They have become part of reporters' Rolodexes, called upon for responses during the fundraising scandals of three years ago and the China spy scandal unfolding today. They are the thousands of workers who run the thousands of Asian American nonprofits nationwide. But they don't all look the same.
Diversity exists, too, in how each group raises money and where that money goes.
And in the seventh year of a growth economy, there's more money around. Moreover, a photographic memory could be practically essential to making sense of the information, given that no one was required to make copies if requested. Enter Congress, which through the Tax and Trade Relief Extension Act of 1998 imposed new IRS regulations that require nonprofits as of June 8 to send copies of tax forms that disclose how much an organization takes in, how much it spends and where, and in certain cases, how much it pays its top people. The IRS can just send one inspector to audit the books to make sure things are in order, instead of the whole world knowing. And the IRS does do that.