Charities Abandon Effort to Modify Treasury Department Global Grantmaking Guidelines

The Council on Foundations recently issue a press release announcing that a working group of more than 70 charities has ended its seven-year effort to convince the Treasury Department to modify its approach to global grantmaking.  Sparked by Treasury’s issuance of “voluntary” anti-terrorist guidelines for charities in the wake of 9/11, the working group strove to convince Treasury to modify the guidelines to better reflect the reality of international charitable activities.  Those efforts led to a revision of the guidelines in 2006, but according to the press release those revisions were not sufficient to resolve concerns that the guidelines are “confusing and misleading.”  Lack of responsiveness from Treasury led the group to determine “it can no longer support or participate in Treasury’s attempts to impose current or future versions of the guidelines on the charitable sector.”

LHM