Professor Dana Brakman Reiser Discusses New Book 'Advanced Introduction to Nonprofit Law'

Professor Dana Brakman Reiser, the Law School's Centennial Professor of Law, whose areas of expertise include corporate law, nonprofit organizations, and social enterprise, has released a new book, Advanced Introduction to Nonprofit Law (Edward Elgar Publishing, 2026).

The book provides a concise overview of nonprofit law in the United States, with reference to international approaches, examining how legal frameworks regulate nonprofit entities and the ongoing challenges they face. Brakman Reiser explores how nonprofit law structures the organization of charities and their activities, while also empowering and restricting their leaders.

Her two previous books, For-Profit Philanthropy: Elite Power and the Threat of Limited Liability Companies, Donor-Advised Funds, and Strategic Corporate Giving (2023) and Social Enterprise Law: Trust, Public Benefit and Capital Markets (2017) were both co-written with Professor Steven A. Dean (Boston University School of Law) and published by Oxford University Press.

Brakman Reiser hopes that her latest book can serve as a guide for educators, students, and those in the nonprofit sector alike.

In the Q&A that follows, she explains what readers can expect.

How did you first become interested in teaching and writing about nonprofit law?

It’s hard to remember a time when I was not interested in nonprofit organizations. I grew up volunteering in my local community and wrote my college honors thesis on the charitable tax deduction. When I discovered the legal quandaries facing nonprofits in a Nonprofit Law class during law school, I was hooked. It was the first time the course had ever been offered at my law school, and I knew I wanted to introduce a similar course in any law school where I ended up teaching.

Tell us about your new book. What was the inspiration behind it?  

I actually designed the book to use in teaching. After teaching my nonprofit law class here at Brooklyn Law School for 20-plus years, using materials that others had developed, I was approached about writing my own book. I thought it would be a great opportunity to design the materials that would allow me to teach the class in the way I believed would be most productive for students. I actually taught in the spring of 2025 using the draft manuscript, and I got feedback from Brooklyn Law School students. So they are part of the process – thank you! And I'm looking forward to using the published version in my class this coming spring.

Have your students discussed how this resonates in the area of law they’d like to go into, and how what they’ve learned in this class may apply after graduation?

Students usually take my nonprofit law class because they see themselves working with nonprofits in the future. Some will have full-time roles advising nonprofit organizations, but others anticipate serving as board members, occasional advisors, or active volunteers who might be asked to share their legal knowledge. A text like Advanced Introduction to Nonprofit Law provides a clear explanation of the many intersecting legal rules that apply to nonprofits, for whom corporate or trust law, tax law, and constitutional law may all play a role in a single decision. Clarifying the doctrine left us room to probe deeply the policy questions that remain and to look at real organizations facing hard questions the doctrine also does not answer.

Beyond your students, who is the book’s target audience? 

It was designed to be used not only in law schools, but also in schools of business and schools of public policy, where courses are taught on nonprofit management and nonprofit law. This is another reason it's not a traditional casebook. It explains how nonprofit law works. It describes some of the leading cases. It explores a lot of practice issues that arise. It addresses current policy debates, and then it leaves a lot of room for students to connect, debate, and bring in their own experience when used as a teaching tool. I also hope it will be used as a reference by scholars and practitioners.

What are some of the main takeaways of the book?  

I hope people will take away that nonprofit law really is a coherent legal topic. Many people see it as a bit of a hodgepodge – that it is some tax law, and maybe there's something about the organizational forms involved, or maybe there's something about public policy or freedom of association, but it really does hang together. It has important concepts that track across those different ways that nonprofit organizations are regulated. Nonprofits are a hugely important part of our economy and our society. They do incredibly valuable work, and I think that the way they are regulated deserves respect because they are not just entities we benefit from, but they are key to the way we constitute our society. So, that's what I'm hoping people will see when they look at the book as a whole.