Navigating Political Advocacy: What Every Nonprofit Leader Needs to Know for 2024

Let’s consider the risk management implications of my last two blog posts (here and here). Clearly, your nonprofit should not risk its 501(c)(3) status to campaign for Kamala Harris or against Donald Trump. As a matter of solid risk management, however, you need to be informed and to make decisions about how this political cycle impacts your nonprofit and its beneficiaries and what you should do about it.

First, you owe it to your nonprofit to perform this analysis. Nonprofit CEOs, executive directors, and boards of directors have a fiduciary duty to act in your nonprofit’s best interest. If your nonprofit’s best interests implicate the political sphere, you need to understand what you can and cannot do. (As an aside, I think almost all nonprofits’ work implicates the political sphere.)

Second, as I noted in our last post, it is important for you to familiarize yourself with these rules for your own personal interests. Nonprofit leaders should not feel discouraged from exercising their political rights simply because their day job is working for a public charity.

Third, you owe it to your nonprofit’s beneficiaries to act consistently with the law and as zealously as you can on their behalf. As I mentioned earlier, this election has issues that would affect the interests of almost everyone who receives nonprofit services. While you cannot urge your beneficiaries how to vote, you can urge them to vote. As Justice Hugo Black famously put it in Wesberry v. Sanders, 376 U.S. 1 (1964), “No right is more precious in a free country than that of having a voice in the election of those who make the laws under which, as good citizens, we must live.” Emphasize this with your beneficiaries: they gain agency by participating in the system.

I take this last point one step further. If your nonprofit does not yet include advocacy on behalf of its beneficiaries and their full engagement with our society as part of its mission, I urge you to consider modifying your mission in this respect. Cause-related advocacy is an entirely permissible activity for a public charity. As noted by Thomas Raffa in Nonprofit Quarterly, “While it is true that a public charity under the Internal Revenue Code Section 501 c3 is not allowed to take part in a political campaign on behalf of any candidate for public office, there are no such restrictions on cause-related advocacy.” As he notes, cause-related advocacy might include the following:

• “Efforts to make an administrative agency of the government change its policies, rules or regulations, or to adopt new ones, are not considered lobbying.
• An exempt organization can target a political executive (e.g.: a mayor or governor) so long as they are not being asked to promote, discourage, or veto legislation.
• Your organization can develop a general policy position directed at issues as long as the issues have not been reduced to a specific legislative proposal.
• Testifying before a legislative committee on a matter for which the organization has received a written request from the committee to testify.”

As I noted previously, you can also run a non-partisan registration drive, and even voter educational material, “so long as,” Raffa explains, “such material: 1) States the position of all candidates without any evaluation of the candidates, 2) covers a broad range of issues without any particulate bias toward such matters, and/or 3) describes the candidates’ positions in ways that do not show bias on the issues or a preference.”

So please, think hard about your fiduciary duties to your organization. Think about your beneficiaries. Think about your own involvement. And please, get involved.

Risk Alternatives provides training and support for organizations that want to improve their resilience, sustainability, and growth. For more information, email info@riskalts.com or call 608-709-0793.

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