Last year, the Federal Reserve conducted a survey to better understand the range of challenges facing communities and individuals served by nonprofits as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic. The resulting report helped shape nonprofit advocacy efforts and informed equitable recovery programs, policies, and investments.

Earlier this month, the Federal Reserve launched an updated survey on how the effects of COVID-19 are evolving in communities and among the organizations serving them. The Center encourages all North Carolina nonprofits to complete the 2022 survey today and share the survey link with others serving the community. The survey is open through Tuesday, August 23.

Advocacy is a broad concept encompassing all the strategies and communications that advance a nonprofit’s mission. To help your nonprofit strengthen its advocacy, the Center is offering a three-part webinar series to equip nonprofit leaders with a better understanding of and concrete tools to be more effective advocates for your missions. Join us beginning this Tuesday, August 16 to define your nonprofit’s goals, audiences, and resources as you develop your advocacy strategies and tactics; study proven narratives and practical storytelling tools; and identify and track the data that supports the need for your organization’s programs. Register for the full series or individual webinars. We especially encourage staff, board, volunteers, and leaders from lower-resourced, rural, BIPOC-led, and new (less than two years old) nonprofit organizations to attend. Learn more and register.

On Sunday, the U.S. Senate passed the Inflation Reduction Act of 2022 (H.R. 5376), a domestic spending bill intended to reduce the federal deficit, combat climate change, and decrease healthcare costs for people with Affordable Care Act health insurance subsidies. The bill passed the Senate along party lines by a 51-50 vote, and the U.S. House of Representatives plans to vote on it today. The bill would help nonprofits in three ways:

The new Senate bill does not include many of the provisions in the $1.7 billion Build Back Better legislation that the U.S. House of Representatives passed last November. That bill, which was the House’s plan for a budget reconciliation bill, also would have included other nonprofit priorities like continuing the expanded Child Tax Credit, investing significant federal support in child care and early childhood programs, providing more funding for national service programs, and supporting new and expanded affordable housing programs. It appears unlikely that Congress will fund these investments this year.

The bill is likely to pass the House today, and President Joe Biden has already expressed his support for the legislation.

Last month, the U.S. Department of Education published a formal notice of proposed rulemaking to address student loan forgiveness and affordability issues. The rules propose making permanent some, but not all, of the relaxed eligibility terms in the temporary Limited PSLF Waiver that is set to expire on October 31. Key provisions include:

To help you better understand the proposed rules and how they would affect nonprofits and nonprofit employees, the National Council of Nonprofits has prepared a helpful chart highlighting the key provisions in the proposed rules.

In public comments submitted earlier this week, the National Council of Nonprofits expressed strong support for many of the proposed regulatory improvements that, if substantially implemented as proposed, “would help ease some of the staffing challenges nonprofits are facing by clarifying and expanding the opportunity for loan forgiveness for charitable nonprofit employees, thus fulfilling the purpose behind PSLF as Congress originally intended.”

Today is the last day for nonprofits and their employees to submit public comments on the proposed rule. Comments can range in length from a paragraph to many pages. Feel free to use any part(s) of the National Council of Nonprofits comments as a template for your own submissions. Learn more about the ease of drafting and filing public comments.

Last week, the National Council of Nonprofits and 26 other national organizations sent a letter to congressional leaders and the President calling for Congress to pass disaster relief legislation that would help nonprofits address urgent needs in communities. The letter calls for the following:

The Center is sharing this letter with North Carolina’s members of Congress, many of whom told us this summer that they support each of these provisions.

Earlier this year, the Center sent a candidate questionnaire on nonprofit issues to all North Carolina candidates for Congress and the NC General Assembly. The questionnaire is intended to help nonprofit leaders learn more about the candidates on their ballots in the 2022 election and also to help candidates have a better awareness of the work of nonprofits. Last month, the Center posted a clickable 100-county map on its website to help you find the responses from candidates in your county (note: you may need to disable popups on your web browser to see candidates’ responses).

With early voting for the 2022 general election less than three months away, now is the time to encourage more candidates to complete the questionnaire. Your local candidates for office are more likely to respond to the questionnaire if they hear from you rather than from the Center. Please take a few minutes in the next week to reach out to your local candidates to ask them to complete the questionnaire.

