Online Courses

This course requires significant amounts of reading per week along with weekly research projects.  Students who do not spend the necessary time to complete all assignments should consider whether they should be in this course.

This is a course designed to consider the legal and regulatory environment of religious nonprofit management. This course is somewhat unique in that most courses of this nature either narrowly track the lifecycle of a nonprofit (creation, process and dissolution) but leave out all other legal aspects or they solely focus on employment law and related risk management/HR legal concerns.  This course is an attempt to merge both types of courses so that students may successfully issue spot key legal concerns for religious nonprofits they may serve.

The following learning objectives will be achieved by this course:

1. Make ethical business decisions through a proper understanding of the legal environment of nonprofit operation.
2. Issue spot major concerns in employment law and employment discrimination issues.
3. Demonstrate a working knowledge of the key tort concerns facing religious nonprofits.
4. Understand the problem of child abuse in our communities of faith.  Be able to articulate best practices of child abuse prevention and be able to provide guidance to a nonprofit in developing policies and procedures to as best as possible ensure the safety of minors and others at risk.
5. Display a basic understanding of charitable giving and fundraising laws, regulations and limitations.
6. Articulate how a nonprofit is formed and acquires and maintains a tax-exempt status.
7. Demonstrate knowledge of the role and liabilities of directors, officers, volunteers and employees in a nonprofit corporation.
8. Articulate an understanding of how the law of the land interfaces with the operation of a religious nonprofit in order to create Christian business leaders capable of influencing the business and nonprofit community
9. Articulate the current cultural and legal landscape of U.S. Constitutional religious freedom rights.

There are no prerequisites for this course.