Nonprofit Practitioners Chat Back: An Exploratory Content Analysis of Participant Responses to the National Council of Nonprofit’s Webinar on the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act

As the first major overhaul of the United States’ tax code in a generation, the passage of the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017 has particular significance for the operation of US nonprofit organizations. Provisions of the Tax Act, including raising the ceiling on individual standard deductions, imposing excise taxes on highly compensated nonprofit employees, repealing the individual mandate of the Affordable Care Act, etc., are causing great uncertainty and consternation within organizations of, and bridging, the nonprofit sector. In response to some of the initial confusion, the National Council of Nonprofits offered a webinar, entitled, “Now What: How the New Federal Tax Law Impacts Charitable Nonprofits” on January 11, 2018. A one-hour slide-show with voice-overs was complemented by a running “chat” of nonprofit listeners/participants. This exploratory study undertakes a content analysis of the one-hour nonprofit participant chat that accompanied the webinar in order to take a pulse of the concerns of the practitioners as the potential impact of the law was explicated.