April 20, 2000 | Read Time: 1 minute
The Alliance for Justice, a national association of advocacy groups, is telling charities how they can use e-mail messages, e-mail discussion lists, and other online techniques to help set public policy while following federal laws that were written years before the advent of the Internet.
The association has published a guide, “E-Advocacy for Nonprofits: The Law of Lobbying and Election-Related Activity on the Net,” that explains the legal ways charities can lobby and engage in nonpartisan election-related work using the latest technology.
For example, the guide says that a charity is allowed to send an e-mail bulletin on the status of legislation it opposes to a large list of people, most of whom are not members of the charity. It could explain why it opposes the bill and suggest alternatives to the legislation, without the communication counting as grassroots lobbying, a term of art in federal law. The reason: The bulletin does not contain a “call to action” that the recipient contact a legislator or public official about the bill.
Copies of the 69-page booklet are available for $25 a copy from the Alliance for Justice, 2000 P Street, N.W., Suite 712, Washington 20036. The organization plans to also make it available on its Web site, at http://www.afj.org.
