Anita S. Lichtblau provides comprehensive legal advice to a wide variety of nonprofits and tax exempt organizations and businesses and individuals involved in nonprofit matters. Anita advises on issues including:
Nonprofit Corporations, Charitable Trusts, Tax Exemption, and Governance
- Forming new nonprofit organizations and trusts and related entities of existing organizations
- Seeking AG and court approval of changes in use or transfer of charitable assets
- Obtaining and maintaining tax-exempt status
- Donor Advised Funds
- Drafting and updating bylaws and governance policies
- Complying with fundraising and charitable organization rules and reporting requirements, including IRS Forms 990 and 990-PF and Massachusetts Form PC
- Roles and responsibilities of effective nonprofit boards
- Lobbying and political activity rules
- Unrelated Business Income issues
- Corporate restructuring, including mergers, acquisitions, and other affiliations
- Dissolution
- Grantmaking rules and other requirements applicable to private foundations
- Property tax exemptions
- Vendor contract drafting and review
Grants and Contracts; Licensing
Contracts and grants with, and monitoring and audits by, federal, state, and local government agencies and private foundations
- Creating and reviewing subcontracts for government-funded organizations
- Compliance with federal and state grant program rules, such as Head Start and the Community Services Block Grant Act (CSBG)
- Compliance with general federal and state grant and contract rules, such as the federal Office of Management and Budget (OMB) guidance on administrative grant requirements and cost principles and the Massachusetts human services procurement and contracting rules
- Early education and care licensing
Employment
Employment matters, including internal investigations, discrimination, leave, and wage and hour issues
- Review of personnel policies
Anita served for fifteen years as both the General Counsel for Action for Boston Community Development (ABCD), a large nonprofit human services organization and Community Action Agency (CAA) that provides Head Start and other services to low-income people, and Executive Director of Community Action Program Legal Services (CAPLAW), a nonprofit providing legal training and technical assistance to the approximately 1000 CAAs across the country. In those positions, she advised, provided training, and wrote numerous articles and publications on many issues including those described above. She presented hundreds of in-person workshops and webinars across the national Community Action network.
Prior to holding those positions, she was a senior trial attorney with the United States Department of Justice handling white collar criminal cases in federal courts in New England and practiced with the Boston firm Hill & Barlow and the Washington D.C. firm Steptoe & Johnson.
Former Co-Chair of the Boston Bar Association Tax-Exempt Organizations Section and Current Co-Chair of its Chapter 180 Working Group
Admissions
Massachusetts
Education
Anita graduated from Cornell University and Harvard Law School.
