August 31, 2010
By Ingrid Zacharias
I discovered an article in the Chronicle of Philanthropy today that I found very interesting. It spoke about how the Democrat Congressional Campaign Committee was accusing the Americans for Prosperity Foundation of going against the rules of their non-profit status by running ads against President Obama. You can read the article at http://philanthropy.com/blogPost/Democrats-Say-Conservative/26561/ . The article brought back memories for me of how hard I and colleagues of mine in the non-profit sector had to work at ensuring we not be seen as being political. So I developed some personal guides for myself that I felt made it easier for me to abide by the rules to ensure sustainability of the charitable status of the non-profit I worked for.
These are the rules I followed:
- No personal endorsements – Never personally endorse a candidate or say that your organization endorses a candidate. If you are the leader of an organization, even a personal endorsement can be seen as violating the charitable status rules.
- No working election campaigns – No matter how passionately you feel about a candidate, do not openly work for their election campaign. Some of my non-profit colleagues would work behind the scenes if they wanted to support a candidate. Some really committed ones, actually took a leave of absence during an election campaign if they really wanted to campaign for their candidate.
- No candidate’s signs on your property – Candidate campaign signs should never be on the property of a non-profit, and depending on how closely the leader is recognized as being synonymous with the organization, they should probably also not be on their personal property as well.
- No criticizing a politician individually – It’s a better idea that you focus your criticism on the policies of government and not on individual members. If you explain how those policies have impacted your organization or the people who are your clients in a negative way, you should not be seen as being political.
Question of the Day: What actions have you taken to appear apolitical while working in the non-profit sector?
