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Jennifer L. Franklin
 

Jennifer L. Franklin

Senior Counsel
 
425 Lexington Avenue
New York, NY 10017 

Jennifer Franklin is Senior Counsel in the Firm’s Exempt Organizations Practice. She advises a variety of international and domestic exempt organizations, including both private foundations and public charities, and has worked on transactional and tax matters, including the merger or dissolution of non-profit corporations. The Legal 500 calls her a “key contact for corporate transactions in the space.” Jennifer has significant experience in the areas of charitable gift-planning, where she works with donor-advised fund, private operating foundation and supporting organization structures and she also structures endowment fund gifts. Jennifer’s experience also includes art law, where she advises artist foundations on governance and tax issues and individual and foundation donors on charitable gifts of works of art. Jennifer has been recognized as a “Rising Star” by The Legal 500 United States (2022-2023).

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Work Highlights
  • Structured, negotiated and documented a promised gift of Cubist art, together with a monetary gift to fund a new research center devoted to Modern art, to a New York museum.
  • Represented a private operating foundation since its formation in 1999, including with respect to gifts of approximately $175 million to support a New York museum’s endowment and gifts of art totaling over $250 million to the same New York museum.
  • Incorporated and advised a new company foundation formed to address harmful drinking through evidence-based scientific interventions, including with respect to governance, tax, contract, employment and data protection matters.
  • Represented a foundation having over $1 billion in assets in its conversion from a New York charitable trust to a New York not-for-profit corporation.
  • Represented a public charity in connection with a multi-year, complex IRS audit involving potential excess benefit transactions, including related to executive compensation. 
  • Represented a public charity having a large membership in connection with member-initiated litigation involving interpretation of the charity’s governing documents.
  • Represented a donor in connection with the largest gift (as of 2022) made to Hunter College of the City of New York to endow a community care nurse practitioner program to provide financial support to nurse practitioner students committed to practicing in New York City’s under-resourced communities, as well as a similar gift made by the same donor to the University of Pennsylvania.
  • Represented a family of donors in connection with a $200 million “legacy gift” to accelerate the discovery and development of drugs to prevent and treat a specific disease.
  • Incorporated and provided tax and corporate governance advice to a new private operating foundation that will operate an artist residency program.
Education
  • Duke University School of Law, 1998 J.D.
    With High Honors; Duke Journal of Comparative & International Law, 1996–1998
  • Georgetown University, 1993 B.S.
    magna cum laude
Associations
  • American Bar Association, Member, Exempt Organizations Committee
  • American Bar Association Section of Taxation, Former Secretary of the Exempt Organizations Committee
  • Duke University School of Law Young Alumni Award 2008
Admissions
  • New York 1999

Jennifer is Senior Counsel at Simpson Thacher & Bartlett LLP where she practices in the Exempt Organizations Practice. She advises a variety of international and domestic exempt organizations, including both private foundations and public charities, and has worked on transactional and tax matters, including the merger or dissolution of non-profit corporations. The Legal 500 calls her a “key contact for corporate transactions in the space.” Jennifer has significant experience in the areas of charitable gift-planning, where she works with donor-advised fund, private operating foundation and supporting organization structures and she also structures endowment fund gifts. Jennifer’s experience also includes art law, where she advises artist and collector foundations on governance and tax issues and individual and foundation donors on charitable gifts of works of art.

Jennifer has been recognized as a “Rising Star” by The Legal 500 United States for Not-For-Profit (Nonprofit and Tax Exempt Organizations) (2022-2023). Her professional associations include membership with the ABA Section of Taxation’s Exempt Organizations Committee, where she currently serves as the Co-Chair of its Subcommittee on Small Tax-Exempt Organizations. Jennifer was named a John S. Nolan Fellow of the ABA Section of Taxation for 2002-2003 and served as the Secretary of the ABA Section of Taxation’s Exempt Organizations Committee from 2001-2003. 

Jennifer has also been a speaker on several panels at meetings of the ABA Section of Taxation’s Exempt Organizations Committee, discussing topics such as revisions to IRS Form 1023, Application for Recognition of Tax Exemption, the applicability of Circular 230 to exempt-organization practitioners, practical charitable-giving solutions involving the use of donor advised funds and the structuring of art gifts. Jennifer has spoken on a variety of exempt-organization topics at the New York City Bar Association, the New York Regional Association of Grantmakers, the AICPA’s National Not-for-Profit Industry Conference, the Western Conference on Tax-Exempt Organizations, the Georgetown Law Conference on Representing and Managing Tax-Exempt Organizations, the University of Texas School of Law Nonprofit Organizations Compliance and Internal Review Workshop, the American Legal Institute’s Legal Issues in Museum Administration Conference and at programs sponsored by New York Lawyers for the Public Interest and Legal Aid Society of New York.

Jennifer co-authored an article with David Shevlin entitled “Heading Into the Year-End: Issues for Donors and Charities to Consider When Making and Accepting Gifts of Restricted Stock,” published in the February 2002 edition of The Exempt Organization Tax Review. Jennifer also published an article entitled “Final Regulations Provide Guidance on the Treatment of Corporate Sponsorship Payments" in the July/August 2002 edition of Taxation of Exempts and wrote the “Letter Ruling Alert” in the July 2002 edition of The Exempt Organization Tax Review. Jennifer also published an article entitled “Using a Donor Advised Fund for Charitable Giving” in the April 2012 edition of the Orange County Lawyer.

Jennifer currently serves on the Board of Directors and as the Secretary of Good+ Foundation, a charity dedicated to dismantling multi-generational poverty by pairing tangible goods with innovative services for low-income fathers, mothers and caregivers, and on the Advisory Council of the New York Landmarks Conservancy.

Jennifer earned her J.D. at Duke University, where she graduated With High Honors, and earned her B.S. degree from Georgetown University, where she graduated magna cum laude

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