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The campaign against US nonprofits has been a long time coming. The worst of it is starting. Are you ready?

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a primitive figure, like a petroglyph, shots through a megaphone

Upon the election of Donald Trump to a second presidency, many nonprofits became wary about how they talk about their work, even their mission statement. Even before the election, many nonprofits rushed to remove any mention of the phrase diversity, equity and inclusion or DEI, or ANY of those words on their own, from their web sites. Now, as the Trump administration threatens to revoke tax-exempt status from nonprofits supporting racial justice efforts, it’s made it further difficult for many nonprofits to communicate at all about their work. This article from the Chronicle of Philanthropy focuses on specific nonprofits who are having to significantly alter their messaging – or put a pause on public communications altogether (note that you must register on the site to read it, but registraiton is free).

Make no mistake: in addition to trying to purge the nonprofit world of work regarding diversity, equity, inclusion, racial justice, economic justice and climate change, they are focusing on the use of the word empathy, and any work regarding such.

This is an issue I’ve been researching, talking about and training about long before the current presidency. Because this campaign against nonprofits has been a long time coming.

I first wrote about the political right’s desire to undermine the credibility and support for nonprofit organizations in 2011, in my blog Could your organization be deceived by GOTCHA media?, where I showed examples of how any cause can become politicized, and any organization can become a political target. My favorite example of this is the successful and horrifying elimination of the wonderful Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN), per right-wing misinformation via doctored videos.

I wrote about it again in Growing misconceptions about the role of nonprofits in the USA in 2018. I wrote about it AGAIN in Your nonprofit WILL be targeted with misinformation; prepare now at the start of 2025. And when I watched a nonprofit consultant on an online community advise nonprofits to not just soften their language but to bend the knee to the current administration, I wrote a strategy for myself, in my own work, and it became Your Nonprofit CAN Resist. Here’s how.

I hope your nonprofit won’t back off of its commitment to diversity, equity and inclusion. I hope your nonprofit won’t alter its mission statement. I do hope your nonprofit will:

  • Talk to your board of directors, staff and lead volunteers regularly, repeatedly, about why your nonprofit exists, why it does what it does, and why it has the values or commitments it does. Make sure they know how to talk about all of that from a place of confidence.

If this hasn’t been on a staff agenda or a board meeting agenda yet, then get it on there ASAP. If you had a meeting about it last year, you’re overdue to have one this year. Get busy.

Also see

Nonprofits: be honest with yourself, your staff & the public about how the November 2024 elections may affect you.

Governments cracking down on nonprofits & NGOs

Why I’m not outraged at the IRS from 2013.

Told ya. & I’m still telling you.

Your nonprofit WILL be targeted with misinformation; prepare now.

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a primitive figure, like a petroglyph, shots through a megaphone

Watching misinformation and disinformation related to the fires in Los Angeles spread exactly like wildfire has been a reminder of just how bad things are regarding public relations and truth. Instead of an army of newspapers, local radio stations and TV stations and other credible media ready to debunk it, the media landscape is as decimated as the actual landscape of the area, and lies about government funding and action, spread by the owner of the site formerly known as Twitter and other people with a political agenda. And no amount of fact-based debunking seems to matter.

As someone that’s studied misinformation and disinformation campaigns against governments and cause-based organizations since the 1990s, it’s been as horrifying to watch as people losing their homes. And as I’ve watched, I am reminded that nonprofits, no matter how small, no matter how beloved, need to be thinking about their strategy NOW for if and when they are targeted by misinformation. It doesn’t matter what your nonprofit’s mission or size: it can be a target for misinformation, on a local or even national level. And given the incoming Presidential administration, the power of misinformation should never be under-estimated.

I’ve used the example of the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN) before: it was a collection of community-based nonprofits and programs all over the USA that advocated for low- and moderate-income families and worked to address neighborhood safety, voter registration, health care, affordable housing and other social issues for low-income people. At its peak, ACORN had more than 1,200 neighborhood chapters in over 100 cities across the USA. But ACORN was targeted by conservative political activists who secretly recorded and released highly-edited videos of interactions with low-level ACORN personnel in several offices, portraying the staff as encouraging criminal behavior. Despite multiple investigations on the federal, state, and county level that found that the released tapes were selectively edited to portray ACORN as negatively as possible and that nothing in the videos warranted criminal charges, the organization was doomed: politicians pounced and the public relations fallout resulted in almost immediate loss of funding from government agencies and from private donors.

