Advocacy Group Urges Support for Donor Disclosure Regs

Freedom Foundation IRS Hearing Comments:

• Transparency is intended for the government, while privacy is reserved for the citizen. This concept is a cornerstone of American political discourse.

• Transparency for citizens who want to exercise their rights to free speech and association has been a paramount concern from the very foundation of this country, when our Founding Fathers used pseudonyms to write The Federalist Papers.

• In 1958, the U.S. Supreme Court recognized in NAACP v. Alabama that it was a violation of private citizens' rights to expose their private affiliations to potentially harmful backlash, writing that such exposure could lead to “economic reprisal, loss of employment, threat of physical coercion, and other manifestations of public hostility . . .”

• These rights must be protected, which is why the Freedom Foundation strongly supports the IRS proposal to modify 26 CFR section 1.6033-2(a)(2)(ii) to relieve the qualifying organizations from the obligation to disclose names and addresses of their contributors to the IRS on annual 990 tax forms.

• Unfortunately, the Freedom Foundation is already the subject of the very backlash outlined in NAACP v. Alabama.

• Funded by labor unions upset that the Freedom Foundation's work helps public employees understand and exercise their constitutional right to refrain from joining a union, the Northwest Accountability Project (NAP) combed through our 990 tax filings to get information on our organizational leadership, Board of Directors, employees and donors and have been targeting them for harassment ever since.

• Members of the board have had letters mailed to their neighbors falsely accusing them of opposing the environment, women, the LGBTQ community, etc., even though these issues generally fall outside the Foundation's areas of focus.

• Similar letters have been sent to the neighbors of Freedom Foundation's CEO and Executive Vice President and a number of staff.

• NAP has arranged pickets outside businesses owned by board members and created websites and petitions denouncing firms owned by members of the board in an effort to drive away business and ruin their professional reputation and income.

• After identifying the Murdoch Charitable Trust as a donor, NAP mounted a years-long intimidation PR campaign against the Trust, including targeting Jeffrey Grub, a Murdoch trustee who also served as a vice president for Wells Fargo.

• Lee Saunders, president of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME) — one of the largest labor unions in the country — sent Wells Fargo CEO John Stumpf a letter expressing his “displeasure” at Mr. Grub's support for the Freedom Foundation through his role at the Murdoch Trust, and informed Mr. Stumpf that Mr. Grub exposed “Wells Fargo to unnecessary reputational and financial risk”, urging the CEO to “do all in your power to distance Wells Fargo from these kinds of organizations.”

• NAP even set up a website listing Freedom Foundation staff, including a picture, their home address, birth date and biographical information.

• These tactics are used to intimidate and bully people out of exercising their free speech rights and their desire to participate in cause-based activities.

• Knowing this, the federal government should take action to minimize the ability of such harm by protecting the private information of Americans who simply want to participate in political discourse in their own way as private citizens.

• Although the Freedom Foundation as a 501(c)3 organization would not be directly affected by the proposed rule change, we are very pleased to see the IRS consider narrowing the requirement to report contributors' names and addresses to only 501(c)3 and 527 organizations and urge the IRS to retain this proposal in its final rule.