 

We recommend that you reach out to candidates running for office in the county where your organization is based. Please make sure you reach out to all candidates running to serve the county or geographic area you serve. This both increases the chances we will hear back from everyone and demonstrates that you are not favoring any candidates or political parties. To make it easy for you, the Center has:

This summer, both the NC Senate (H.B. 149) and the NC House of Representatives (S.408) passed legislation to expand Medicaid coverage to adults with incomes up to 133% of the federal poverty level. Medicaid expansion would provide health coverage for about 600,000 North Carolinians whose incomes are too much to qualify for Medicaid currently but not enough to receive health care subsidies in the Affordable Care Act health marketplace. Unfortunately, North Carolina still hasn’t enacted Medicaid expansion because of disagreement between the House and Senate on whether the legislation should include other major health care policy provisions, including changes to the state’s certificate of need laws and a version the SAVE Act that would enable more nurses to provide services without supervision by a physician.

As we explained in a recent Care4Carolina blog post, the Center strongly supports Medicaid expansion because it would support the work of charitable nonprofits in three ways:

The Center continues to work with our partners to advocate for legislators to come to an agreement and pass Medicaid expansion this year. We will let you know when there is a need for your nonprofit to take action.

The federal government has changed how government grantees and contractors identify themselves for registration and reporting purposes. Rather than the DUNS Number, organizations must use the Unique Entity ID, a 12-character alphanumeric ID assigned to an entity by SAM.gov. For more information about this transition, visit SAM.gov.

The U.S. Treasury Department recently released guidance updates and a “How-To” Guide for increasing investments in affordable housing using American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA) funds. The guidance makes clear states and local governments may use ARPA money to finance long-term affordable housing loans and to fund the development, repair, or operation of any affordable rental housing unit that provides long-term affordability of 20 years or more to households at or below 65% of the local area median income.

Last month, ProPublica reported on a recent trend of 501(c)(3) nonprofits getting permission from the IRS in 2020 to convert their status to churches or an association of churches, enabling the organization to maintain the secrecy of financial and governance information that 501(c)(3) organizations normally report. Generally, churches and associations of churches don’t have to file Form 990 like other 501(c)(3) nonprofits. The ProPublica report documents how the IRS appears to have not followed its own guidelines in reclassifying some of these organizations as churches or associations of churches.

Last week, 40 U.S. Representatives sent a letter to the Treasury Secretary and IRS Commissioner urging them to reconsider its recent reclassification of a nonprofit think tank as a church and to review whether there are other political advocacy organizations that have obtained church status but do not satisfy the IRS requirements for churches, integrated auxiliaries, and conventions or associations of churches.

This fall, the U.S. Department of Labor (DOL) plans to release new proposed regulations on the salary threshold under the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA). Currently, FLSA requires employers, including nonprofits, to pay their employees at least $7.25 per hour and to pay employees one-and-one-half times their regular rate of pay when they work more than 40 hours in a workweek. Employees are exempt from the FLSA overtime pay requirement if they:

It is important for nonprofits to regularly review their employees’ job descriptions to see whether they meet the criteria for one of these three duties tests. Unfortunately for nonprofits, the DOL guidance on the three duties tests often focuses on typical for-profit positions and doesn’t provide analysis of nonprofit positions (e.g., the guidance isn’t clear on whether certain fundraising/development jobs or volunteer management positions meet one of the duties tests). The new regulations are a chance to fix this issue and provide clearer guidance for nonprofits. The Center and our national partners have reached out to DOL to raise this issue, and we are seeking your help in identifying positions at your nonprofit that don’t fit clearly within the existing guidance for administrative, executive, or professional employees. Let us know some examples of positions at your nonprofit for which it would be helpful to have clarity from DOL about whether they meet the duties tests for FLSA exemption.

The Center provides Nonprofit Policy Update each week as a benefit to its nonprofit members. However, to help all North Carolina nonprofits respond to the COVID-19 pandemic, we're temporarily providing this newsletter to non-member nonprofits. Don’t miss out – become a member to ensure you continue receiving these updates along with many other valuable benefits.