Free Republic

CLAYTON, Mo. - Panera Bread Co. is asking customers at a new restaurant to pay what they want. The national bakery and restaurant chain launched a new nonprofit store here this week that has the same menu as its other 1,400 locations. But the prices are a little different — there aren't any. Customers are told to donate what they want for a meal, whether it's the full suggested price, a penny or $100.

How to Stop USPS Junk Mail By Shelly Schumacher, eHow Contributing Writer The average American receives 41 pounds of junk mail per year. Not only does junk mail clog up our mailboxes, it also wreaks havoc on the environment. Nearly half of the junk mail received annually (44 percent) ends up in a landfill. In addition, nearly $320 million in local tax money is used to dispose of junk mail, and more than 100 million trees are used to create pulpwood for paper products. While the United States Postal Service does not have a one-stop method for reducing junk mail,...

<p>DES MOINES, Iowa – More than 200,000 small nonprofits across the nation are days away from losing their tax-exempt status because they haven't filed a new form with the Internal Revenue Service.</p> <p>Many of these groups already operate on razor-thin budgets and some worry an unexpected tax bill could force organizations to close.</p>

As many as 400,000 nonprofit organizations are weeks away from a doomsday. At midnight on May 15, an estimated one-fifth to one-quarter of some 1.6 million charities, trade associations and membership groups will lose their tax exemptions, thanks to a provision buried in a 2006 federal bill aimed at pension reform. “It’s going to be an unholy mess once these organizations realize what’s happened to them,” said Diana Aviv, president of the Independent Sector, a nonprofit trade group. The federal legislation passed in 2006 required all nonprofits to file tax forms the following year. Previously, only organizations with revenues of...

Among the most important sub-texts in the year-long national debate over Obamacare has been the massive support for the proposal by organized labor and the opposition of most of the business community. Erick Erickson, the dough-faced, take-no-prisoners proprietor of the Redstate.com blog and CNN's newest political analyst, offers an interesting tidbit of information that helps illuminate the Labor vs Business factor in the Obamacare debate. Seems the chief organized labor non-profit is the AFL-CIO's American Center for International Labor Solidarity, aka the Solidarity Center.

The community organization group will keep the same mission and many of the same staffers, but will not belong to the troubled national alliance. California ACORN has broken away from its embattled parent organization to form a new nonprofit group, a move that observers say might foreshadow other defections that would seriously undermine one of the nation's largest and most politically powerful community organizations.

According to the Grassley report, charities "are being used to raise monies which are then funneled to other charities or to other organizations for purposes other than what the donor may have intended. . . . Dollars raised for charitable [purposes] appear to be used for impermissible lobbing and political activity."

He is a kind of Society for th’ Prevention of Croolty to Money. If he finds a man misusin’ his money, he takes it away fr’m him an’ adopts it. —MR. DOOLEY Charity is said to be a virtue without compare, and yet we all know that it arouses suspicion—about the giver’s display of his generosity, the recipient’s dependency, some essential inequity that the gift only reinforces. Perhaps for this reason, Maimonides argued that the highest level of charity was not charity at all but rather helping the needy find the means by which to earn their own living. In...

Google drops idea to buy newspaper By Andrew Edgecliffe-Johnson in New York and Chrystia Freeland in London Published: May 20 2009 22:00 | Last updated: May 20 2009 23:30 Google has considered buying a newspaper or using its charitable arm to support news businesses seeking non-profit status, but is now unlikely to pursue either option, Eric Schmidt, chairman and chief executive, told the Financial Times. His comments, in an interview with FT.com, will cool speculation that the deep-pocketed search engine operator might save franchises such as the New York Times that are struggling with debts and declining advertising revenue. Google...

Note: Includes a photo. Note: The following text is a quote: THE BRIEFING ROOM • THE BLOG Wednesday, May 6th, 2009 at 7:55 pm What Is the Social Innovation Fund? Last night the First Lady discussed the Social Innovation Fund at the Time 100 Most Influential People Awards; we asked Michele Jolin, Senior Advisor for Social Innovation for the Domestic Policy Council, to tell us about it: Yesterday, the President announced that he would ask Congress in the FY2010 budget to provide $50 million in seed capital for his Social Innovation Fund, fulfilling a campaign pledge. The Fund will identify...

