Treasury Department releases new anti-terrorist financing guidelines for charities.

Nonprofit and Church Legal Trends - Free Edition - January February 2007 (free edition)

The Treasury Department has recently released a newly amended version of the 2002 “Anti-Terrorist Financing Guidelines: Voluntary Best Practices for U.S.-Based Charities”. The Guidelines are divided into five main sections, with the fifth and final section specifically addressing anti-terrorist financing best practices. A brief overview of the voluntary but advisable guidelines includes the following advice:

1. The charity should collect basic information about grantees, including the grantees’ name in English and any other pertinent languages, the grantee’s jurisdiction, all available contact information, and other information about the grantee’s individual character, business goals, and associating organizations.
2. The charity should conduct a basic inquiry of grantees through publicly available terrorist and sanctioned groups lists. The most important of these lists is the Terrorist Exclusion List (TEL), available on the State Department’s website.
3. The charity should conduct a basic vetting of its own employees in the same manner.