This week, Philanthropy Roundtable published the Free to Give Index, a comprehensive, state-by-state assessment of the policy environments that shape charitable giving and nonprofit activity across the United States.
The devil's advocate in me wonders if your "robust correlation" isn't being treated as causation in the wrong direction:
"burdensome regulation suppresses the formation and growth of charitable organizations."
What if those 5 states impose all that regulation because the people in those states are too stingy and the state apparatus has to step in to fill in for the market failure?
That is a valuable observation. The regulations we focused on in this analysis were regulations specific to charities i.e. charity reporting requirements, nonprofit audit thresholds etc. It wouldn't make much sense for policymakers in states with perhaps less charitable populations to impose more regs on charities.
Ah, but maybe it would. You just gotta think more devilish ... what if the regulators think those lower reported amounts show that charities are reporting less than what was donated and stealing the rest? Clearly more regulations are called for.
I spent 20 years writing hardware diagnostics for computers and developed a real sense of Murphy's Law, and it's about impossible to turn that off when it comes to government :-)
The devil's advocate in me wonders if your "robust correlation" isn't being treated as causation in the wrong direction:
"burdensome regulation suppresses the formation and growth of charitable organizations."
What if those 5 states impose all that regulation because the people in those states are too stingy and the state apparatus has to step in to fill in for the market failure?
That is a valuable observation. The regulations we focused on in this analysis were regulations specific to charities i.e. charity reporting requirements, nonprofit audit thresholds etc. It wouldn't make much sense for policymakers in states with perhaps less charitable populations to impose more regs on charities.
Ah, but maybe it would. You just gotta think more devilish ... what if the regulators think those lower reported amounts show that charities are reporting less than what was donated and stealing the rest? Clearly more regulations are called for.
I spent 20 years writing hardware diagnostics for computers and developed a real sense of Murphy's Law, and it's about impossible to turn that off when it comes to government :-)