Maura Whelan is Senior Counsel at Simpson Thacher & Bartlett LLP where she practices in the Exempt Organizations Practice. Maura provides clients-—consisting of all types of tax-exempt organizations, as well as their governing boards and donors—comprehensive and specialized advice honed from years of practical experience working with exempt organizations. While her work primarily focuses on representing exempt organizations, Maura also has extensive experience representing other types of clients in their philanthropic endeavors and interactions with exempt organizations, including high net worth individuals, family offices, major corporations, and novel philanthropic structures, such as limited liability companies. Maura advises private foundations, public charities, social welfare organizations, and trade associations on a wide variety of structural and operational issues, including formation, governance, succession planning, and ongoing compliance with the tax rules applicable to tax-exempt organizations. Maura has significant experience working with grantmaking organizations – including private foundations, sponsoring organizations of donor advised funds, “American friends of” organizations and social welfare organizations – to structure and implement complex domestic and international grantmaking programs. Maura counsels both individual and corporate donors in philanthropic planning and structuring, including related to gifts of art and other complex assets. Maura represents charitable and social welfare organizations in connection with social impact and mission- and program-related investments. In addition, Maura represents endowed universities, foundations, hospitals, cultural institutions and other institutional investors, including family offices, in the review and negotiation of documentation relating to alternative investments.
Maura is recognized as a thought leader and is regularly featured as a speaker and writer at symposia, conferences, and convening’s of exempt organizations and their advisors. Maura has presented at the New York City Bar Association, American Bar Association Section of Taxation Exempt Organizations Committee, Georgetown University Law Center’s Representing and Managing Tax-Exempt Organizations Conference, University of Texas School of Law’s Nonprofit Organizations Institute and Appraisers Association of America Art Law Day, and at programs sponsored by the TEGE Exempt Organizations Council, New York State Council on the Arts, Volunteer Lawyers for the Arts and New York Lawyers for the Public Interest, among others.
Maura is a member of the American Bar Association Section of Taxation’s Exempt Organizations Committee and previously served as Secretary of that Committee. The Committee is considered the nation’s leading exempt organizations practitioners group. Maura also is a member of the New York City Bar Association Non-Profit Organizations Committee.
Maura earned her J.D. from Harvard Law School, where she graduated cum laude. She earned her A.B. from Georgetown University, where she graduated magna cum laude and was elected to Phi Beta Kappa.