Transparency and trade secrets, though alliterative, are not necessarily two things that go together. Andrew Masak of Seyfarth Shaw highlights how nonprofits have to protect both, and how doing so creates tension for organizations purporting to work in the best interests of others.
Masak draws on the recent situation in which ProPublica, through New York’s Freedom of Information Law, asked the American Red Cross how it spent donation money in the wake of Hurricane Sandy. The nonprofit requested it be exempt because of the “proprietary and confidential” information it would need to disclose about operational procedures and fundraising methodology, he says. The New York attorney general agreed, recognizing that the organization’s business strategies could be jeopardized if disclosed.
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