In the wake of the widening corporate accounting scandals, both the House and Senate have passed versions of corporate accountability and reform legislation. As reported in a previous Watcher, on April 24, the House passed the "Corporate and Auditing Accountability, Responsibility, and Transparency Act" (H.R. 3763), while the Senate passed its version (S. 2673) last Monday, July 15th. The conference committee that will hammer out the differences between the House and Senate version was appointed on Wednesday, July 17th, and has promised to be finished with the legislation by July 26th. The House version is of most interest to the nonprofit community, as it contains a provision that charges the Securities and Exchange Commission with developing rules that require a corporation to report contributions to a nonprofit organization if any of the corporation's directors or members of their immediate family are members of that nonprofit's board. This applies to contributions over $10,000 made by the corporation or any officer of the corporation in the last five years, as well as any other activity that provides a "material benefit" to the nonprofit, including lobbying. While OMB Watch supports disclosure, there are technical problems with this legislation that need to be addressed. There is uncertainty about whether nonprofit disclosure language will be included in the final legislation that comes out of the conference committee. While several sponsors of the House legislation feel strongly about the issue, the Senate sponsors did not make it a priority. There have been several recent high profile cases of corporations giving large donations to corporate officers' pet causes (such as Enron giving large donations to a hospital chaired by a member of its audit committee) as well as an increase in "strategic philanthropy" where corporations give money to nonprofits that work to advance their business interests (for an excellent article on groups tracking this type of giving see this page). We'd like to hear your input. If you have an example of a corporation using undisclosed donations to influence the policies of a nonprofit, or to use an ostensibly independent nonprofit to further its business goals (for example, Citizens for Better Medicare), please post it for discussion in our forum.