Public libraries are another good example of how misinformation campaigns can work: more books were challenged in public libraries and school libraries in 2024 than ever before, according to the American Library Association. The vast majority of that increase came from groups or individuals working on behalf of national efforts trying to censor dozens or hundreds of titles at a time, part of a push across the country by those supporting the incoming Presidential administration to ban certain books based on the unfounded claims that they are inappropriate for children, as well as to defund and close public libraries altogether.

Goodwill is a frequent target of misinformation regarding senior staff salaries – and from what I see on a local level, makes no effort to counter that misinformation, resulting in people choosing not to donate items to their thrift shops nor shop at such. Which is so sad, as Goodwill does amazing work regarding training people to enter or re-enter the workforce (which most people don’t know is their mission).

There are nonprofit theaters, including community theaters, that have mounted a production that has resulted in community protests and a loss of donors, and seemed utterly unprepared for the groundswell of controversy, a groundswell that’s often started by just one person spreading misinformation about the play, and the people protesting often haven’t actually read nor seen the play. But they are loud, organized and committed, and the theater is often left utterly unprepared for the negative attention.

I have an entire blog about how to train staff so that your organization doesn’t become a victim of GOTCHA media?, so I won’t repeat those tips here. But you need to have a plan for what to do when there is even a hint of misinformation starting about your organization.

Misinformation about nonprofits usually targets their budget, what they pay staff, how they have or haven’t helped someone, how they make their programming decisions, how they carry out their work and their plans for the future. Therefore:

  • Make sure your web site is up-to-date regarding all of the above.
  • Your social media needs to regularly updated the public about all of the above.
  • ALL staff, including volunteers, need to be regularly briefed (at least twice a year; once a quarter is better) on all of the above.
  • All staff, including volunteers, need to know what to do if they see or hear misinformation related to your organization.

Your entire staff, including volunteers, need to be on the lookout for misinformation: a post on an online community, a comment at a church meeting, a reference at a civic group, a comment from a new volunteer, even a comment at a family gathering. If they see it or hear it in a public setting, or from an elected official or community leader or influencer, they need to NOT respond themselves – they need to know who at your organization they need to tell (it’s probably the executive director, the communications manager or their immediate supervisor). If it wasn’t a public comment, there’s no need to say exactly who said it, but do say what was said.

When was the last time you told your entire staff what to do in case they see or hear misinformation? If you don’t have an answer, create a strategy NOW and meeting dates and times. If it was in the last six months or more, it’s overdue to do it again.

When you hear misinformation, the next step may not be to have a meeting next week to discuss what’s happening; it may be to start drafting responses IMMEDIATELY, to be shared online within hours, even minutes. Who is going to be involved in that? Just the Executive Director and communications person? The board president too? Do you have all the contact information you need for these people so this can happen quickly?

If you had a message that needed to spread quickly online, do you have that system ready to go: do you have a board member who will be in charge of calling all board members to tell them to share an urgent social media message? do you have a manager of volunteers or volunteer leaders who will be in charge of contacting certain volunteers to encourage them to share that urgent social media message? Do you have more than one person who knows how to update your web site, in case your communications manager is on vacation?

And here’s the reality: if you are just thinking about this for the first time, right now, as you read this blog, or if you haven’t done anything to prepare yet, then you are already behind schedule. Most of the recommendations above cannot be done quickly without many weeks, even months, of preparation and refreshers. This is an URGENT need your nonprofit needs to address now, no matter its focus.

One more thing: you need a photo of your executive director, and any other staff, with as many elected officials as possible: the mayor, at least one city council member, at least one county representative, your area’s state representative, your area’s state senator, your areas US Representative and, if possible, your US Senators. It makes it more difficult for an elected official to criticize an organization when there is a photo of that person smiling with your staff, particularly at one of your events. See more at Nonprofits: look at local election results & prepare to reach out.

July 2025 update: They matched on Tinder shortly after the November presidential election, shared their mutual disappointment about Donald J. Trump’s victory and agreed to meet for a drink. The date lasted an hour and the man said he barely thought about the date again. Then a video of him appeared on the website of Project Veritas, a right-wing group known for using covert recordings to embarrass political opponents. His date had posed as a politically liberal commercial real estate agent and recent transplant to the capital, but she was actually a Project Veritas operative with a hidden camera. Conservative media and Republicans used the date conversation as supposed evidence that the Biden administration had mishandled funds. (if the link doesn’t work, try this one)

Also see

How to handle online criticism.

