Talk:Foundation (nonprofit)

misuse of foundations

Shouldn't a section be added to talk about how charitable foundations can be used to shelter funds with little benefit to the people that the charity purports to help?

For example there is a good article on MSN:

http://moneycentral.msn.com/content/Savinganddebt/consumeractionguide/P58021.asp

This would be a good idea. Since you have a source, why don't you try adding some details? See WP:BOLD

I suggest this should go into charitable organisations. JK

___________

Similar organizations?

I was going to add this, but not sure about accuracy:

==Similar organizations==

A foundation differs from a development charities in that development charities solicit donations from the public whereas foundations rely on private funds.

However, I don't think that's accurate, as the Heart Foundation in Australia solicits public donations. Can anyone clarify? --Singkong2005 00:38, 18 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]

more difference

I don't totally agree on your point. Some charity organizations also mainly depends on private or govenmental funds, although they accept public donations as well. Another difference is that foundations are usually founded with an initialized fund( and very specific direction), while most charity organizations startup from ground. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Qqakai (talk • contribs) 07:23, 25 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

What is a foundation exactly?

Wow! My revision of this article was up for only one minute when Kungfuadam restored the former version. The point of my revision was to say that "Foundation" is a technical term in civil law jurisdictions, where it describes a particular type of institution, but it has no precise meaning in common law jurisdictions except as a vague synonym of charitable organisation. That is certainly so in the UK. If it is different in the US, can someone cite the relevant authorities? I am happy to be corrected. Otherwise I will restore my amendment when I have a moment. JK 29 June 2006.

My revision of 2 July 2006 separates out the discussion into the headings of foundation in civil law/English law/US law. James Kessler QC

Relationship of this article and article on charitable organisations

I suggest that the main article on charities should be Charitable organization and much of the material at present here under "US law" could usefully be moved there. I suspect that in the US, as in the UK, the word "foundation" is simply an imprecise word used to describe a charitable organisation. I also suspect that some of the comments under the heading US law may be misleading. However I leave it to someone more familiar with the US side of things to sort that out.

JK.

Content move and new article re USA law

I moved much of the content on foundations in America because this article had too much content on America that it rendered the article more of one on the US. I moved the great majority of the USA content to an article dedicated to foundations in the USA. Of the content that I moved, I condensed some of it and moved some of the content to more precise articles like ones on community foundations, private foundations, donor advised funds, etc. EECavazos 21:36, 10 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Correct legal status and term

I suggest that the article is moved to just "Foundation" . Not all foundations are charities and the term describes a wide array of legal entities. There is already an article about charitable organizations if necessary to correlate even if charitable foundations may have a complete section under the article Foundations. As is, the article presents some confusion as a Foundation is not a charity per se. Daoken 10:43, 13 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Foundation leads to a disambiguation page; there are other uses of foundation, and they are listed in Foundation. Should we make an article on other sorts of organizations that are foundations we should make a page like "Foundation (organization)" and then have this article as the main article for charitable foundations (ie Foundation (charity)). Otherwise if we have the article on foundation plain and simple devoted to organizations, then that shall interfere with a foundation meant for buildings and other such uses of foundation.EECavazos 00:19, 15 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]

As far as US law, many companies that have the word Foundation in their name, are legally registered as public charities, and also 501(c)(3) organizations, and are not legally registered as foundations. Foundation is both a general term, and a specific type of legal entitiy within the US. That's not yet clear in any of the related wikipedia articles. Fredsmith2 23:10, 21 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Agree with EECavazos. About US charities and foundations situation, I think that it should be noted in a US section and other situations as many EU jurisdictions where charity is a qualification and not inherent to any legal person and where the term foundation is used to dennote diverse legal entities, should also have sections. Or at least a main section "The Foundation status (or concept) in diverse jurisdictions" or something like this, with subsections for each country. What do you think? Daoken 07:01, 25 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Although I am from the USA, I don't think that US law should be the default law or approach to articles. The proper approach should be something like Daoken suggests. Some sort of general article that encompasses civil law/EU countries, common law of the commonwealth countries, and the USA. Then that general article should have subheadings for each jurisdiction's approach. For each subheading there should be a link to an article that specifically addresses in detail that jurisdiction's approach. This way if someone searches for articles on foundations (the organization) then they can be directed to the type of foundation they're searching for whether they're from England, Australia, the USA or France. This is better than everyone just getting US law when they search. And if someone is in fact looking for US law, then they can reach specific information on all the different sorts of foundations.EECavazos 17:36, 25 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Addition Of Organizations

Is it possible to Add a Link to a Wikipedia Page that would show a list of Charitable Organizations? —Preceding unsigned comment added by Reyagray9 (talk • contribs) 15:06, 15 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]

The problem with this is that there are so many directories of NPOs that it would be hard to find one that provides good coverage of all the nonprofits n the world. Many try but none seem to have succeeded. We're not a directory and readers are probably better off trying to use their favorite search engine to find the sorts of lists they would be most comfortable using. -- SiobhanHansa 15:34, 15 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Bibliography

I have the impression that the bibliography (further reading) is too focussed on US foundations. I think it would be more relevant to provide those references on the specific article and to have here more comparative and international studies. --Iopensa (talk) 08:19, 2 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]

United Kingdom CIOs

The term Foundation has started to be used now in UK charity law. Since 2013 there is a new legal entity called a Charitable Incorporated Organization (CIO). There are two main types of CIO, Associations and Foundations. The difference between them is that Associations have a general membership, whereas Foundations just have a board of trustees. I would make an edit but I'm not really confidant about what the actual definition of Foundation is here, I only know that I just registered one. Hope someone more knowledgeable about law can look into this. - MH 15 April 2016 — Preceding unsigned comment added by 88.145.18.198 (talk) 16:03, 15 April 2016 (UTC)[reply]

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