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October 3, 2023

Non-Profits are Now Exempt from Political Contribution Rules (Well Three of Them at Least)

Out of millions of non-profit organizations in America, three have been hand-picked by the authors of the DISCLOSE Act, a House bill meant to bring transparency to political contributions.

The bill is inspired by a Supreme Court decision that overturned a cap on corporate contributions to political campaigns. So to compromise and soften the hard-ass bill a little bit, they threw in an exemption for certain non-profits that meet specific requirements.

They must have more than 1 million members, be at least 10 years old and receive no more than 15% of their contributions from corporations to receive this exemption. OK, how many non-profits could that be?


The NRA and 2 others (AARP and the Humane Society).

Reform at its finest, I guess.

Just a note, Charity Navigator doesn’t do the NRA for the following reason:

We don’t evaluate National Rifle Association.
Why not? We don’t evaluate 501(c)(4) organizations because they are allowed to spend a substantial portion of their revenue on lobbying our government and not every donation to them is tax-deductible. You may be interested in our evaluation for The NRA Foundation.

If you’re curious, “DISCLOSE” stands for Democracy Is Strengthened by Casting Light On Spending in Elections and I don’t think light is what we need in this situation. Companies, unions and other groups that spend more than $10,000 would be required to disclose donors who have given $1000 or more.

Why does this matter? Should lobbying groups really receive any tax deductions at all?

Adrienne Gonzalez is the founder of Jr. Deputy Accountant, a former CPA wrangler and a Going Concern contributor. You can see more of her posts here.

Out of millions of non-profit organizations in America, three have been hand-picked by the authors of the DISCLOSE Act, a House bill meant to bring transparency to political contributions.

The bill is inspired by a Supreme Court decision that overturned a cap on corporate contributions to political campaigns. So to compromise and soften the hard-ass bill a little bit, they threw in an exemption for certain non-profits that meet specific requirements.

They must have more than 1 million members, be at least 10 years old and receive no more than 15% of their contributions from corporations to receive this exemption. OK, how many non-profits could that be?


The NRA and 2 others (AARP and the Humane Society).

Reform at its finest, I guess.

Just a note, Charity Navigator doesn’t do the NRA for the following reason:

We don’t evaluate National Rifle Association.
Why not? We don’t evaluate 501(c)(4) organizations because they are allowed to spend a substantial portion of their revenue on lobbying our government and not every donation to them is tax-deductible. You may be interested in our evaluation for The NRA Foundation.

If you’re curious, “DISCLOSE” stands for Democracy Is Strengthened by Casting Light On Spending in Elections and I don’t think light is what we need in this situation. Companies, unions and other groups that spend more than $10,000 would be required to disclose donors who have given $1000 or more.

Why does this matter? Should lobbying groups really receive any tax deductions at all?

Adrienne Gonzalez is the founder of Jr. Deputy Accountant, a former CPA wrangler and a Going Concern contributor. You can see more of her posts here.

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