Could your organization be deceived by GOTCHA media?

Growing misconceptions about the role of nonprofits in the USA.

Mission-Based Groups Need Use the Web to Show Accountability

Governments cracking down on nonprofits & NGOs.

If you have benefited from this blog or other parts of my web site and would like to support the time that went into researching information, developing material, preparing articles, updating pages, etc. (I receive no funding for this work), here is how you can help. 

Governments cracking down on nonprofits & NGOs

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Budapest, Hungary is one of my very favorite cities, and not just because I think it has the BEST FOOD IN THE WORLD. Budapest has what I consider the perfect mix of gorgeous history all around and vibrant new ideas from its young people. It feels unique and ancient while also feeling bold and progressive. It’s an energy that both preserves what’s best about a community or country (history, architecture, environment, the arts, etc.) and helps it prosper and move forward, particularly in times of great economic and cultural change.

It is with great sadness that I read about efforts by the Hungarian government to shut down the Aurora community centre.  “Now, the Aurora, which rents office space to a handful of NGOs — including LGBTQ and Roma support groups — says it has been pushed to the brink of closure by far-right attacks, police raids and municipality moves to buy the building… NGOs are routinely attacked through legal measures, criminal investigations and smear campaigns — something the Aurora told CNN it has experienced first-hand.”

“We wanted to create a safe environment for civil organizations,” said Adam Schonberger, director of Marom Budapest, the Jewish youth group that founded the community center in 2014. “By doing this we became a sort of enemy of the state. We didn’t set out to be a political organisation — but this is how we’ve found ourselves.” Schonberger didn’t think authorities had targeted Aurora because of its Jewish roots. Instead, he put the harassment down to the group’s values of “social inclusion, building civil society and fighting for human rights.”

Here’s Aurora on Facebook. And here is the Aurora’s web site.

I am very partial to these kind of non-governmental organizations (NGOs) – what we call nonprofits in the USA – that help cultivate grassroots efforts, encourage the sharing and exploration of ideas, and help incubate emerging movements and other NGOs. I believe these NGOs can play an important role in helping immigrants assimilate in a country as well and help the country benefit from the talents and ideas these immigrants may bring. I’ve had the pleasure of addressing groups like this in Eastern Europe, and in the USA in Lexington, Kentucky, and I’ve walked away feeling renewed and energized. Add in promotion and celebration of the arts, like Appalshop does in Eastern Kentucky, and I’m ready to pack up and move to a remote town in Eastern, Kentucky.

This NGO’s struggles are part of an ongoing shift all over Europe, and indeed, the world, in local and national governments that are rejecting diversity, changing times, dissent and intellectualism, and governing from a place of fear. I could think that I’m isolated from this trend here in the USA, where I’m living these days, but I am not. I remember back in the 1990s, when similar political groups went after arts organizations, even going so far as trying to defund the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) and the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) – I helped arrange for Christopher Reeve, a co-founder the Creative Coalition and then performing at a theater where I was working, to debate Pat Robertson about the NEA on CNN’s Crossfire on July 16, 1990, and the theaters where I worked back in those days all felt pressure regarding their artistic choices because of these movements. Those controversies are still here, as any search on Google and Bing shows.

Nonprofits in the USA need to watch carefully what’s happening in other countries and think about how such could happen here. Remember the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN)? It was a collection of community-based nonprofits and programs all over the USA that advocated for low- and moderate-income families. They worked to address neighborhood safety, voter registration, health care, affordable housing and other social issues for low-income people. At its peak, ACORN had more than 1,200 neighborhood chapters in over 100 cities across the USA. But ACORN was targeted by conservative political activists who secretly recorded and released highly-edited videos of interactions with low-level ACORN personnel in several offices, portraying the staff as encouraging criminal behavior. Despite multiple investigations on the federal, state, and county level that found that the released tapes were selectively edited to portray ACORN as negatively as possible and that nothing in the videos warranted criminal charges, the organization was doomed: politicians pounced and the public relations fallout resulted in almost immediate loss of funding from government agencies and from private donors.

There are growing misconceptions about the role of nonprofits in the USA and this could fuel local, state and national movements against nonprofit organizations – not just arts organizations. Nonprofits of every kind need to make sure they are inviting the public and local and state government officials regularly to see their work and WHY their work matters to the entire community, not just their target client/audience. Most nonprofit organizations need to do a much better job using the Web to show accountability. In short: don’t think it can’t happen here.

