[Federal Register Volume 71, Number 245 (Thursday, December 21, 2006)]
[Notices]
[Pages 76709-76710]
From the Federal Register Online via the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
[FR Doc No: E6-21904]
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OFFICE OF PERSONNEL MANAGEMENT
Solicitation of Federal Civilian and Uniformed Service Personnel
for Contributions to Private Voluntary Organizations--Charity Recoding
AGENCY: Office of Personnel Management (OPM).
ACTION: Notice.
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SUMMARY: The Office of Personnel Management (OPM) is assigning new,
unique code numbers to charitable organizations that participate in the
Combined Federal Campaign (CFC). The number of participating charitable
organizations is increasing and will soon exceed the number of codes
available under the current CFC coding procedure. In addition, the
assignment of new, unique code numbers will allow OPM to improve the
efficiency and effectiveness of the CFC by assisting in future
promotion of the use of electronic giving technology and future
revision to geographic restrictions to donor giving.
DATES: The Office of Personnel Management's Office of the CFC
Operations (OCFCO) will issue new code numbers to charities and provide
them to local campaigns and charities no later than March 30, 2007.
FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT: Mark W. Lambert, Senior Compliance
Officer for the Office of CFC Operations, by telephone at (202) 606-
2564; by fax at (202) 606-0902; or by e-mail at [email protected].
SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION: Currently, the CFC coding procedure is based
on a four-digit number. Charitable organizations that are approved to
participate in the CFC as national or international organizations are
assigned a four-digit code by OPM. Local CFCs assign a four-digit code
to organizations approved to participate in that local CFC. OPM informs
local CFCs of which four-digit codes were not used for national and
international organizations and that are, therefore, available for
local use. There are approximately 2,000 participating national and
international organizations and an estimated additional 20,000 local
organizations. With a four-digit coding procedure, there are only 9,999
available codes. Charitable organizations in different
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local CFCs often have identical codes because of the independent
assignment process and the limits of the current four-digit code
structure. At the same time, OPM has reclaimed all or part of a code
series in the past several years to accommodate the ever-expanding list
of national/ international federations. Consequently, redundant code
assignments can lead to the misdirection of donor funds, as donor
choices in giving currently remain limited to the national/
international list and to local charities located within the employee's
designated duty station campaign.
In recently issued CFC regulations, set forth at 5 CFR Part 950,
the OPM Director has the authority, upon implementation of appropriate
electronic technology, to remove the restriction that limits donors to
contributing only to local charities within their geographic campaign
area, based on their official duty station. A first step in
implementing electronic technology that would allow donors to
contribute to local organizations in other campaign areas is to make
sure that each organization has its own unique code. Being able to
identify all participating charitable organizations by a unique code
will also allow OPM to better monitor compliance with CFC eligibility
standards and sanctions compliance requirements. In order to be
eligible to participate in the CFC, each charitable organization must
be determined to be a tax-exempt public charity under section 501(c)(3)
of the Internal Revenue Code. In order to demonstrate compliance with
this eligibility standard, each charitable organization must provide a
copy of its IRS determination letter. However, many of the IRS
determination letters provided by charitable organizations are dated at
the time of the initial IRS determination. That determination could
have been made many years prior to the current CFC to which the
charitable organization is applying for participation. To ensure that
each charitable organization meets the 501(c)(3) eligibility standard,
OPM will compare the applicant organization against an IRS database to
determine that the charitable organization is still recognized as a
501(c)(3) tax-exempt public charity by the IRS. The newly assigned
unique codes will assist OPM in identifying each charitable
organization against the IRS database. In addition, OPM requires each
charitable organization participating in the CFC to complete a
certification that it is in compliance with all statutes, Executive
orders, and regulations restricting or prohibiting U.S. persons from
engaging in transactions and dealings with countries, entities or
individuals subject to economic sanctions administered by the U.S.
Department of the Treasury's Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC).
Currently, OPM checks each participating national and international
organization against the OFAC list of sanctioned organizations and
requests local campaigns to do the same. The newly assigned unique
codes will assist OPM in performing this check against the OFAC list
for all national, international, and local, organizations participating
in the CFC and relieve a burden from the local campaigns.
U.S. Office of Personnel Management.
Linda M. Springer,
Director.
[FR Doc. E6-21904 Filed 12-20-06; 8:45 am]
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