Practical resources on the rules nonprofits operate under. Governance and fiduciary duties. Tax-exempt status and public-support tests. Lobbying and advocacy rules. Employment and volunteer compliance. Fiscal sponsorship.
Written for executive directors, board members, and senior leadership who want to understand the frameworks shaping their work.
The Nonprofit Law Primer.
Fiscal Sponsorship: Legal Structure, Risks, and Best Practices
Fiscal sponsorship is often treated as an administrative shortcut, but it's a governance decision with real employment, insurance, and multistate compliance consequences. This piece walks nonprofit boards through the legal models, the risks each one creates, and what the agreement needs to say.
Terminating Employees at Nonprofits: What MA and DC Executive Directors Need to Know
At-will employment is more complicated than most nonprofit leaders realize, and termination is where that complexity concentrates. This post covers the key exceptions in MA and DC, whistleblower traps, RIF rules for grant-funded orgs, and what makes a separation agreement enforceable.
Contracts and Grant Agreements: What Nonprofit Leaders Need to Know Before They Sign
Grant agreements are contracts in legal disguise: they bind your organization to deliverables, reporting timelines, indemnity terms, and clawback rights, and the moment to negotiate them is before signing, not after the funder asks for a refund.
The Cost of Complacency: How Nonprofits Lose Their Tax-Exempt Status and How to Keep It
Tax exemption isn't permanent: three years of unfiled 990s triggers automatic revocation, and so do private inurement, excess political activity, and operations that drift from your stated exempt purpose, often before a board notices anything has changed.
The Other Lobbying Rules: State Registration and Reporting Requirements for Nonprofits
Federal 501(h) election covers your IRS exposure, but every state has its own lobbying registration regime, and once your advocacy crosses the state-defined threshold, missing the registration is a strict-liability problem that can shut a campaign down.
The Lobbying Rules Nonprofits Get Wrong — and the Power They're Leaving on the Table
Most 501(c)(3) leaders avoid lobbying entirely because they think the rules are restrictive, but the 501(h) election actually quantifies what's allowed, and the limits are higher than most boards realize, leaving real influence on the table.
What Nonprofit Employers Owe Their Employees Under Federal and State Law
Nonprofit status doesn't exempt you from federal or state employment law, which means your wage-and-hour exposure, benefits obligations, and discrimination liabilities are the same as any for-profit employer's, even when you can't pay market rates.
What Effective Nonprofit Conflict of Interest Policies Look Like, and How to Enforce Them
Most nonprofit COI policies are drafted to satisfy the IRS Form 990 question and then ignored, which is exactly when they fail, because the moment a real conflict surfaces is the moment everyone realizes the policy doesn't say who has to recuse.
Board Structures, Bylaws, and Policies: The Governance Framework Every Nonprofit Needs
Bylaws aren't a one-time filing; they're the operating manual your board will reach for the day a chair resigns, a major donor demands accountability, or a regulator asks who has authority to do what.
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