Contents

PrefaceAlthough it may sound like a horrendous conceit, I marvel at this book. The verytitle suggests a subject that ought to be confined to a pamphlet: The Tax Law ofCharitable Giving. The principal reason for my amazement: How can something assimple and innocent as charitable giving generate so much law? It is, I suppose, ahallmark of our society; matters are quite complicated in the United States thesedays, and so too is the matter of transferring money and property to charity.There is another reason, one much more personal. In the early 1990s, thisbook had been on my mind for a long time. It had been written, in fits and starts,many times over the years, with the manuscript pages ending up accumulatingin this storage box and that file. It took some gentle prodding by the wonderfulpeople at John Wiley & Sons—specifically, for this project, Jeffrey Brown (longsince promoted to Wiley’s higher echelons) and Marla Bobowick (now workingin the charitable sector)—to get me going on the writing of the book. The firstedition appeared in 1993. Martha Cooley skillfully continued in the fashion ofher predecessors; the second edition arrived. Susan McDermott provided theimpetus for this, the third edition of the book.It is not that I did not want to write this book; that is certainly not the case. Infact, I long dreamed of—it seems rather immodest to say it—a trilogy. This ideareflects what is now more than 35 years of law practice entirely in the realm ofnonprofit organizations. I have come to see the law uniquely affecting these organizationsas falling into three fields: the law of tax-exempt organizations, the lawof fundraising, and the law of charitable giving.By the time the pressure was mounting to write a book on charitable giving,the books on tax-exempt organizations law and fundraising law had been published(by Wiley, of course). Certainly, the time had come to begin (or re-begin)the writing of the third book. But I found my writing time diverted to other subjects(such as book supplements and other books); postponement of the charitablegiving book had become the order of the day.I have been writing books for Wiley for over 25 years. (The first book, the thirdedition of The Law of Tax-Exempt Organizations, was published in 1979. The predecessorto The Law of Fundraising was published in 1980.) These and other Wileybooks I have been involved with entail the writing of annual supplements. Asthe 1980s unfolded, I discovered something unusual: I enjoy writing supplements.(There is something perversely challenging about simultaneously correctingprior mistakes, and capturing and integrating subsequent developments.) xv