Disclosures for Equity

Abstract

This Article addresses how to increase funding to nonprofit organizations that are led by minorities or serve communities of color, and how to hold corporations and private foundations who make public commitments to fund these organizations accountable for those commitments. The Article makes two policy recommendations to address these problems, while engaging with Supreme Court jurisprudence on mandatory disclosures to ensure that the proposals are narrowly tailored to institutional donors and include an opt-out provision so as not to chill the constitutional protection of the freedom of association. The first is for charities to publicly disclose their institutional donors in Schedule B of Internal Revenue Service (IRS) Form 990. The second is to modify IRS Form 990 to include information on the race and ethnicity of top managers, boards of directors, and the communities an organization serves. These disclosures are crucial for determining organizations that are minority-led or that serve communities of color, and the institutional donors who donate to them annually. The Article addresses the benefits and tradeoffs of disclosure, and how to use nudges—watchdog organizations, certifications, and the public—to use disclosures to increase funding to minority-led and serving nonprofit charities.

Keywords: nonprofit tax, race and ethnicity data, donor disclosures, corporate social responsibility