News
| Published date | 01 February 2016 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1002/nba.30160 |
| Date | 01 February 2016 |
12
FEBRUARY 2016
NONPROFIT BUSINESS ADVISOR
© 2016 Wiley Periodicals, Inc., A Wiley Company • All rights reserved
DOI: 10.1002/nba
EMPLOYMENT LAW (continued from page 11)
News
were not sufciently severe or pervasive to alter the
conditions of her employment and create an abusive
working environment. The judge also held that the
“white privilege” comment and the “name and color”
joke were not clearly and obviously discriminatory.
Acknowledging that the counseling may have been
unpleasant, he also ruled that it was not so severe as
to support a hostile work environment claim by itself.
Judge Cooper granted summary judgment in favor
of the defendants.
[Uzoukwu v. Metropolitan COG, et al., U.S. District
Court for the District of Columbia, No. 11-cv-00391,
09/18/2015]. ■
Contributions to Combined
Federal Campaign slipping
Contributions to the Combined Federal Campaign
are declining, according to an informal survey con-
ducted by The Washington Post, with many federal
employees opting to give their time instead of money
in recent years. According to the Post, CFC contribu-
tions have been dropping steadily in recent years, with
2014’s tally of $193.2 million nearly a third lower than
2009’s total.
Per capita contributions have also fallen by nearly a
third, and the participation rate among federal workers
is off about 14 percent in that time as well. One cause
the Post points to is nancial pressure resulting from
the perennial threat of a government shutdown in the
era of divided government—and the instability that
brings, nancially, for government workers. Another
issue is low morale, the Post said, with many workers
feeling put off by politicians who are vocally critical of
the federal workforce as a proxy for government itself.
Study shows inequality stunts
generosity among wealthy
New research published in the Proceedings of the
National Academy of Sciences suggests that income
inequality leads to less generosity among the wealthy.
For the research, scholars from the University of
Toronto and Stanford University analyzed results of
a national survey indicating that in the most unequal
U.S. states, higher-income respondents were less
generous than lower-income respondents. In the least
unequal states, however, higher-income individuals
were more generous.
To better establish causality, the researchers con-
ducted an experiment in which apparent levels of
economic inequality in participants’ home states were
portrayed as either relatively high or low. Participants
were then presented with a giving opportunity. Higher-
income participants were less generous than lower-
income participants when inequality was portrayed as
relatively high, but there was no association between
income and generosity when inequality was portrayed
as relatively low, the researchers found.
The ndings suggest that the tendency for higher-
income individuals to be less generous pertains only
when inequality is high, challenging the view that
higher-income individuals are necessarily more self-
ish, and suggesting a previously undocumented way
in which inequitable resource distributions undermine
collective welfare, the researchers said.
IRS withdraws proposal calling
for donor Social Security numbers
Due to intense opposition from the charitable sec-
tor, the IRS has withdrawn a proposal that would have
called for nonprots to collect various information—
including taxpayer identication numbers or Social
Security numbers—for donors that contribute $250 or
more to charity.
The proposal would have been voluntary for the
most part; it would only apply when nonprots chose
to report information about larger donations directly
to the IRS, in lieu of providing written acknowledge-
ments of such gifts to donors themselves and allowing
them to report the transactions on their individual tax
returns. According to the IRS, the aim was to make it
easier for the government to match up large charitable
donations to individual taxpayers. However, chari-
ties voiced concerns about privacy and data security
measures, which would have required costly software
and facility upgrades in many cases, and opened up
nonprots to serious legal troubles in the event of data
breaches, the charitable sector contended. After receiv-
ing over 38,000 public comments, the IRS quickly
rescinded the proposal. ■
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