Episode 277: Where Advocacy Ends - Good and Lobbying Begins - Bad
Welcome to another edition of Around with Randall, your weekly podcast for making your nonprofit more effective for your community. And here is your host, the CEO and founder of Hallett Philanthropy, Randall Hallett.
It is such an honor to have you take a few minutes of your day to join me, Randall, for this edition of around with Randall. I want to spend a little time talking about a subject that might for some, and depending on how you do it, caused some consternation, particularly at the organizational wide level or the or the ability for us in our community to make sense.
And that is the concept of where nonprofits meet the idea of public policy implementation, integration and really more influencing. And I'm talking about, in a very general term, lobbying.
Lobbying or influencing the politics of the day might be construed as, for many nonprofit leaders, as a no go. And in some ways, which we will talk about, there are some aspects that are not allowed. But often the assumption is incorrect because there's a difference between policy engagement and actual lobbying. And if we don't advocate policy, meaning the things that are within our wheelhouse, so to speak, what happens is, is that we miss out on ways of making what we do stronger, better, more engaged, and even possibly drawing more support.
The result of silence when we don't have this done in the right way, is that those organizations that are closest to the problem may actually miss out on the ability to help solve that problem more effectively. So nonprofits on the front lines, look at this as a sense of maybe either responsibility or we got to completely stay away or somewhere in the middle and at the end of the day, participation in the process is important.
And that this participation, particularly at policy level and lobbying, are not exactly identical. And that advocacy can happen in many ways and still remain perfectly compliant with what the laws are, particularly for nonprofits. So we'll start at the top talked about from kind of the big picture. Then we will get down to six things that you can do to be more active in the right activities that drive policy change, but necessarily aren't lobbying.
So why are nonprofits wanting to lobby? Why is this something that we should even consider? Well, I think there's three things that need to be thought of or discussed, or at least mentioned. The first is, is that policy drives are mission outcomes. Give me a couple of examples. If you're a hospital or in philanthropy supporting a hospital, well, then health care is a policy issue that you deal with every day.
If you are a foundation supporting a let's even say a public school education is an issue that you deal with every day. If you're in a social service initially, let's say like food or baby housing, that what goes on in the community from people who need food or need housing is what you do every day. Hospitals, universities, housing, even social service agencies all operate within a framework of policy, meaning there are rules and regulations as to what you can do.
Your maybe paid for certain services through the government, through the things that you are trying to accomplish that things like Medicaid’s, Medicaid reimbursement rates, educational funding formulas, zoning regulations, tax incentives are all part of what goes on every day, and they affect your nonprofits ability to do your job. The second thing is, is that because it and I talk about this at the end of almost every podcast, the philanthropy sits between the idea of for enterprise activity, meaning businesses that don't want to do certain things because I don't make money, and government, which is inefficient.
And that's important because that gap is where philanthropy and nonprofits live. And what we know is, is that at least my experiences is, is that governments slow to change, slow to recognize. And because we're in that gap, we actually see the problems, the challenges and maybe even some of the solutions more quickly that we operate closer to the ground, closer to the action.
And that being by closer to this action, we will know things years before our government. If you have the partner or government that you work with in or around or underneath, you'll know that the problems within the area of service which you have before the government ever does. So the ability for us to become a natural driver of the change that might be necessary to help what we do can be important.
The third is, is that in some way, shape or form, our donors kind of expect it. And this is where we get into some of the problems, because I'm not talking about political candidates. I'm not talking about a particular one or the other. For the most part, maybe a third political party. I'm talking about the things that government decides that creates the framework of what we do.
And for that, many donors probably believe that we should be involved in helping inform what actually needs to be done to make the situation better. It makes perfect sense for leaders at an academic medical center or a hospital community based children's hospital rehab center. They might have some good information that government officials lawmakers need to make decisions. And if we're not leading, then we're just following behind.
And that's not a very attractive place for our donors to think we are. If we're trying to build confidence that we're changing the world, that we're making a difference. I understand this creates tension, but leaders in nonprofits want to make these opportunities, these policy adjustments, because it makes what they do more, hopefully more effective, that we see it more quickly so we can act upon it more quickly.
And finally, that our people that support us at the highest levels want to know we're making a difference. You might be asking, what's the law on this? And you should. So a general principle that I hear often is, well, you know, we shouldn't be involved with any policy or lobbying. In fact, there's a place on the 990 where we have to disclose certain things.
