Starting in January of 2002, the Internet Nonprofit Center has a wholly new look. We want to thank the people at Social Ecology (http://www.socialecology.com) who have helped us design and implement this new format for providing information over the World-Wide Web; Social Ecology also provides the webserver for INC as a public service.

We'll be very interested to get your feedback on how the new appearance and arrangement of the Internet Nonprofit Center works for you. We expect there will be some rough spots; after all, the FAQ has been around since the early '90s and some parts of it haven't been revised in a long time. Please write editor@nonprofits.org to let us know if you find things that seem to need further attention.

We also have a new facility for sending out announcements of new Bulletins (again, provided by Social Ecology, using their DonorLink product). This email system will make it easier for us (and for our readers) to keep email addresses up to date, handle any difficulties that may arise, and over time connect better with the people who use this site to help them manage and understand nonprofits. There's an easy link in the left-hand margin for anyone who would like to subscribe to the announcement service that lets readers know when a new Bulletin has been posted. If you are not already on this list and would like to be, please type in your email address and click on the 'subscribe' button now. This email service is used only for announcements about the Internet Nonprofit Center; your personal information will never be given or sold to anyone else for any purpose.

Interview with the New Head of the Corporation for National Service

The Senate confirmed Les Lenkowsky as CEO of the Corporation for National and Community Service in October 2001. On December 6, he made some informal remarks and answered questions at a gathering hosted by the Independent Sector, ranging over many topics of interest to people who work in or care about the nonprofit sector (see http://www.IndependentSector.org/members/Lenkowsky.html). Prior to this appointment, Les Lenkowsky was Professor of Philanthropic Studies and Public Policy at Indiana University/Purdue University at Indianapolis, as well as a research associate at the Center on Philanthropy at Indiana University (for more about his background, see http://www.cns.gov/about/family/bios/lenkowsky.html)

Reading the Form 990

Many people quite reasonably observe that public access to an organization's Form 990 is one thing while understanding it is quite another!

Peter Swords, working with support from the Ford Foundation, has written How to Read the IRS Form 990 & Find Out What It Means and the Nonprofit Coordinating Committee of the City of New York (where he was the director for many years) has posted it on the Web at http://www.npccny.org/Form_990/990.htm. The form is complicated. Reading it requires specialized knowledge. Anyone who wants to use a 990 to get greater understanding of the nonprofit that filed it will find this publication a great help.

And, by the way, any organization that wants to make sure that people reading its 990s will find the data they need and gain confidence in its work might also want to look carefully at Peter Swords' advice. Making it easy for people to make sense of the 990 matters more and more, as more and more people learn they can have online access to the forms through Guidestar (http://www.guidestar.org) and many other portals.

Car Donations Revisited

The IRS and the National Association of State Charities Officials issued a joint advisory to taxpayers late last year about the complexities of donating a car. See http://ftp.fedworld.gov/pub/irs-news/ir01-112.pdf — it's a .pdf file, so you'll need an Acrobat reader from Adobe (available free from http://www.adobe.com/products/acrobat/readstep2.html) to access it. I've written about car donation programs before in these Bulletins and elsewhere. As a result, I get frequent queries from people who want advice about how to find an organization that will use the car (or the money derived from selling it) wisely. The answer to this question is the same as it is about any donation: ask the charity. (And, if you want, check out the information about it at http://www.guidestar.org too).

There are lots of technicalities about donating cars, though. If the tax-benefits of the donation are important, checking every aspect of the transaction carefully before bidding the old buggy a fond farewell will be an especially good idea.

An Urban Legend

The word has been circulating among nonprofits that putting a sponsor's web-address into a flyer or newsletter could call into question the use of the nonprofit rate when the piece is mailed. Ellenor Kirkconnell of the Alliance of Nonprofit Mailers (http://www.nonprofitmailers.org) explains that there was a brief flurry around this question when the US Postal Service raised the issue of whether links to websites were a form of advertising. After discussions, though, it was recognized that simply providing a URL is like giving the sponsor's phone number; it doesn't become advertising unless the nonprofit's mailing makes an explicit appeal for readers to buy something or use the sponsor's services.

Sponsors that offer charge cards, insurance or travel services may spark extra attention from the Postal Service, though, since nonprofit rates can never be used to promote such things. A mailing that might appear to bump up against that rule should be checked with the eligibility experts at the Business Mail Entry facility where the mailing will be done. In fact, it's a good idea to check with these people for any out-of-the-ordinary mailing, especially if the timing is important or your organization would find it difficult to pay the extra postage for standard mail rates while appealing an unfavorable ruling at the time the mailing needs to be sent.