October 28, 2012 | Read Time: 4 minutes
Lack of understanding about lobbying rules is a key reason nonprofits don’t succeed in influencing public policy, says Pat Libby in a new book she edited, The Lobbying Strategy Handbook: 10 Steps to Advancing Any Cause Effectively. In an interview, Ms. Libby, founder and director of the Institute for Nonprofit Education and Research at the University of San Diego and a lobbyist for charities, discusses the basics.
Why are nonprofits so reluctant to lobby?
Scholars and others suggest that as nonprofits become service providers for government and depend on government, they’re afraid to bite the hand that feeds them.
Only 2 percent of nonprofits engage in lobbying, and most of them to a very limited degree. Nonprofits don’t understand what their legal rights are. I’m getting a lot of calls right now from nonprofits in California asking, “Am I allowed to endorse a ballot question?”
You can endorse a ballot question, you can blog about it, you can tell your members about it—there are all kinds of things nonprofits can do.
Most of us fell asleep during high-school civics. We’re really embarrassed to admit that we don’t understand how the system works.
What other misunderstandings exist about lobbying?
The biggest misperception is that nonprofits think if they get any money from the government, they’re prohibited from lobbying. That’s not true. You can’t use government money to lobby the government, but you can use membership dues, donations, and operating grants for lobbying.
Under the Section 501(h) election, which is a one-line form that nonprofits can fill out, it gives them enormous latitude on the amount of money and time they can spend lobbying. It simplifies the laws and regulations.
All 501(c)(3)s are automatically granted lobbying status using the “substantial part test,” which means that if they don’t spend a substantial amount of resources lobbying, they can lobby. What the IRS doesn’t say is that it has to be 2 or 3 percent of their time and money.
Under that test, all the time that your volunteers and your board members spend lobbying counts and has to be reported on your 990. Whereas if you take the time to fill out the very simple 501(h) form, all that volunteer time or the time you spend doing nonpartisan research does not have to be reported.
Are the words advocacy and lobbying used interchangeably?
They are. Nonprofit leaders come up to me and say, We advocate and we educate, but we don’t lobby. Then they wink at me, like they’re sharing a trade secret, and I ask, “Why not? It’s perfectly legal for you to lobby.”
Advocacy is the broader umbrella in what you do to try to influence an issue or public opinion. An example I use is Mothers Against Drunk Driving. They didn’t have to pass a law to get the term “designated driver” to become commonly used and, more important, get activities to have a designated driver be something we all do now—that’s advocacy. What they also did was lobby to change the blood-alcohol limit in every state.
What can nonprofits do during this election year?
They’re fearful, unnecessarily, that the IRS is more likely to audit them if they file the 501(h) designation. Everyone knows that nonprofits are not allowed to endorse candidates; what most organizations don’t know is that they can still do things like host a candidates’ debate or send out questionnaires to all the candidates running in their district. They can invite candidates, as long as they invite all of them, to their organizations.
People don’t realize how much change they can create and how effective it can be to do a few simple things, primarily by establishing relationships with elected officials. If you host a debate and you open it up to the community and you have 400 people there, what those candidates are seeing is an organization that represents 400 voters, and that positions your organization to have tremendous influence.
The California Association of Nonprofits has a new campaign called “Vote With Your Mission.” The idea is to get every board and staff member of nonprofit organizations to commit to voting in every election.
Sometimes people think of lobbying as only going to talk with public officials or their proxies, but we’re also lobbying at times when we go directly to the public. When nonprofits promote a ballot question, they’re lobbying.
What lobbying advice do you have for nonprofits?
You don’t need money to be a successful lobbyist. You don’t have to know the ins and outs of the legislative process to pass a law. You just have to be passionate about your issue, be sure it’s well researched, and present it professionally, and then you’ll have success. The legislators are there, no matter what level, to serve you and are very, very eager to do so.