Also see:

Growing misconceptions about the role of nonprofits in the USA

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In addition to sitting in on various local government meetings in the small town where I live in Oregon, I’ve been volunteering with a local unit of my state’s League of Women Voters, registering voters and sitting in on numerous candidate debates. My goal in these activities, which I’ve said before, is to compare what I’ve seen and experienced abroad working in international aid and development with what happens locally in my own community in the USA.

In doing these activities, I’ve noticed a disturbing trend that greatly affects nonprofits in terms of how the public, the private sector and government think about them, and how the public, the private sector and government feel about their funding and support for such. There is a growing chorus of elected officials and their supporters who say variations of the following:

There are enough resources in our region, via nonprofits and communities of faith – charity – for anyone who is homeless, who has an addiction or has mental issues to get the help they need. All someone needs to do to get help is to contact those organizations. 

There was a time in the USA when poverty was successfully and completely addressed by charity, usually through churches, not by government. Charity used to help all the people that were poor, and we should go back to that way of addressing poverty. 

People who have addiction issues, mental issues, homelessness issues or any issues associated with poverty just aren’t working hard enough. They lack morals or willpower and they could stop their drug use or their slide into mental illness simply by choosing to, by really trying.

These statements are not true.

The truth:

Programs that serve the homeless, whether they provide temporary housing or more permanent housing, or even just serve food, are utterly overwhelmed all across the USA and do not have enough resources to help everyone that needs it. Their waiting lists for housing assistance are months, even a few years. And providing food and temporary shelter does not prevent homelessness nor reduce the number of people who are homeless.

Before the creation of Social Security, most people in the USA supported themselves into old age by working. The 1930 census found 58 percent of men over 65 still in the workforce; in contrast, by 2002, the figure was 18 percent. Children and other relatives bore the major cost of supporting the aged. The Great Depression swept this world away: many of the elderly could no longer find work and their family could not afford to support them anymore. To get by in that time, the elderly took to panhandling, moving into dingy, unsafe almshouses or poorhouses, many run by charities or churches, or simply dying impoverished, which was the fate that befell 1 in every 2 older Americans in the years after the 1929 stock market crash.

Homelessness and poverty can be triggered by a range of issues in the USA, including divorce, medical bills/bankruptcy, income vs. housing affordability, decline in public/government assistance and mental health issues. Simply getting a different, better-paying job usually isn’t an option for someone facing homelessness and poverty.

Addiction is a chronic disease that creates a compulsion or even a physical need to use drugs. Drugs, including alcohol, affect the brain’s “reward circuit,” causing euphoria as well as flooding the brain with the chemical messenger dopamine. A properly functioning reward system doesn’t result in addiction. Whether a person is born with a disfunctional reward system or if the disfunction results entirely from drug use continues to be debated and researched; most agree that a combination of genetic, environmental and developmental factors influences risk for addiction, and the more risk factors a person has, the greater the chance that taking drugs can lead to addiction. The initial decision to take drugs is voluntary for most people and often relates to a medical issue rather than recreation, but repeated use of drugs, including alcohol, can lead to brain changes that interfere with an addicted person’s ability to resist intense urges to continue to use. As with most other chronic diseases, such as diabetes, asthma, or heart disease, treatment for drug addiction generally isn’t a cure. Addiction is treatable,  however, like other chronic diseases, such as diabetes, asthma, or heart disease, treatment for drug addiction requires professional intervention and guidance – a person can’t address the issues entirely on their own.

So, that’s the truth. But how did the misinformation happen, and how does this misinformation affect nonprofits now?

The misinformation happened not only because of the political agendas of the people saying such; it also has happened because nonprofits have done a poor job of explicitly, frequently talking about the issues they are addressing and educating the public about those issues.

If anyone believes any of these myths, then any sense of urgency regarding homelessness, addiction or poverty vanishes for potential donors, whether individuals or corporate giving programs or foundations. In addition to these myths creating the idea that nonprofits, communities of faith and “charity” can address all the needs of anyone at risk for harm in a community, these myths also create the idea that poverty happens primarily because of bad personal choices: if you’re homeless, then you just have been lazy and not bothered to contact a nonprofit that could help you. If you are addicted to opioids, it’s because you lack willpower.

