cancer to changing the culture on domestic violence — we’re just getting started. Join us: https://t.co/QHaFokMnrZ

— Joe Biden (@JoeBiden) February 1, 2017

Emma Von Zeipel

Emma Von Zeipel is a staff writer at Law Street Media. She is originally from one of the islands of Stockholm, Sweden. After working for Democratic Voice of Burma in Thailand, she ended up in New York City. She has a BA in journalism from Stockholm University and is passionate about human rights, good books, horses, and European chocolate. Contact Emma at EVonZeipel@LawStreetMedia.com.

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The 21st Century Cures Act easily passed through the Senate on Wednesday by a vote of 95-4. With the inclusion of grants for mental health care and research on cures for life-threatening diseases, the bill enjoyed bi-partisan support in both chambers. Some progressives, like Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) and Bernie Sanders (I-VT), opposed the bill, fearing it could lead to unsafe drugs hitting the market, and could fail to curtail drug costs.

But President Obama, looking to build upon his health care legacy, which includes passing the Affordable Care Act, said last weekend that the 21st Century Cures Act is an “opportunity to save lives, and an opportunity we just can’t miss.” Highlighting the billions of dollars the bill will pledge toward Alzheimer’s and cancer research, as well as funds to combat the opioid epidemic, Obama added: “It could help us find a cure for Alzheimer’s,” and “could end cancer as we know it and help those seeking treatment for opioid addiction.”

Supporters tout the bill as the first major mental health legislation in nearly a decade. Included in the $6.3 billion package is money to create suicide-prevention programs, and grants to increase the number of  mental health professionals, like psychologists and psychiatrists. The bill also designates $1 billion in state grants to combat the opioid epidemic. It also includes a stipulation that is meant to speed up the approval process of breakthrough medical technologies, which is worrisome to some lawmakers who opposed the bill.

“I cannot vote for this bill,” Warren said last week, citing its watered down safety requirements for new drugs. “I will fight it because I know the difference between compromise and extortion.” And on Tuesday, Sanders, a longtime critic of Big Pharma, said “if you want to lower the outrageous cost of prescription drugs, vote against this bill.” He added: “It is time to stand up against the pharmaceutical industry and stand up with the American people who are tired of being ripped of by this extremely greedy industry.”

Vice President Joe Biden was one of the staunchest supporters of the bill, which includes $1.8 billion for the Cancer Moonshot Initiative, parts of which were recently named for Biden’s son Beau, who died last year from a brain tumor.

Alec Siegel

Alec Siegel is a staff writer at Law Street Media. When he’s not working at Law Street he’s either cooking a mediocre tofu dish or enjoying a run in the woods. His passions include: gooey chocolate chips, black coffee, mountains, the Animal Kingdom in general, and John Lennon. Baklava is his achilles heel. Contact Alec at ASiegel@LawStreetMedia.com.

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Dr. Stanley Riddell’s team at the Seattle’s Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center earned themselves a place in medical history with the research they recently presented at the American Association for the Advancement for Science’s annual meeting. Riddell’s immunology team works with terminal patients. This new treatment engineers a patient’s own T-cells to target and fight back against the blood cancer cells that are attacking them–a major breakthrough in cancer research.

In the most recent trial, U.S. researchers used genetically modified T-cells in 35 terminally ill patients with leukemia, and 94 percent went into remission. Riddell’s T-cell research has only been applied to blood cancer but for the thousands of people in the United States alone suffering from blood cancer, this treatment could be the medical innovation they have waited years for. As with any new treatment, there is cause for caution–the data from this treatment is still being processed which means it still needs to be peer-reviewed and vetted by a host of evaluators. Furthermore, the risk involved in the treatment can be steep. For all the patients who witnessed major positive effects or full remission, there were several patients who were admitted to intensive care due to their treatment.

Cancer treatments are on the whole brutal and exhausting for the patient, but in this case, two of the participants in the study died because of adverse reactions to the treatment. It is important to remember that the patients for this trial were all terminal, which meant they were incredibly weak even as their newly trained T-cells tried to fight against the more aggressive cancer cells. However, members of the medical team believe they can minimize the dangers as time goes on by using lower doses of the therapy. This week, Dr Alan Worsley, from Cancer Research UK, told the BBC that while the field was incredibly exciting, “this is a baby step…the real challenge now is how do we get this to work for other cancers, how do we get it to work for what’s known as solid cancers, cancers in the tissue?”

Even though this research still has a long way to go before it becomes a typical cancer treatment, the attention that the stunning success rate has garnered will no doubt spark a wave of funding for similar T-cell therapy projects. There are dozens of top research institutions working around the clock to test experimental treatments and Riddell’s team is not the only one investigating the efficacy of engineering cells to fight off cancer attacks.