Yes. If you're just advocating we're going to get into this in a second. What can't do a particular candidate? You can't do that as a nonprofit. But there's a lot of things you can do. U.S. tax law says that charitable nonprofits can engage in what I would call policy advocating, but can't represent a substantial. But it can't be a substantial part of what you do.
So, there's kind of two direct ways of looking at lobbying or policy influence. One is direct lobbying, and that's communicating directly with legislatures or government officials about something specific, maybe legislation, maybe it's a regulation that's placed out or that you have to follow and express a position on that particular legislation or policy. And this is maybe meeting with a state senator or even at the largest levels.
We have associations. The American Hospital Association has people that go to Congress and say, hey, if you do this, then this is what's going to happen. And that could be bad or good, depending on the circumstances. The second is more of grassroots lobbying, and this is where we get the public to maybe be involved with more communication with the legislation.
Where there's a mass number, it may not have the expertise level, the direct lobbying or conversation tab, but when you put enough people, policymakers and legislators look at it and go, oh, there's a lot of people involved here. My constituency is telling me that I need to be aware of X, Y, or Z. So this could include sending an email or having a bunch of people send emails or go to meet up on a legislature day.
There's a lot of states that have what they call advocacy days that they go and they send different people or different constituencies or just general public to legislators to express their opinions, which is the foundation of our democracy, our republic. There are ways of judging this. And I talked about what's the law and all of this. There's something called a 501 H election.
This is where you actually have to kind of make, as a nonprofit, a decision on whether you're doing too much lobbying or to direct lobbying. And this is just a mathematical test the IRS puts on. If you have this much in revenue. Here are the limitations you can do. A general rule is if you're more than 20%, you're way out of whack.
So if you're anywhere from 15 to 20% of your expenditures, and I would doubt many nonprofits actually are that are basic nonprofits, hospitals, universities and such social service entities, they generally don't get close to that number. Don't forget that charitable organizations can't participate in a partizan and individual campaign, meaning no endorsements of candidates or any type of direct support for an individual.
It's about what the wider policies are that the organization wants to see that would make whatever it is that you do and serve better. And so policy conversations allowed. Candidate or candidate politicking is not.
All this is to say is, is it? There is a difference between lobbying and advocacy. There are things that are very much natural to the nonprofit world that probably most nonprofits should be involved with, particularly in their area of expertise. Publishing research. If you're a hospital or an academic, will center medical center on community health outcomes.
Hosting forums and housing shortages. If you're in the housing nonprofit area providing testimony about some expertise, possibly on something dealing with education, educating policy makers about what the current system is doing, what it's trying to do, what the problems are. All those are fine. These activities inform policy, and the discussions that go along with them are important. Without ever attempting any type of individual to do something.
Many nonprofits can significantly shape public policy, particularly in the area of their expertise. Through these methods that I mentioned. I would be remiss, before I get into the tactical ways in which you can do this. If I didn't put a warning sticker on this particular part of the podcast, or maybe the subject as a whole. You have to understand the risk.
There are issues that are so difficult to deal with that you'll alienate your particular or part of your particular constituency. And that's where we see the most amount of trouble. I'm not going to spend a lot of time going into what those are. I don't need the controversy here. You can figure that out. But if you are in a nonprofit and you advocate something that's highly political, that has two distinct sides to it.
I'm not saying you should or shouldn't. And I'm not talking about a candidate. I'm talking about a particular action or a particular issue in health care, education, housing, whatever. And there are two legitimate perspectives to it. If you advocate heavily enough, what ends up happening is that you end up alienating people. And if you alienate the wrong donors, that will hurt your ability to raise money.
Over the last couple of years, maybe over the last, I'd say decade, decade and a half for profit corporations have gotten into trouble with us now, not with the government, but with their stakeholders, their stockholders. And in some ways, it's kind of the thought process that we want organizations to do what they're meant to do. But we don't need you doing all these other things.
I'll draw a comparison. There is an argument out there when we watch, let's say, an award show for the Oscars, the Grammys, the Tonys, whatever that a particular actor or artist or singer or whatever has a commentary about some issue, and you will immediately hear people say, I don't want to hear from you on this issue because it's not your level of expertise.
