NWC NEWSLETTER July 2009
NWC Breakfast with Special guest Jan Larimer, RNC Co-Chairman
On Tuesday, June 16th, NWC hosted a breakfast event with special guest Jan Larimer, Co-Chairman of the Republican National Committee at the St. Regis Hotel in Washington, DC. The breakfast took place during RJC's June Leadership meeting with a special introduction by NWC Chair, Diane Sembler-Kamins. Co-Chairman Jan Larimer spoke about the growing role of women in the Republican Party and urged members of the NWC to participate in the grassroots movement.
On Friday June 25th Co-Chairman Jan Larimer and the RNC hosted a Women’s Summit as a launch party for their “Women’s Interactive Network.” Their GOP state party chairmen, Republican National Committeemen and Committeewomen, nominated the 280 women invited to attend or Republican Members of Congress based on their leadership ability coupled with their interest to get involved and make a difference. Among the participants was NWC Chair Diane Sembler-Kamins, who attended this summit to discuss strategies for mobilizing the grassroots contingencies in the upcoming 2010 elections.
NWC Member Beverly Goldstein Receives Award from FBI
RJC NWC member Beverly A. Goldstein, was honored by the FBI with the Director’s “Community Leadership Award,” for her efforts to promote national security education. Beverly, whose husband is a retired intelligence officer, became interested in national security issues after attending an AFIO conference at FBI Headquarters with her husband. She returned home and began working with the Beachwood Schools Foundation and school officials, developing a full-day symposium for high school students, featuring 15 speakers from the CIA Defense Intelligence Agency, the National Security Agency, the Central Intelligence Agency, the FBI, the Department of Homeland Security, and the Drug Enforcement Agency. The program consisted of lectures, breakout sessions, and a dinner where the SAC for the Cleveland FBI, Frank Figliuzzi was the keynote speaker. Beverly Goldstein wants teenagers to think about our national security and possible national security careers.
Beverly Goldstein is committed to replicating this symposium in other schools in the region and the country.
Op-Ed by NWC Member Suzanne Tufts
NOT-FOR-PROFITS FACE TAXING TIMES
In the midst of one of the worst fundraising years in American history and a year that saw the destruction of a significant portion of the Jewish philanthropic and communal world, President Obama recently announced his intention to sharply curtail charitable deductions for families with incomes of over $250,000 a year.
The proposal has been greeted with deep criticism from many people across the civic and political spectrum. Indeed, Harvard economist Martin Feldstein, who's a member of the President's Economic Recovery Advisory Board, recently pointed out that the President’s proposal to limit tax deductibility of charitable contributions “would effectively transfer more than $7 billion a year from the nation’s charitable institutions to the federal government.”
It would also have a devastating effect on the role of individual action and individual decision making in American and Jewish communal life. I know this from first hand experience. Several years ago, I served as President and CEO of the American Woman’s Economic Development Corporation, (“AWED”) the nation’s first entrepreneurship training center for women business owners. From time to time, at the request of various government agencies AWED would host delegations of women from various Western European, Asian and African countries who were visiting the United States.
Every delegation had the same question: “how much do you pay your board”? The delegation members were always astonished when we explained that not only did we not pay our Board they were active donors and fundraisers on the organization’s behalf and that fundraising was a key expectation of not for profit Board members in the United States.
When we told them that our faculty and business counselors were all volunteers and that many of them were donors as well the women were positively incredulous. “Why”, they would ask? For what reason? Do they (the donors) feel guilty?
To women from these European and other international economies “philanthropy” and “voluntary citizen action” were foreign concepts. Indeed, these ideas are quintessential aspects of the American ‘way of life’ from our earliest days as a nation. Individual freedom and creativity in the economic sphere built our nation, so to have individual freedom– and individual philanthropy – built our colleges, universities, hospitals, medical research centers, our museums – and our religious and civil rights institutions.
In the early 1800’s, Alexis de Tocqueville observed that “Americans of all ages, all stations in life and all types of dispositions are forever forming associations…….at the head of any new undertaking, where in France you would find the government or in England some territorial magnate, in the United States you are sure to find an association.” [Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America, Vol. Two, Part II, Ch. 5. 1848 Ed.].
Today, the same holds true for France and England, (although in the U.K. the government has replaced the magnate) and if President Obama has his way the same will hold true for the United States. We must be vigilant and insure that philanthropy, the institutions it supports, and the freedom from which they spring are nurtured rather than handicapped.
Suzanne Israel Tufts, Esq. is an attorney and a consultant to not for profit organizations, foundations and donor who lives in New York City. She served in the Administration of President George H.W. Bush as Regional Director, Region II, of ACTION, the predecessor agency to the Corporation for National Service.
NWC is on Facebook!
NWC recently launched a Facebook page in order to grow our grassroots movement. If you are on Facebook please join our group and invite your friends to join too.
The link for the group is: www.facebook.com/group.php
