Volume 14, Issue 1

This study attempts to understand the role of the nonprofit sector within the climate change discourse in Russian news media. It explores the news media coverage of climate change and nonprofit sector through the quantitative review of Russian news articles published within the five-year period of 2016–2021. We find that the nonprofit sector generally gains positive media coverage, and the climate change is presented as mostly a national and political issue, while the scientific discussions are very rare. Government and nongovernment news media sources diverge in their coverage on the topic. The state-owned media views the climate change as a national issue relying predominantly on Russian official sources, and praising assistance that the Russian government provides to the nonprofit sector. On the other hand, the nongovernment media highlights the political aspects of the climate change, includes government critique, and often draw on business and foreign sources.

The political purpose doctrine, a key part of the charity law landscape for many common law jurisdictions, has been subject to much judicial and academic criticism over the years. Its continued influence on the charity sector in relation to whether or not charities can operate effectively, or indeed, whether they may lose their registered status, gives rise still to such criticisms. It is against this backdrop that this article critically assesses the doctrine in light of newly-emerging decisions from the New Zealand courts that have fundamentally changed the charity law landscape from a national perspective, and considers some of the issues associated with this newly-evolved doctrine. Thus, what can be said is that New Zealand charity law jurisprudence is evolving and this article provides some useful insights in to contemporary charity law issues predominantly through the New Zealand lens as but one legal approach, and also compares some of these issues against two international perspectives.

Much writing on Donor Advised Funds (DAFs) relates to whether they ‘unduly’ delay the direct application of donated funds to achieve public benefit. However, the discussion rarely touches on a normative basis for determining what is ‘undue’ or that can be used to shape potential reforms, which are typically framed with reference to a private foundation payout rate or time limit for expending contributions. Research on charity accumulation conducted across the United States, United Kingdom, Canada, Australia and New Zealand, suggests that the normative principle of intergenerational justice is helpful for grounding such discussions (Murray, I. 2021. Charity Law and Accumulation: Maintaining an Intergenerational Balance . Cambridge: Cambridge University Press). This article considers intergenerational justice in the context of DAFs and considers whether the principle can be implemented in ways that support DAF sponsor independence and flexibility. One way that this could be achieved is by imposing (or enforcing existing) procedural obligations on decision-makers to give genuine consideration to intergenerational justice when making decisions about how much to spend and retain.

This policy brief proposes a tax credit with related qualifying conditions that address the serious deficiencies related to abuse and neglect found in the current for-profit long-term care space. It also seeks to address the lack of government accountability for huge outlays of taxpayer dollars in the form of Medicare and Medicaid payments to these facilities, much of which results in maximizing profits for wealthy investors at the expense of vulnerable individuals with limited voice. Our proposed policy arrangement alters the organizational DNA of the for-profit organization, including the moderation of profit, to circumvent the existing financial incentives that are driving the mistreatment and malpractice so evident in the system. It aims to achieve this through four policy components including social financing, a sliding dividend cap, employee-ownership, and limits on complex corporate structures which are tied to a tax credit. This multi-faceted policy idea is intended to start the discussion around a possible path forward.