Solicitation of Federal Civilian and Uniformed Service Personnel for Contributions to Private Voluntary Organizations-Charity Recoding, 76709-76710 [E6-21904]

Agencies

• Office of Personnel Management
• Personnel Management Office

[Federal Register Volume 71, Number 245 (Thursday, December 21, 2006)]
[Notices]
[Pages 76709-76710]
From the Federal Register Online via the Government Printing 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 cfc@opm.gov.

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

[[Page 76710]]

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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