April 26, 2011; Source: Reuters | In what must be a very welcome move, New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman announced on Tuesday that he will look at the possibility of ending the practice of redundant audits and other onerous requirements visited on charities in that state.

Schneiderman acknowledged that if an organization had contracts from six different state agencies they might now be subject to six different audits – a waste of resources on both sides. Additionally, in New York, nonprofits with budgets above $250,000 are required to get their own audits while in other states the threshold is as high as $2 million.

Said Schneiderman, “We can be as tough or tougher on policing fraud without imposing unnecessary burdens . . . in hard economic times, we can’t afford to force (charities) to spend 15 or 20 percent of their resources on compliance costs.” Schneiderman intends to convene a working group made up of representatives from nonprofit, government, and labor to recommend reforms.—Ruth McCambridge