LAWINRC Director, 2007-2018
Richard Koontz was director of the Larned A. Waterman Iowa Nonprofit Resource Center from 2000 until his retirement in 2018. He received his undergraduate degree from Hampshire College in Amherst, Massachusetts and attended graduate school at Northeastern University in Boston. After graduating from the New England School of Law, Richard practiced in Boston at the Massachusetts Department of Revenue then later joined the law firm of Goodwin, Proctor and Hoar where he did estate planning. He was general counsel for Chicago's Field Museum of Natural History from 1991 to 1996 where he dealt with issues involving Native American collections, human remains, environmental collections, public safety, and tax exemption. From 1997 to 2016 he was an adjunct professor at The University Of Iowa College Of Law where he taught Nonprofit Organizational Effectiveness and Cultural Property Law.
Richard worked to help Iowa nonprofits understand the legal and operational issues they face in performing essential community services. He played a significant role in drafting and editing the Iowa Principles and Practices for Charitable Nonprofit Excellence and traveled around the state to conduct training sessions about these self-regulatory guidelines.