I’ve been looking at the web sites of various nonprofit organizations serving my communities and various others, and, for the most part, all I see are pleas for support, for donations. What I don’t see:

  • a list, with citations, as to what causes a man, a woman or an entire family to be homeless, with profiles of clients (actual names can be changed and photos can be taken in such as way as to hide the identity of clients)
  • what activities precede a person becoming addicted to a substance, particularly opioids, with profiles of clients (again, actual names can be changed and photos can be taken in such as way as to hide the identity of clients)
  • a list of exactly what donations to a nonprofit pay for (emphasizing why paid staff is needed, rather than relying solely on volunteers helping whenever they might have some time)
  • information on the number of people the organization turns away, or puts on waiting lists, because it does not have the resources to help them, information on what activities or services the community needs but that the organization cannot provide because of a lack of resources, etc.

Nonprofits have got to be much more deliberate and direct in all of their communications about the issues they are addressing, why those issues exist, and what resources they lack. If tax cuts and tax breaks for corporations have resulted in less money for these critical services, nonprofits must say so. 

Our futures depend on it.

Sources:

Homelessness in Portland, Sept. 26, 2018, Travel Oregon

Roads before homes: Our Homeless Crisis, March 18, 2015, The Oregonian

U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development. The 2016 Annual Homeless Assessment Report (AHAR) to Congress, November 2016

National Alliance to End Homelessness. Homelessness: A State of Emergency.Feb. 6, 2016

“A Great Calamity Has Come Upon Us”, Jan. 23, 2005, The New York Times

16 Ways People Survived Before Social Security — Could You Do It?, April 12, 2018, GoBankingRates

What causes homelessness, downloaded Nov. 2, 2018

Why Are People Homeless?, July 2009, National Coalition for the Homeless

Understanding Drug Use and Addiction, June 2018, National Institute on Drug Abuse, National Institutes of Health, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (and see more sources at the end of this NIH article)

Also see:

What should be on a political web site

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I’m a stickler for nonprofit organizations being as transparent as possible, well beyond what is required by law, regarding their financing, spending and staffing. As mission-based organizations, with missions that are supposed to benefit people and/or our environment, being accountable not only to donors but to all the public at large is crucial in showing credibility and ethics. Many in the for-profit/corporate and political sphere are threatened by the work of such organizations – nonprofits, NGOs, community-based organizations, etc. – and they can use an organization’s perceived lack of transparency about certain information to feed the public’s distrust of such organizations. Nonprofits can head this office by sharing as much info as possible on their web site about who they are and what they do.

I think a nonprofit, NGO, etc. should have on its web site:

  • a list of its board of directors
  • a list of its staff, at least senior staff, and their credentials
  • a statement of when the organization was founded and why
  • a list of key activities and accomplishments since the organization was founded
  • a statement regarding how much money it raised or earned in the last fiscal year and how much it spent, and at least a general idea on what it spent that money on

There have been nonprofits that I have seriously thought about giving a donation to, but when I go to their web site, they don’t have this basic info, so I don’t donate. I wonder how many other donations these nonprofits have missed out on because of this lack of info? There’s even more I think should be on a nonprofit’s web site, like complete information about volunteering, but that’s another blog.

I apply this rule about mandatory information that must be on a web site to political organizations and political candidates I’m interested in as well. No matter how passionately I feel in support of a candidate or a viewpoint, I want to know who is running things and how the money will be spent, even a general idea. You want me to donate to so-and-so so they can win an election? What are you going to spend the money on? In particular, how much will go to paying for TV time, radio time, flyers, web site development, etc., and how much is going to be paid to consultants for their ideas? What percentage of your staffing is by paid consultants and what percentage is by unpaid volunteers? And if you are a political organization, when were you founded, who is staffing the organization, and how did you pick the candidates you have suggested in your voter guide?

Another tip for political organizations: when someone comes to my door and says they are from such-and-such organization, and they want me to sign a petition about judicial reform or some new law or whatever, I am more likely to listen to that person if he or she says, “I am a volunteer with so-and-so.” Knowing someone is a volunteer, not a paid political person, gives whatever that person says much more weight with me. A volunteer is giving up precious time, often on a weekend, to reach out to me about a person or a cause – that’s how passionate that person feels about that candidate or ballot measure or whatever. And that carries a huge amount of weight with me. A paid person is the same as an ad on TV, and I just shrug, take the info and usually cut them off – I’d prefer to look up the candidate or issue myself in my own time.

Also see:

If I can’t find what I’m looking for on your web site, who else can’t?

Use Your Web Site to Show Your Accountability and To Teach Others About the Nonprofit / NGO / Charity Sector!