Conservatives are big financiers of the spread of socialism by nonprofits. Bigger even than billionaire George Soros. There are tens of thousands of liberal nonprofits on the public dole. Conservatives tend to focus attention and even outrage on a few large and notorious taxpayer-funded nonprofits such as ACORN, Planned Parenthood and AARP. That focus, though, is too myopic. Liberals know how to use nonprofits to "change" America. With the daily bombardment against our free-market, constitutional senses by the Obama-Pelosi-Reid regime, we may be ignoring the nonprofit foundation of their comprehensive socialist agenda. And conservatives are helping to pay for it,...

The head of a Philadelphia nonprofit organization is facing charges he used more than $400,000 in state taxpayer funds intended to poor childern and elderly residents to finance a lavish lifestyle.

Maryland Senator Benjamin Cardin has proposed legislation to allow newspapers to be classified as non-profit entities (technically a “Low Profit Limited Liability Corporation” or L3C). Non-profit status for newspapers has been the hot buzz in the trade press for the past several months and is supported

Yes: Their conflicts of interest mean they don’t deliver on credibility By GARY SNYDER The charitable sector is struggling to keep the public’s confidence because it lacks good governance, financial accountability, transparency and provisions against conflicts of interests. It mirrors the attributes —- greed, arrogance and outrageous corporate behavior —- assigned to the for-profit sector. Angel Food Ministries is an example. It joins the ever-growing list of nonprofits that feel their mission gives them reason not to subscribe to generally acceptable charitable guidelines. Their mission is not unique, but their practices are. Fat salaries, loans approved but not by an...

A nonprofit organization founded by California's largest union local reported spending nothing on its charitable purpose -- to develop housing for low-income workers -- during at least two of the four years it has been operating, federal records show. The charity, launched by a scandal-ridden Los Angeles chapter of the Service Employees International Union, had total expenses of about $165,000 for 2005 and 2006, and all of the money went to consulting fees, insurance costs and other overhead, according to its Internal Revenue Service filings. Charity watchdogs say that nonprofits should never have zero program expenses in two successive years...

Early last year, Alejandro Stephens' long tenure as president of one of California's biggest union locals came to an end after the labor organization he headed merged into a larger local. The Service Employees International Union sweetened Stephens' exit with severance payments and other compensation that totaled nearly $180,000, said union spokeswoman Michelle Ringuette. A condition was that Stephens give up the salary he was receiving from Los Angeles County, Ringuette said. Under an agreement between the union and the county, taxpayers covered the salary of the head of the union local. The separation deal has since become the focus...

It’s time to stop government funding and tax breaks for “Big Abortion.” That’s the message from U.S. Rep. Michele Bachman, R.-Minn. Speaking at the Family Research Council Values Voter Summit on September 12, Bachman detailed how Planned Parenthood – a controversial non-profit “family planning” organization that reportedly performed 289,750 abortions in 2006 – has expanded significantly. She cited a June 23 Wall Street Journal article by Stephanie Simon that revealed 501(c)3 organization had a record $1 billion in annual revenue in a recent financial report. “I got a call from my husband one morning that said, ‘Michele, take a look...

CAIR Exposed: Part 1 As IAP Offshoot, CAIR Followed Pro-Hamas Agenda From the Start by Steven Emerson IPT News March 24, 2008FEATURE STORY   From the Hamas ties of its founders in 1994 to its solicitous stance toward accused terrorists today, the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) has demonstrated that its actual mission is far removed from the civil rights advocacy it claims to pursue. Still standing as perhaps the clearest evidence of CAIR's insidious role, two key leaders of the group attended a 1993 meeting in Philadelphia called by Hamas members and supporters to devise a strategy for torpedoing...

Judge sides with CAIR against Michael Savage (Talk Radio) March 11, 2008 © 2008 WorldNetDaily Michael Savage A Clinton-appointed judge in California is siding with the Council on Islamic-American Relations in a lawsuit by radio talk-show host Michael Savage. Judge Susan Illston has issued a terse one-page ruling in the case in which she "granted" a defense motion for judgment on the pleadings with "leave to amend." Although it was released only today, it was dated Friday, apparently finalized shortly after she held a hearing on the issues at hand. It was posted on Michael Savage's website, under the headline...

CH-UH library postpones ‘anti-Israel’ documentary BY: DOUGLAS J. GUTH Senior Staff Reporter The Cleveland Heights-University Heights Public Library has postponed a three-part series on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict amid concerns from Jewish residents that the program would be biased against