{"id":594,"date":"2015-08-18T10:49:15","date_gmt":"2015-08-18T08:49:15","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/jumper\/?p=594"},"modified":"2015-08-18T13:58:44","modified_gmt":"2015-08-18T11:58:44","slug":"to-share-or-not-to-share-on-nonprofits-and-the-disclosure-of-information-to-the-public","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/jumper\/2015\/08\/to-share-or-not-to-share-on-nonprofits-and-the-disclosure-of-information-to-the-public\/","title":{"rendered":"To share or not to share: On nonprofits and the disclosure of information to the public"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"confidentiality-agreement\"<\/a>A couple weeks back the Chronicle of Philanthropy <\/em>ran an article by Rebecca Koenig with the headline: Some Nonprofits Misuse Contracts to Hide Activities, Experts Say<\/a><\/em>.\u00c2\u00a0The experts cited in the article include the president of CharityWatch<\/strong> (which provides information about\u00c2\u00a0the\u00c2\u00a0financial efficiency, accountability, governance, and fundraising of\u00c2\u00a0nonprofits), Senator Charles Grassley<\/strong> (who has long sought greater regulation and oversight of the nonprofit sector) and the president of Guidestar<\/strong> (which primarily collects and makes available for analysis financial data reported by nonprofits on IRS Form 990).\u00c2\u00a0 The article is focused on\u00c2\u00a0challenges that the media faced in gathering information on the uses and beneficiaries of the $487 million raised by the Red Cross after the 2010 earthquake in Haiti.\u00c2\u00a0 Koenig reports that while the Red Cross ultimately complied with a request from Senator Grassley to release the information, it did so while issuing the following statement:<\/p>\n

\u00e2\u20ac\u00a6 our contracts with the great majority of our partners, while permitting us to disclose this information to Congress, do not permit us to disclose the information to the media or donors.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

It is this statement that the article investigates, asking whether nonprofits should enter into agreements with others that prohibit them from disclosing information. This article is only one of a spate\u00c2\u00a0of news items of late looking at secrecy around the\u00c2\u00a0flows\u00c2\u00a0of money into, or out of, nonprofits and\u00c2\u00a0NGOs.<\/p>\n

Another high profile case was that of the Tate museum in London, which refused to release information on the amounts of sponsorship received by the controversial oil company, BP. As\u00c2\u00a0covered\u00c2\u00a0in this Guardian article<\/a>, among many others, Tate was eventually forced to disclose the amount of funds when a Freedom of Information request was made by a group of campaigners who argued\u00c2\u00a0that the figures needed to be released so that “a properly informed debate [could] take place about whether BP is an appropriate sponsor of the art gallery and its work.” \u00c2\u00a0When the\u00c2\u00a0matter was brought before a tribunal,\u00c2\u00a0the Tate lost its case\u00e2\u20ac\u201dwhich rested on the arguments that disclosing the annual amounts of funds would upset BP, deter future sponsorships, or lead to health and safety risks stemming from ongoing protests against the oil company. Evidently, in the tribunal’s estimation, the public’s right to know the facts and openly debate the matter trumped these other concerns.<\/p>\n

The Chronicle of Philanthropy<\/em> article raises or prompts\u00c2\u00a0several questions about the Red Cross case, which might be asked more generally about nonprofits and their various agreements with partners (particularly those that are not charities and, thus, subject to the same requirments regarding\u00c2\u00a0disclosure of information):<\/p>\n