REQUIRED Volunteer Information on Your Web Site

Gossip’s toll in your workplace

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gossipBack in March 2010, an article (registration may be required for access) in Workplace.com highlighted a study in the Journal of Contemporary Ethnography regarding workplace gossip. It reviewed how rumors among employees about a company can dilute authority, can poison workplace congeniality and contribute to staff turnover, all of which can cause harm an organization without ever becoming public (external to the organization). The study is focused on paid employees, but, of course, its findings are important to nonprofits and volunteers as well. The study’s author, sociologist Tim Hallett, calls such gossip “reputational warfare,” and says that once a bad reputation has been solidified, justified or not, it usually sticks — often with negative consequences for the entire organization.

Employees and volunteers will always talk internally about how things are going at an organization, what they think the future holds, what obstacles they see facing the country, etc. There’s nothing wrong with that. But a misunderstanding, a small fear, an unanswered question or an observation by someone uninformed about a situation can turn conversations into negative gossip, layout the foundation for mistrust, conflict, and negative public relations.

Don’t try to stop conversations about the internal workings of an organization – those conversations can be important informal training for new staff and help you discover and address issues before they become full-blown problems. But do work to make sure conversations by staff – employees, consultants and volunteers – are fact-based and within the bounds of your confidentiality policies, and work continually to create a culture where employees and volunteers share their fears, questions and suppositions early with supervisors, without fear of retribution for merely expressing a fear or asking a question.

Gossip tends to crop up when there are voids in communication. Therefore, address fears, questions and suppositions quickly and regularly. Filling the void with information — about possible office relocation, promotions, layoffs, firings, conflicts with funders or partners, budget shortfalls, etc. If a situation must be kept confidential and can’t be shared with employees, consultants and/or volunteers — for instance, the reasons why a staff person was fired — then explain why such information is kept confidential, in such a way that employees realize that you will honor their personnel issues, positive or negative, in a confidential manner as well. If the information could be damaging to the organization if released too early, then say so, explicitly. If you should have released the information sooner internally, apologize to staff and talk about what you will be doing to ensure that information is not withheld again — or ask them how they would have liked the situation to have been handled.

If you don’t want to commit anything or everything to writing, such as in a company-wide memo, then meet individually with staff and volunteers, have the executive director or a senior manager address individual department meetings, and have all-staff meetings. Give employees multiple opportunities to ask questions and voice concerns about rumors that they have heard.

But how do you know gossip is happening? By having trusting relationships across the organization – including across an organization’s hierarchy. That comes from regular conversations, formal and informal, and by showing explicitly how feedback from staff is heard, how suggestions from volunteers does influence the organization, etc. And building trust would take several more blogs to explore…

In short, you must create a culture of faith and trust among your paid staff and volunteers in each other and in the organizational leadership in order to prevent damaging gossip. It’s much easier to create and sustain such a culture than it is to try to overcome “reputational warfare.”

Also see

For Nonprofit Organizations: How to Handle Online Criticism.

Feuds in the nonprofit/NGO/charity world

Why I’m not outraged at the IRS

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Each year, the IRS reviews as many as 60,000 applications from groups that want to be classified as tax-exempt.

501(c)(4) tax-exempt status is a different nonprofit category than organizations like homeless shelters, arts groups, animal groups, etc. The (c)(4) status allows advocacy groups to avoid federal taxes, just like 501(c)(3) orgs, but the status doesn’t render donations to the groups tax deductible. The primary focus of their efforts must be promoting social welfare – and that can include lobbying and advocating for issues and legislation, but not outright political-campaign activity. Also, these groups do not have to disclose the identities of their donors unless they are under investigation.

The U.S. Supreme Court’s January 2010 “Citizens United” ruling lead to a torrent of new 501(c)4 groups: the number of applications sent to the IRS by those seeking 501(c)4 status rose to 3,400 in 2012 from 1,500 in 2010. MOST of these applications were from conservative groups. And many of these organizations flout the law in terms of not being involved in political-campaign activity – if you saw the whole process where Stephen Colbert oh-so-easily formed his own 501(c)(4) organization, you know what I mean.

So what was the “extra scrutiny” by the IRS? Good luck trying to find out specifics beyond the phrase “extra scrutiny” again and again. It took me an hour on Internet searches to find out enough to make this list of what the “extra scrutiny” was:

  • more details on what “social welfare” activities the organizations were undertaking
  • speakers they had hosted in meetings
  • fliers to promote events
  • list of volunteers
  • roles/works of volunteers
  • lists of members
  • list of donors
  • positions on political issues the organization was advocating

Some groups have claimed they were asked who was commenting on the group’s Facebook page, but I can’t find any confirmation of this claim.

