Florida may be alerting the world of philanthropy to a new front in conservative legislative initiatives. Emmett D. Carson is chief executive officer of Silicon Valley Community Foundation, in Mountain View, California. Carson writes in an opinion piece in the Chronicle of Philanthropy, “A new Florida law heralded by its supporters as protecting the freedom of private foundations has done just the opposite: It has raised questions about what values foundations operate under and thereby could raise new limits on the tax deductions enjoyed by donors to those foundations.”

The new law, according to Carson, is a road map to secrecy and lack of transparency. It builds a new wall around the information about foundations and how they operate and who they are. Carson sees this as a first skirmish on the way to a federal law. The work to build “glass pockets” over recent decades would be reversed.

“The new law prohibits the State of Florida or local governments from requiring foundations to disclose certain demographic data about board and staff members, as well as grantees, without the written permission of those involved and prohibits the state from requiring a diverse board or requiring a foundation to make grants based on demographic information. The demographic data covered by the new law include ‘race, religion, gender, national origin, socioeconomic status, age, ethnicity, disability, marital status, sexual orientation, and political-party registration of its employees, officers, directors, trustees, members, or owners.’”

Walter Davis