From Harvard Business Review Blogger Dan Pallotta
Oregon’s Attorney General John Kroger has introduced a bill that would strip the tax-deductible status from donations made to charities that spend less than 30% of their annual budget on services over the course of a three-year period. The law is intended to weed out scams.
And that’s a problem. The fact that a charity spends less than 30% of donations on services doesn’t mean it’s a scam, and the fact that it spends more than that doesn’t mean it’s not one. The proposed law could not be more dysfunctionally designed: It has a blind spot for real fraud and puts a spotlight on potential innocence.
Here are six reasons why anyone who cares about social progress should contact Mr. Kruger’s office and ask him to withdraw this proposed legislation: