Todos Modos

The unwritten rules keeping nonprofit leaders quiet, and why most of them are myths.

Somewhere along the way, many of us who lead nonprofit organizations inherited a set of rules that, as far as I know, no one ever actually wrote down. Stay away from policy work, especially on-the-ground kind, where you create space for politicians or political candidates to talk about real issues with the community. Don’t talk about legislation, because that’s lobbying. I heard that one more than once. If it touches an election in any way, don’t touch it at all. And whatever you do, keep your personal opinions about candidates to yourself, because apparently your organization’s tax status follows you home at night. We were told, or we assumed, that this was the price of our 501(c)(3) status, and that leaders who wanted to shape policy needed a (c)(4) and a different job title.

I want to name that clearly: most of that is myth.

It reminds me of the moment a few years back when LeBron James spoke up about issues facing his community and a national television host told him to “shut up and dribble.” He kept speaking, because he understood that the platform basketball gave him carried a responsibility beyond the court. Nonprofit leaders hear our own quieter version of that line all the time. Stay in your lane. Stick to programs. Shut up and serve. The message is the same, and so is the answer.

The law prohibits one thing absolutely: supporting or opposing candidates for public office. A charitable nonprofit cannot endorse, cannot campaign, cannot tell people who to vote for. That line is real, it is bright, and we should respect it. But everything on the other side of that line is far more open than most of us were led to believe. Nonprofits can educate the public about issues. We can share research and data with lawmakers. We can invite elected officials to see our work. We can take positions on ballot measures. We can even lobby on specific legislation, within limits the IRS spells out plainly. And we can host nonpartisan candidate forums, so long as all candidates are invited, the questions are fair, and no one on our side of the microphone signals a preference. And here is the part that surprises people most: that prohibition applies to organizations, not to the people who work in them. On our own time, with our own resources, and without our organization’s name attached, we keep every right we hold as citizens. A nonprofit leader can knock doors for a neighbor running for school board on a Saturday and walk back into a strictly nonpartisan organization on Monday. The tax code never asked us to give up our own voice. It asked us not to lend it the organization’s.

This is not a loophole or a gray area. Congress and the IRS have both recognized advocacy and even limited lobbying as legitimate activities for charitable organizations. The gray area exists mostly in our own heads, and the data shows how much it costs us. Independent Sector found that only about a third of nonprofits know which advocacy activities they can legally do, down from more than half in 2000. When knowledge drops, participation drops with it.

“The people closest to the problems go quiet in the rooms where solutions get decided.”

I think about this often in our work at KConnect. We track outcomes for children and families across an entire county, from prenatal care to career. Every one of those outcomes is shaped by policy: how child care is funded, how schools are supported, how housing gets built. If the organizations holding that knowledge remain silent due to a misunderstanding of tax law, our communities lose twice. They lose the outcome and the voice that could have changed it.

That is why we created a Shared Policy Agenda and a Policy and Advocacy Toolkit at KConnect. Not to push anyone toward a party or a candidate, but to give nonprofit and community leaders the confidence to use the full range of what the law already allows. And I have started to see that confidence ripple outward. More organizations are bringing candidates into a room with the community, asking fair questions and inviting every candidate, so that neighbors can listen and make up their own minds. No endorsements. No agenda beyond an informed community. That is civic education at its best, and it is exactly the kind of thing a 501(c)(3) is built to do.

If you lead in this space and want to check my homework, please do. Here is where I would start:

• The IRS itself. Its guidance on political campaign intervention states directly that nonpartisan voter education, including public forums, is permitted. Revenue Ruling 2007-41 describes how to run a candidate forum properly.
• Bolder Advocacy (a program of Alliance for Justice). Their “Rules of the Game” guide and election checklists are the plain-language standard for this work, and they offer free technical assistance.
• National Council of Nonprofits. Clear explanations of the difference between advocacy, lobbying, and prohibited campaign activity.
• Nonprofit VOTE. Practical how-to resources on candidate forums and nonpartisan voter engagement.
• Independent Sector. The research on how much the sector’s confusion has cost us in participation.

None of this replaces a conversation with your own counsel, and every organization should also know its state’s lobbying registration rules. But do not let an unwritten rule keep you from doing the work your community needs you to do. We were never asked to be silent. We were asked to be nonpartisan. Those are very different things, and the difference is where our leadership lives. However we get there, de todos modos, our communities deserve leaders who know the full reach of their own voice.

The views expressed here are my own, which, as we’ve established, is perfectly legal.

Salvador López is the founder of Todos Modos, where he writes about systems change, community leadership, and social narrative. He is President & CEO of a systems “think and do” tank, a Harvard EdRedesign Cradle-to-Career Fellow, and Chair of the Grand Rapids Community College Board of Trustees. He lives in Grand Rapids, Michigan, with his wife and three children.