Edward T. Chaney

Member

PRACTICE AREAS
Tax-Exempt Organizations | Trusts and Estates

Ed Chaney focuses his practice on advising a broad range of nonprofit organizations on key tax and corporate matters, including organization formation and governance, 501(c)(3) tax exemption and ongoing compliance, charitable giving, program-related and impact investing, and complex organizational structures, transactions, and transitions.

Mr. Chaney has extensive experience in advising philanthropic organizations on operational and tax compliance matters, including donor advised fund operations, private foundation grant making, and program-related investments. He also advises on the tax requirements for supporting organizations, the structuring of substantial charitable gifts, and the governance of endowment funds. He has counseled philanthropic clients of many sizes and forms, including community foundations, small and large private foundations, national donor advised fund sponsors, and university-related foundations.

Mr. Chaney also regularly advises a wide variety of operating nonprofits on their governance, tax compliance, and transactional needs. Clients have included community economic development and affordable housing organizations, colleges and universities, charter school management organizations, public education and advocacy organizations, performing arts organizations, industry associations, and many more. A sampling of special matters he has managed include:

• Successfully contesting a proposed adverse determination by the IRS and obtaining tax exemption for a charter school management organization, which helped changed the IRS position on such entities;
• Serving as outside general counsel to an ongoing joint venture of the leading national organizations in neighborhood stabilization;
• Helping two of the nation’s premier nonprofit affordable housing organizations form a strategic alliance through a corporate and tax reorganization; and,
• Serving as 501(c)(3) tax-counsel to a public charity affordable housing organization in the development of a multi-tiered affordable housing investment structure that attracted more than $100 million in philanthropic and private social investment.

Mr. Chaney speaks, writes, and teaches frequently on the law of nonprofit and tax-exempt organizations. Among other engagements, he has presented at Georgetown University Law Center CLE’s Representing and Managing Tax-Exempt Organizations and at the University of Texas School of Law CLE’s Nonprofit Organizations Institute. He recently served as an Adjunct Assistant Professor at the UNC School of Law, where he taught the Law of Nonprofit Organizations.

Prior to attending law school, Mr. Chaney worked for ten years in the nonprofit sector, serving as a program director, executive director, board member, and board chair with a number of tax-exempt organizations.

Mr. Chaney lives with his wife, Mandy Hitchcock, and their children in Carrboro, and enjoys photography in his spare time.