Techdirt. Stories filed under "non-profit"

More Details Show IRS Targeted Groups Critical Of How The Government Was Run

Mike Masnick — Mon, 13 May 2013 20:06:00 PDT

Late on Friday (the time when people try to break bad news to avoid a big news cycle) the IRS admitted that the office that scrutinizes non-profit/tax exempt status of organizations had acted politically in targeting groups that had "tea party" or "patriot" in their names. Over the weekend, more details have been revealed showing that they further targeted groups that criticized how the government is being run including so-called "social welfare" groups. In other words: if you want to improve our government, the IRS might target you for a burdensome audit. As someone who regularly criticizes our government because I want it to act better, this is absolutely horrifying. I know that this issue has already descended for some into a "left" vs. "right" political battle, but this is an issue that everyone should be aghast about. While the full report hasn't been released yet (and, in fact, there are already accusations that the IRS has leaked parts to try to contain the fallout), some of the details are astounding:

The documents, obtained by The Washington Post from a congressional aide with knowledge of the findings, show that the IRS field office in charge of evaluating applications for tax-exempt status decided to focus on groups making statements that “criticize how the country is being run” and those that were involved in educating Americans “on the Constitution and Bill of Rights.”

Educating people about the Constitution and the Bill of Rights gets extra scrutiny by the IRS? Isn't that the kind of thing that we should be encouraging?

Are there groups that abuse the non-profit status? Probably. But targeting them based on their viewpoints goes way beyond what's allowed or should be seen as even remotely reasonable. As some have pointed out, politicizing the IRS was part of the impeachment articles against Nixon.

Is it so much to ask for a government that actually respects the Constitution? Or does simply asking for that make you a target?

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WordPress Trademark Transfered From For-Profit Company, To Non-Profit Foundation

Mike Masnick — Mon, 13 Sep 2010 17:55:59 PDT

We recently wrote about Twitter's smart and open trademark policy, in that it readily and freely licenses its trademark to many companies, with only a few small exceptions. It looks like blog provider WordPress is doing its own interesting trademark move as well. The company recently announced that it has transferred the WordPress trademark away from the company itself and given it to the WordPress Foundation, a non-profit organization charged with promoting access to WordPress and related open source projects. In other words, even if the company's current execs lose control over the company, the trademark itself won't be abused by new owners, since the mark will remain with the foundation. Given how often we see trademark law being abused these days, both of these examples of smart, forward-looking companies taking a much more progressive approach on trademark really is quite refreshing.

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When We Said OLPC Should Act Like A Tech Company, We Didn't Mean Microsoft

Timothy Lee — Fri, 21 Mar 2008 14:31:13 PDT

In the latest blow to the OLPC project, the organization's security chief, Ivan Krstić, has resigned over philosophical disagreements with the organization's direction. The nub of the dispute seems to be chairman Nicholas Negroponte's belief that now that it's out of its startup phase, the project needs to be run "more like Microsoft." Krstić complains that the organization's previous president, Walter Bender, was demoted, and Krstić was asked to report to "a manager with no technical or engineering background who was put in charge of all OLPC technology." Now as we've said before, it's healthy that the OLPC organization is beginning to realize that they face many of the same challenges as for-profit technology companies, and might be more successful if it adopted some of their methods. But bringing in non-technologists for senior leadership positions and adopting a rigidly hierarchical org chart might be taking things a little too far. Culture matters in technology companies, and it probably matters even more in an organization like OLPC that depends on having employees willing to go above and beyond the call of duty for relatively modest pay. More orderly management is a good thing, but not if you cause your best people to jump ship in the process.

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