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Free legal advice no longer an oxymoron for nonprofits
March 27, 2000
This article appeared previously in Canadian FundRaiserNonprofit managers can now visit a site which offers a wide variety of answers to legal questions specific to their vocation. At LawNow's Not-For-Profit and Charity Law Pages, you'll find information on "nonprofit, not-for-profit and charity management, liability, directors, volunteers, employees, fundraising law, tax law, as well as FAQs, links to other sites, and opportunities for discussion" - in other words, everything you ever wanted to know about how Canadian law impacts your operation but always thought you couldn't afford to ask.
The FAQs section of the site, which is sponsored by the Muttart Foundation, offers answers under the broad headings of Not-for-Profits and Charities, Liability: The General Part, Liability Unique to Non-Profits and Charities, Charitable Status, and Registered Charities: Advocacy and Political Activities. Just to cite one example, if you wanted to ask "are there things that nonprofits should not do?", you would learn:
"The easy answer is that a nonprofit should not have making money as a purpose nor should it provide an investment return to its members. But in these times of reduced funding, many groups are involved in some form of money-making activity through sales. As long as the sole and primary purpose of the organization does not become making money, it can continue with incidental money-making activities. But when an organization's commercial activities become so dominant as to overshadow the purposes for which it was established, trouble might arise."
If you inquired about the circumstances which would make directors personally liable for actions of the organization, you would hear that such liability would arise any time they participated in decisions beyond the scope of their authority, if they failed in diligence in such matters as ensuring Canada Customs & Revenue Agency received the required employee deductions, if they provided a service through their own company without disclosing their interest in it, or by something as simple as not ensuring ice and snow are cleared from a sidewalk.
The site also offers reprints from articles in lawn magazine on subjects of interest to nonprofits. Some sample titles: Getting Better and Better Getting; Disputing Directors, Brawling Boards; The Road Ahead, Can the Voluntary Sector Cope?; When is a Gift a Gift?; Limping Towards 2000. The site also provides a wide range of links to selected nonprofit and charity sites as well as to ACJNet (Access to Justice Network), a broader-based resource of legal information.
For further information, go to www.extension.ualberta.ca/lawnow/nfp.
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