And I just want you to act as saying, I enjoy your music or whatever it might be. If you're if you are a social service agency and you're commenting on some issue that is either loosely connected to what you do or not connected at all, you can assume there are going to be people who say, why, why, why are you telling me these things?
Or if you pick an issue and you are on only one side of that particular challenge and not looking at the policy implications or the outcomes for what you do, you could alienate the other side and they may stop being as involved. We live in a hyper partisan world, and so your ability to discern this before it happens is really important to have conversations.
Are we missing something? Is there somebody perspective. Do we want to modify it? And if you truly believe it's a policy issue as an organization, you have to have a stand pat on and it's in your expertise, then that's fine. But we have to be aware of the risk that comes with this when we do it in the wrong way.
Which brings us to the tactical ways to influence policy without formally lobbying and creating a problem from a legal perspective. So the first is you can produce mission driven data. Research data carries authority in policy conversations. So nonprofits can do studies. Your community needs assessments to program outcome reports that highlight gaps or problems in the area. In which your nonprofit serves.
So a hospital foundation could publish data on emergency departments being overcrowded, which is allowing or pushing or causing an issue with patients not getting into the Ed soon enough. And that could be tied to regional primary care shortages or let's say, urgent care clinics, because when they don't have primary care and they don't have urgent care, they come to us.
And that's the worst place for us to try to take care of a cold. We're there for the gunshot wound, the stabbing, the heart attack, the stroke, car accident. That's a policy issue. How do you reimburse urgent care versus primary if we don't have enough of them? What's the cost of education? There's all of these policy issues.
So how do you produce data driven research to show the outcome? This information, this ability to do this informs policy conversations, discussions without advocating for a specific bill. What it's saying is when you invest in our example more into primary care, we reduce waiting times in ads for the people that actually need them. That gets us away from the partizan issues that come where we're not allowed to do certain things.
Mission driven research. The second is educate, and I mean the policymakers. And that's not just the legislatures. Sometimes that's the bureaucracy. People who are managing what the legislatures ask them to do. Most often, legislatures lack a direct exposure to the community issue, which you advocate for. They didn't come out of our nonprofit world, many of them. And if they did, it may not have been the sector that we serve.
Organizations can host visits, briefings, program tours for policy makers. You think about it that inviting state legislators to come visit a clinic or a campus program or something, that they can observe the what's going on? The focus is still on education. It's on getting them information so they better understand the challenge rather than just legislative persuasion. And I'd advocate that this is pretty important.
The ability to do this on a regular basis. Number three is a cross section or across a grouping conversation where you bring different stakeholders together. It's like a policy forum and they rarely meet in the same room. It's kind of interesting how we segment our lives in many ways. The ability for us to cordon off other parts of the world that maybe direct it directly and more often indirectly related to what we do.
So this is policy roundtables, community forums, research briefings, academic symposiums. These conversations shape awareness without asking participants or the audience or the policymakers or the legislature, or some member to support a specific piece of legislation. What we're doing is we're elevating the thought as to what's going on, what needs to be done, and why it's important. And we're using sometimes data to do so, as well as connecting people that may not be normally connected.
This elevates community voices and organizations can become the template of a place of conversion where we're bringing solutions together, which is more about experience than it is lobbying. Number five is to translate complex issues into more simple terms for the public. Health care is incredibly complicated, and having done this for a long time, I and I was not obviously an executive on the clinical side, was a senior executive in an academic medical center.
Learned a lot. But man, it's complex. How do you dummy this down? Well, one of the great things that you can do as an organization from a community influence policy perspective, is creating easy ways for people to better understand what the public issue is. And then what are some of the options that may be available to solve that particular problem?
So you can you can produce explanation guides, reports, podcast campaigns. I don't mean capital campaigns, but educational campaigns that clarify a complex issue come up with a metaphor simile that gives the community or policymakers or others a chance to better understand it. So, as an example, a nonprofit can explain mental health funding and the flows through state system, which is highly complicated, where then identify where the gaps are.
Why do we not have more mental health professionals? And what happens when we do that? What are the societal effects when we don't? What are the outcomes when we advocate for access to mental health? By illuminating this not just as a global issue, but the tactical issues inside? You're not advocating for, you know, hey, you know, the port for this legislator because they like mental health issues or they'll support it.
It's this is a challenge that we are at the frontline of. We'd like to find better solutions. Here's some of the things that might be of interest to you as to why these are important. So number five is to kind of create a simplicity with really complex issues, which if you do that work in the community, you should be able to do as a part of what you normally talk about.