Nonprofits, corporate donors, and governments alike should all take note of this new T-cell trend and adjust cancer research funding accordingly. It can be difficult to divert funding into one particular branch of research when there are so many different forms of cancer that need cures, but if the results of T-cell training research continue to match the success rate of this study, the financial forces behind research hospitals may allocate more resources to this genetic branch of research.  Prioritizing treatment of one type of cancer over another may seem callous, but if this blood cancer treatment can be adapted to solid cancers then we may be looking at an actual cure for the disease as a whole–an opportunity it is difficult to ignore.

Jillian Sequeira

Jillian Sequeira was a member of the College of William and Mary Class of 2016, with a double major in Government and Italian. When she’s not blogging, she’s photographing graffiti around the world and worshiping at the altar of Elon Musk and all things Tesla. Contact Jillian at Staff@LawStreetMedia.com

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It seems like every month we see the announcements on Facebook. One friend might post how they’re “lighting up the town blue for Autism awareness!” or notify you that they’re “running to support The March of Dimes, please donate here!” You might get calls from various organizations asking you to donate, or get stopped on the street. But no matter where we are, we can’t help but notice that there are a lot of nonprofit organizations out there that want to collect money.

However, there are also those headlines that scare us away from donating money. We see allegations of fraud, mismanagement, and funds never reaching the very people that they are intended to help.

So what is the truth behind non-profits, should you feel safe donating, and most importantly, what rules must non-profits follow?

What is a Non-Profit Organization?

Non-profits (also known as NPOs or non-business entities) seem to confuse a lot of people, especially those who aren’t involved or actively participate in one. Many people will simply say that another word for non-profit is “charity,” which isn’t totally correct. According to the Cornell Legal Information Institute, a non-profit is more complicated:

A non-profit organization is a group organized for purposes other than generating profit and in which no part of the organization’s income is distributed to its members, directors, or officers. Non-profit corporations are often termed ‘non-stock corporations.’ They can take the form of a corporation, an individual enterprise (for example, individual charitable contributions), unincorporated association, partnership, foundation (distinguished by its endowment by a founder, it takes the form of a trusteeship), or condominium (joint ownership of common areas by owners of adjacent individual units incorporated under state condominium acts).

Non-profits cannot just form out of thin air from already existing companies, as they must be designated as a non-profit in their charters. According to the Cornell Institute, “Non-profit organizations include churches, public schools, public charities, public clinics and hospitals, political organizations, legal aid societies, volunteer services organizations, labor unions, professional associations, research institutes, museums, and some governmental agencies.”

A key difference between non-profits and for-profit organizations is that when a for-profit organization goes out of business, the shareholders can get what’s leftover. But when a nonprofit goes out of business, any remaining assets must be given to another nonprofit.

Some of the most popular non-profits include: National Public Radio (NPR), United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF), Human Rights Watch (HRW), WikiLeaks, Green Peace, the Smithsonian Institute, Human Rights Campaign, Kiva, and Doctors Without Borders.

What are the legal requirements to be a non-profit?

Many nonprofit groups want to be considered non-profits because it will help them avoid federal or state taxes. Non-profits often receive tax exemptions from Section 501(c)(3) of the Internal Revenue Code, which is why nonprofits are sometimes referred to “501(c)(3)s.” State laws are typically stricter than federal laws when it concerns non-profits, and each state has its own set of rules and regulations, though many states do overlap.

State Laws

State laws have big consequences for any non-profits that don’t strictly follow the rules. There are many lawyers who specifically work with non-profits, as the nomenclature can be quite confusing and dense, especially for people who have never taken law classes. A nonprofit that operates in more than one state will need to pay attention to the laws that affect its work in each jurisdiction.

Twenty-six states require that non-profits complete an audit so that they are able to participate in fundraising activities from year to year. According to the National Council of Non-Profits, “thirty-nine states (including the District of Columbia) require charitable nonprofits to register with the state in order to fundraise in that state.” Over half of the states require some form of audit every year, whether the group actively fundraises or not. For example, Maine is particularly strict with licensing and requires renewals each year.

Many of the audits that take place within a state for the government must be done by an independent auditor, or someone who does not have stake in either the company or the government.

To see more about your specific state, visit the National Council of Non-Profits interactive page.

 Political Non-Profits

Political non-profits have become some of the largest contributors to elections in the last few decades. Some of these organizations include the often talked-about Super PACs, which pool campaign contributions from members and donate them to campaigns for or against particular candidates. These organizations, predominantly 501(c)(4)s and 501(c)(6)s, “do not have to disclose the sources of their funding–though a minority do disclose some or all of their donors, by choice or in response to specific circumstances.” The anonymity and large scale of these Super PACs have ruffled many feathers, especially within smaller parties.

