Ingenuity, skill and experience that clients trust in the world of nonprofits.
Locke Lord has a long tradition of serving nonprofit entities, including universities, seminaries, hospitals, other health care and social service organizations, museums, religious entities, private foundations and trade associations. We represent a variety of organizations in the world of nonprofits, from the banks that provide financing and the foundations that provide financial support to the insurance companies that structure unique programs for charities. Locke Lord also assists corporations and individuals in establishing charitable trusts and/or private foundations to facilitate charitable giving.
We have considerable experience in securing and maintaining tax-exempt status for nonprofit organizations and deal extensively with the Internal Revenue Code's provisions regulating unrelated business taxable income and debt-financed income.
Publicly Supported Charities
We represent tax-exempt religious, charitable and educational organizations on issues such as:
Our lawyers have obtained determination letters for our exempt organization clients from the IRS. We also advise our charitable clients on complex organizational matters — for example, structuring for a major national public charity, the merger of its multistate affiliates into the charity’s national organization.
Foundations
Our lawyers have organized and assisted many small, medium-sized and large private foundations. We have also represented numerous corporate-sponsored foundations, including bank-sponsored foundations and scholarship foundations. Our lawyers often advise clients regarding IRC provisions that relate specifically to private foundations, including the self-dealing and other excise tax provisions under Chapter 42.
Health Care
We offer a full range of legal services to nonprofit health care systems and hospitals, insurers, managed care companies, physicians and physician groups and other health care facilities and businesses. Our broad experience in both corporate health care and insurance regulation enables us to deal effectively with the continuously changing roles of payors and providers. We provide counsel on:
Trade Associations
We represent trade associations and professional societies in the insurance, health care, construction, manufacturing and other business sectors. These clients are advised on a wide range of tax-related issues, including:
Finance
Lenders and nonprofit organizations that want to tap capital markets through tax-exempt bonds or taxable securities come to us for our creative and cost-efficient solutions. Lenders can provide letters of credit offering credit enhancement and lower costs to nonprofit borrowers. We have represented numerous universities, cultural institutions and social services agencies directly in bond issuances and helped them determine which bond issuer to use, which projects could be financed and understand what the process entails. We have also represented nonprofit borrowers in swap transactions.
Director and Officer Liability
We frequently counsel our nonprofit clients on coverage and liability issues for directors, trustees and officers of nonprofits regarding their duties and liabilities under state and federal law. We also advise on issues related to indemnification under corporate bylaws and coverage under directors' and officers' insurance policies.
Religious Organizations
We have a great deal of experience in representing religious organizations, including educational institutions, social service organizations, radio networks, hospitals, religious orders, religious denominations and religious entities that band together to provide for liabilities on a common basis. Examples of such entities we have been involved with include risk pooling organizations for the protection of property, and retirement and health programs for employees and ministers of religious organizations.
Litigation
We regularly represent nonprofit and tax-exempt clients in litigation involving regulatory enforcement issues, commercial disputes, fiduciary claims, charitable trust, charitable solicitations, Attorney General regulatory issues, corporate conversions, corporate governance and compliance, trustee liability and tax and tax-exemption matters.