Because it is highly complicated. Your donors may not understand. How did you work with them to help them figure out what you do and what the value is? The last is like with donors. Create long term relationships with policymakers, not just legislature or legislators, but bureaucracy leaders. That policy influence comes from a concept we understand very well, and that's trust.
Trust your relationships. So we're doing this anyway. We're just doing it in a donor such a way. And I'm not saying if you're a major gift ops you should be doing this, but the organization should understand this. And that means regular briefings, regular meetings, informational meetings. We're not always there to ask for something like, hey, can you help us with the mental health bill that's going through over here?
Not specific, but if we don't do something, here we come. The challenges. If they only hear when you need something, then it's not a real relationship. It's just you asking for someone to better understand the problem. These conversations over time focus on knowledge and sharing and really understanding the legislative process of when to have the discussions. And over time, you'd be surprised.
What happens is policymakers will come back to you for expertise. Like, I'm trying to draft something to help kids and mental health. Here's what I think is this accurate? And so you get to become part of the solution at a policy level, to support your mission of what you're trying to do.
I understand these six things are not directly into fundraising. Or if you're a major gift officer, you're like, I don't want to do any of this or I don't. You shouldn't. I'm asking you, if you're not the Chief Philanthropy Office CEO board member, to elevate your thought. If you're looking to grow, understand why these tactical things and policy influence is important, whether it's producing the research or educating policy members or convening different groups together to kind of talk about the challenges, whether it's elevating the community's voice in all of this, bringing people together so that one central maybe verse can be heard.
That translating complex issues into the simple creates more of an understanding what we do. And lastly, we build upon long term relationships because that's the way trust is built. If you understand these things, that gives you an advantage in your nonprofit about helping your organization navigate this challenge. Again, if you go too far overboard, you're going to alienate people.
If you get too specific, you're going to alienate people. And when I say people, I mean donors and community supporters. We're not there to make a splash. We're there to make what we do better. Advocacy is grounded in this idea of education, data and community experience that influences public policy without crossing into lobbying, advocating for a particular bill or a particular issue or item on an individual perspective or a particular candidate.
And for many nonprofits, the approach can be if embraced, if we create the right approaches like we've talked about, we create compliance. We also create effectiveness and efficiency. And that may help your community solve a problem. In what I've talked about in the public private partnership that's needed. We can't live in that gap that I talked about at the top alone.
We have to have connection to private practice, private industry, for profit business and the government. We are not a gap filler that doesn't touch either side. We're touching all of it. And that's why you need to understand how policy can affect what we do, and that we can be voices appropriate, legal and compliant to help organizations like legislatures or governmental agencies understand what we do, why we do it, and what's important, and how they can be helpful in that partnership.
At the end of the day, you do this well, it's not a big deal, but don't go into it just guessing. Use today and other materials that you find and maybe some expertise hopefully to guide you as to what's right and what's wrong. Important to engage in the community. The way the community engages with policy. Don't forget to check out the blogs two per week. You can get an RSS feed right to you. Hallettphilanthropy.com backslash blogs. Two per week 90 second reads. Things I read and think about maybe give you something to think about twice a week. And if you'd like, reach out to me at podcast@hallettphilanthropy.com. We work in these chaotic times. It seems like everything's moving faster.
Everything's evolving more quickly than maybe we even want. The end of the day. This is where, frankly, we can be at our best. Although it's really challenging to serve the community, to serve those in the community in a way that makes a difference based upon the missions that we believe it. Don't forget, some people make things happen, some people watch things happen. And there are those who wondered what happened. We are people. We're looking for others just like us, who are making things happen for the things in our community and the organizations, and the moments where people are wondering what happened. I don't know what I go back and do in my life after 30 years, almost of being a professional, that would be different.
It would be more rewarding, challenging as well, but rewarding. So if you need a moment, repeat after me. You are someone who makes things happen. You are someone who makes things happen, and you're doing so for the people in the places and things in your community that are wondering what happened. And that's making an impact on one life, one organization, many lives, many organizations.
Does it make a difference? It's impact. That's the essence of philanthropy, love of mankind. How do I make the world a better place? I'll look forward to seeing you the next time. Right back here on the next edition of Around with Randall. And don't forget, make it a great day.