That may be why the IRS is considering a rule “to police political nonprofits to include political parties and political action committees.” These groups are commonly called “social welfare” groups and operate under those guises, but play by a completely different set of rules.

“If it’s going to be a fair system, it needs to apply across the board,” IRS Commissioner John Koskinen said when asked by POLITICO about the new rule. He continued, “[I]f we have a set of definitions for 501(c)(4)s, what about everybody else? Can they do more or less [political activity]? And for us as [an] administration, for ease of administration, it makes sense to have this common definition.”

 Non-Profit Spending

How much of what you give a foundation or non-profit actually goes to the cause depends greatly on the specific organization. For most of these organizations, a good chunk goes toward overhead costs like fundraising, employee salaries, and management costs.

For instance, according to The Street, the Walker Cancer Institute “spent 96.4% of its total funds on overhead in 2012. The nonprofit spent 91.1% of its money to raise more funds and 5.3% for management and general costs. CEO Helen Marie Walker received 1.3% of the nonprofit’s funds in 2012.”

To check on any specific charity, the Charity Navigator has spending information on about 7,000 different charities.

Non-profit Controversies

These groups and organizations are not without controversy and problematic behavior. Some of these controversies arose out of tax issues, while others came from the actions of the group specifically.

Case Study: Autism Speaks

The organization has become one of the best known charities in the United States for autism awareness. However, that doesn’t mean the group is without problems.

Autism Speaks has raised autism awareness significantly, and which has led to better treatment, more donations, and more understanding. The Daily Beast details the meteoric rise of autism funding:

When Autism Speaks began, $15 million in private funding went to autism research. In 2010, according to the Interagency Autism Committee (IACC), the federal task force for shaping government autism policy and funding, that amount surged to more than $75 million, with over $18 million from Autism Speaks.

However Autism Speaks has faced some controversies. One of the major criticism levied against the group is that Autism Speaks considers autism to be a “horror” and a “tragedy” that happens to people and families. Autistic Hoya explains: “Autism Speaks regularly issues propaganda in which they say, ‘The rate of autism is higher than the rate of cancer, childhood diabetes, and AIDS combined,’ which compares a developmental disability to diseases.”

In addition, the group has come under fire for allegedly aligning itself with the Judge Rotenberg Center, which uses electric shock therapy. The video below is graphic, but it details some of the treatment:

Case Study: Susan G. Komen for the Cure

Amidst reports of “pinkwashing” or slapping a pink ribbon on a product and calling it support, Susan G. Komen for the Cure recently made a controversial decision that caused it to lose some respect and support. The call came when “it summarily cut off funding to Planned Parenthood in what appeared to be a bow to anti-abortion crusaders.” That cut stopped Planned Parenthood from performing many of the necessary mammograms that caught breast cancer in women, and was reversed in just three days. In the year following, the group lost almost $40 million in donations, and the damage was done.

But that was just the start of the problems for the foundation. When people started looking into its spending, they found something concerning. According to the Los Angeles Times:

While the foundation depicted itself as devoted chiefly to research for a breast cancer cure, it spent only about 20 percent of its donations on research; the biggest expenditure category was public education, at more than 50 percent. Critics questioned whether ‘education’ really should be such a heavy priority in a field where research issues remain important.

While the organization’s reputation is on the mend, it isn’t quite out of the woods yet and still sees some criticism.

Conclusion

Charities and foundations have an extremely important role in our lives–and we should certainly all try to “pay it forward” every now and again. However, before you make that donation, make sure you do some research about the company you are donating to. If you are making a sizeable donation, there are times when you can choose what you want your donation to go towards. Your best bet will always be to donate goods, services, or your time so that you can know firsthand you are helping out.

Resources

Autistic Hoya: Georgetown: Say No to Autism Speaks

Cornell Legal Information Institute: Non-profit Organizations

LA Times: Susan G. Komen Foundation Discovers the Price of Playing Politics

National Council of Non-Profits: State Law Non-profit Audit Requirements

Politico: IRS May Broaden Rule to Police Political Non-Profits

Daily Beast: “Autism Speaks” – but Should Everyone Listen?

Street: You Won’t Believe the Overhead Costs at These 10 Nonprofits

HG: Non-profit Law

Huffington Post: The Truth About Corporate Pinkwashing

Idealist: Do Non-profits Go Out of Business?

Investopedia: Independent Auditor?

Open Secrets: Political Nonprofits

Top Non Profits: What are the Top Non-Profit Organizations?

CNN: Above the Law: America’s Worst Charities

Forbes: Why Autism Speaks Doesn’t Speak for Me

Noel Diem

Law Street contributor Noel Diem is an editor and aspiring author based in Reading, Pennsylvania. She is an alum of Albright College where she studied English and Secondary Education. In her spare time she enjoys traveling, theater, fashion, and literature. Contact Noel at staff@LawStreetMedia.com.

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