Attorneys in Dow Lohnes’s Exempt Organizations practice area serve the legal needs of a wide variety of nonprofit organizations, including charitable organizations, trade associations, social welfare organizations, and other grantmaking and operating foundations. Dow Lohnes’ charitable organization clients include private foundations, charitable trusts, higher educational institutions and public charities operating in the areas of education, public broadcasting, public interest litigation and the arts.
Dow Lohnes’s tax attorneys focusing on exempt organizations assist in all aspects of the formation, operation, and restructuring of nonprofit organizations. Specialties of the Exempt Organizations practice include structuring and obtaining federal and state tax-exempt status for nonprofit entities, planning and preparing transactional documents for partnerships and other joint ventures, obtaining private letter rulings, and advising clients on a day-to-day basis about a wide range of nonprofit tax and corporate issues. As outside tax counsel, Dow Lohnes advises public charity clients with respect to tax issues such as unrelated business income tax, directors’ liability, intermediate sanctions, lobbying and political activity limits, receipt and substantiation of charitable gifts, the deductibility of charitable contributions, and tax controversy issues.
Dow Lohnes also advises its clients with respect to corporate and contractual matters such as the preparation and amendment of organizational documents and the preparation of asset transfer, hotel convention, banking, computer and insurance contracts. Dow Lohnes’ Exempt Organizations attorneys work with other attorneys within the firm to provide legal services in the areas of trusts and estates, employment, labor relations, trademark and intellectual property, general litigation and other areas of specialization within the firm.
Dow Lohnes also counsels private foundations with respect to transfers in mergers or liquidations, excess business holdings, avoidance of self-dealing, structuring of grants and scholarships, federal and state reporting requirements, charitable substantiation, and restrictions on lobbying and political activities. Exempt Organizations practitioners assist members of the Trust and Estates practice in counseling foundation founders with respect to tax-advantageous strategies for structuring charitable gifts.