Of course, this “extra scrutiny” is a fraction of what many of these same people outraged at the IRS were demanding regarding the now defunct nonprofit group ACORN. It’s the same scrutiny these conservatives were screaming about wanting for arts organizations back in the 1990s, in their attempt to eliminate all government funding for arts organizations. And probably most importantly: no organization was prevented from engaging in the activities it wanted to, not even those with pending status. None. Zilch.

This scrutiny is not only what I have been asked for in every nonprofit and government-related job I have held in the last 15 years (yes, I have been asked by a government agency to provide a list of paid staff and volunteers – they wanted to see if our arts organization was involving “enough” volunteers”); these are details I have long encouraged nonprofits to provide on their web sites, to show transparency and credibility.

So, I’ll be by usual blunt self: any nonprofit organization, no matter what their designation, that can’t easily provide details on its programs – who, what, where, when – as well as information the number and role of volunteers and information on any activities that might be considered political advocacy, shouldn’t be a nonprofit. And if that organization is a political group, it should have to provide a public list of all financial donors. Period.

But, no, I’m not going to provide a list of volunteers. Their roles and accomplishments, yes, but not a list of volunteers.

In fact, let’s get rid of (c)(4) nonprofits status altogether. You want to form an organization that engages in political activities? Form a PAC. 

My sources:

http://www.politico.com/story/2013/05/israel-related-groups-also-pointed-to-irs-scrutiny-91298.html#ixzz2TSsJpVJ1

http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/05/14/us-usa-tax-irs-idUSBRE94B08I20130514

http://www.southcarolinaradionetwork.com/2013/05/15/at-least-2-sc-tea-party-groups-say-they-were-singled-out-by-irs/

http://www.coyotecommunications.com/outreach/scrutiny.html

http://www.salon.com/2013/05/14/when_the_irs_targeted_liberals/singleton/

theater as a community development/education tool – it takes more than artists

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It’s been a few years now since, for my Master’s degree, I embarked on a year-long investigation of the non-artistic elements necessary for success in “Theater as a Tool for Development” initiatives. It’s a subject that remains a very big interest for me. I wish I had the time and resources to research it further!

There are numerous organizations using theater techniques as part of their community development / education activities all over the world – for instance, to educate children about a health issue – and there are also numerous initiatives, publications, web sites and individuals that promote and chronicle successes regarding live, in-person performance as an effective tool for development. Even in our current age saturated with multi-media, live, in-person performance/TfD is a popular and effective tool for education, outreach and capacity-building regarding a variety of development issues, such as HIV/AIDS prevention, domestic violence, evolving gender roles, or good sanitation practices

However, there is little information on what has to be in place before these techniques are used, excluding performer training, to better ensure that these techniques will be well-received by an audience/participants, and to better ensure that the desired outcomes will be generated. My research was meant to fill in a bit of that gap. And my conclusion? Without deliberate, thoughtful cultivation of support for and trust in such an initiative among staff at the lead agency, among partner organizations, and among those for whom the theater-for-development techniques will be used, and without clear definitions of what everyone expects from TfD activities, such efforts will fail, no matter how experienced or enthusiastic your artistic staff is. In fact, in one case I studied, not doing this groundwork before hand turned out to be deadly.

My project included a review of key literature on TfD, and semi-structured interviews with 12 TfD practitioners. You can read online:

If you have undertaken similar research – not about theater as a tool for development, but specifically what needs to happen before such activities take place in order for them to be successful, give me a shout.

Could your organization be deceived by GOTCHA media?

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Not everyone loves your nonprofit organization. Not everyone loves your non-governmental organization (NGO), civil society organization, or government agency. In fact, there is at least one individual, and maybe even a group, that would like nothing better than to hurt your organization in a very public way.

You may think no one would launch a negative campaign against your beloved organization that protects wildlife or works to educate children from low-income communities or helps women fleeing abusive relationships or encourages people to spay and neuter their pets or helps people grow their own food or brings the joy of live theater to your town. You may think:

Our organization is completely non-threatening to anyone. We’re a-political. We’re politically benign. No one would want to see our organization go away. We benefit everyone!

The truth is that every cause can become politicized, and every organization can become a political target.

