Bruce R. Hopkins - The Law of Fundraising

Sixth Edition

Bruce R. Hopkinsand Alicia Beck

Copyright © 2022 by John Wiley & Sons, Inc. All rights reserved.

Published by John Wiley & Sons, Inc., Hoboken, New Jersey.

Published simultaneously in Canada.

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Hopkins, Bruce R., author. | Beck, Alicia, 1984- author. | John Wiley & Sons, publisher.

Title: The law of fundraising / Bruce R. Hopkins, Alicia Beck.

Description: Sixth edition. | Hoboken, New Jersey : Wiley, [2022] | Includes index.

Identifiers: LCCN 2021055637 (print) | LCCN 2021055638 (ebook) | ISBN 9781119873440 (cloth) | ISBN 9781119873464 (adobe pdf) | ISBN 9781119873457 (epub)

Subjects: LCSH: Fund raising—Law and legislation—United States. | Charitable uses, trusts, and foundations—United States.

Classification: LCC KF1389.5 .H66 2022 (print) | LCC KF1389.5 (ebook) | DDC 346.73/064—dc23/eng/20220128

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2021055637

LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2021055638

Cover image(s): © Comstock / Jupiter Images

Cover design: Wiley

It is with a heavy heart that we relay the news to you that Bruce Richard Hopkins, J.D., LL.M., S.J.D., passed away on October 31, 2021. Bruce's love for the law and for writing resulted in a wonderful relationship with Wiley that lasted for better than 30 years. Throughout that time, Bruce penned more than 50 books as well as writing “The Bruce R. Hopkins' Nonprofit Counsel” (a newsletter published monthly for 40 years). Bruce's texts are practical guides about nonprofits written for both lawyers AND for laypeople, many of which are considered vital to law libraries across the country. The ideas just kept flowing.

Beloved by many, Bruce was often referred to as the “Dean of Nonprofit Law.” His teaching muscle was built over a period of 19 years when he was Professional Lecturer in Law at George Washington University National Law Center. As Professor from Practice at the University of Kansas, School of Law, Bruce exercised his generative spirit teaching and mentoring younger colleagues. Always the legal scholar, he could brilliantly take complicated concepts and distill them down into easily understood principles for beginners, seasoned colleagues, and those unfamiliar with the subject matter. He was a presenter and featured speaker, both nationally and internationally, at numerous conferences throughout his career, among them Representing and Managing Tax-Exempt Organizations (Georgetown University Law Center, Washington, D.C.) and The Private Foundations Tax Seminar (El Pomar Foundation, Colorado Springs, CO). He practiced law in Washington, DC, and Kansas City, MO, for over 50 years, receiving numerous awards and forms of recognition for his efforts.

Bruce will be dearly missed, not solely for his contributions to the Wiley catalog, but because Bruce was a wonderful person who was dearly loved and respected both by all of us at Wiley and by all of those whom he encountered.

This book, the sixth edition of The Law of Fundraising , is the culmination of an effort by Bruce Hopkins (hereinafter the “senior author”) that began over 40 years ago. The book is an attempt to capture the essence of the law of fundraising for charitable purposes in one volume. This task is becoming increasingly difficult. The book reflects what many in the fundraising profession painfully know: federal, state, and local regulation of fundraising just keeps expanding.

When the book originated, as Charity Under Siege: Government Regulation of Fund-Raising (published in 1980), it was less than an inch thick, yet it was thought the siege was on even then. (The senior author has heard more than one state regulator cluck at that title over the years.) Over the years, the book, thereafter published as The Law of Fundraising , expanded.

Any lawyer whose practice concentration is, like the authors', tax, corporate, and other law as it applies to charitable and other nonprofit organizations, cannot avoid entanglement in the legal morass that constitutes federal, state, and local law regulating charities' fundraising. The representation of charitable organizations by the senior author started over 50 years ago (in 1969) (the junior author emerged a mere 40 years or so later). The law of charitable fundraising has been a significant component of his practice almost from the beginning.

He vividly recalls how it all began. The day was January 20, 1973, a Saturday. A colleague at a client charitable organization telephoned him at his office in Washington, DC, excitedly reporting about a “hearing” that was to be held in a few days, before a subcommittee of the House of Representatives chaired by Rep. Lionel Van Deerlin. This impending hearing was said to concern “proposed legislation” that would create federal law of regulating fundraising by charitable organizations. The senior author was asked to inquire about this development. Knowing nothing of the proposed legislation, the upcoming hearing, Rep. Van Deerlin, or charitable fundraising in general, he promised his colleague that he would explore the matter.