Brief State Regulation of the Charitable Sector
Subtitle
Enforcement, Outreach, Structure, and Staffing
Shirley Adelstein, Elizabeth T. Boris
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State charity offices play an important role in regulating the nonprofit sector, working both independently and with state and federal law enforcement agencies. The Urban Institute-Columbia University Survey of State Charities Regulators (Lott et al. 2016) focused at the office level and showed that state charity offices vary in structure, authority, and tools used to facilitate and enforce regulatory compliance. In this brief, we further analyze those data to compare the relationship between state-level enforcement activities, outreach activities, bifurcation of authority, and staff resources available to state charity offices. We find that staffing levels are related to the scope of outreach and enforcement activities, as well as to bifurcation of authority, which provides a promising avenue for future research.
Research Areas Nonprofits and philanthropy
Tags Nonprofit data and statistics Tax policy and charities Data and technology capacity of nonprofits
Policy Centers Center on Nonprofits and Philanthropy