I learned this while working in public relations and marketing for nonprofit professional theaters in New England back in the late 1980s and early 1990s, when arts groups became the target of a very vocal, well-funded political force who felt all local, state and national government funding for theater companies, dance companies, museums and other arts organizations should be cut off. They declared such funding not only a waste of money, but also as promoting pornography and un-American values. And they had snippets of plays and photos from various exhibits that, out-of-context, seemed to prove their case to the public and the press. I felt completely unprepared as I helped book a very famous actor to debate a very famous televangelist on the subject, on a new network called CNN, and wrote talking points – I’d never been trained for such a response. I never expected to have to do anything like that for an arts organization.

Since then, in various jobs, I’ve interacted with people I later found out weren’t really representatives of the press, weren’t really independent documentary film makers, and weren’t volunteering to help with a mailing because they believed so passionately in this or that cause. Luckily, the discovery of who they really were was always made early enough such that no damage was done – usually before a first face-to-face meeting even took place. I learned to always confirm someone really did represent whatever organization they claimed to, no matter how nice they sounded on the phone, and to always vet every potential volunteer, no matter how enthusiastic and well-qualified they seemed initially – and that was before I had the Internet to help me research people. Subterfuge has been attempted at almost every organization I’ve ever been a part of, no matter what the mission.

Over the last 20 years, I have seen seemingly-benign causes come under voracious attack again and again, the latest being National Public Radio. Your organization may not be big enough to become the target of gotcha right-wing film-maker James O’Keefe, who also brought down the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (Acorn), a collection of community-based organizations in the USA that advocated for low- and moderate-income families by working on neighborhood safety, voter registration, health care, and affordable housing. But there could be just one person in your community with a video camera and a dream of humiliating your organization right out of existence – and given the opportunity, that person could upload a YouTube video that gets picked up by the media and sends you scrambling to explain yourself.

Whether its an animal shelter, or a volunteer association that supports a state park, or a community radio station, or a homeless shelter – no matter what kind of organization it is – you need to talk with staff regularly about handling various scenarios, including:

  • how fund raisers and chief executives should respond to solicitation calls and initial meetings with potential donors, especially those who seem to represent potentially large gifts
  • an email or phone call from anyone claiming to be from the press
  • vetting volunteers and job applicants
  • what staff and volunteers should not share on their blogs and social networking sites, no matter how private they may think such is
  • what conversations should never take place via email or text-based chat
  • what to do when faced with suspicious activity by a volunteer, a donor, a new staff member, someone claiming to be a film maker, etc.
  • pointed questions from someone at an open house, a public event, etc.
  • any questions that hint at the organization helping someone in an illegal way

Don’t assume senior staff, including your Executive Director, is prepared for these kinds of situations because they are in a leadership position. It doesn’t mean that person has to give up individual opinions, but they need to remember when they are “on the clock”, representing the organization to others, and they need to clarify when they are speaking as an individual and when their views do not represent the organization.

Also, don’t become a fortress. You aren’t looking to shut down staff blogs or prevent volunteers from taking photos during their service. You want to exude transparency and openness; but you also want all staff and volunteers to remember the powers of their words and actions.

We hear a lot about how great social media is; but remember that it can be used to spread misinformation and bad press as quickly as it spreads the good stuff the press likes to be breathless about.

One more thing: a lot of people are chastising the head of NPR for not saying anything when the fake donors were making disparaging, insulting remarks about Israel. Yet these critics are the same people who, when chastised for making disparaging, insulting remarks themselves about other various countries and cultures and people, will cry, “Stop telling me to be politically correct!” How many times has a politician, a community leader, a well-known person, said something in a private conversation to you, when you were meeting in relation to your work, that was sexist, racist, and otherwise inappropriate or inflammatory? Did you grin uncomfortably and try to move on, or did you say that the language made you uncomfortable? It’s happened to me too many times to count. Most of the time, indeed, I say something (surprise!), but a few times, I’ve changed the subject or found an excuse to walk away because I was too flabbergasted to say anything else. Before you reprimand a staff person for telling a beloved volunteer, “The language you are using right now about my co-worker is inappropriate and I cannot continue this conversation if you are going to continue using those terms to describe women,” or you reprimand a staff person for staying silent in a hidden camera video while a fake customer made racist comments, consider how well you’ve trained staff to handle these situations, and what YOU do in similar circumstances!

Also see how to handle online criticism, a resource for nonprofits, NGOs, government agencies and other mission-based organizations.