March 22, 2011 | Read Time: 4 minutes
Editor’s Note: The following is a guest post by Tom Tresser, a teacher and consultant in Chicago. He has started or led 10 nonprofit groups since 1974, was a lead organizer for No Games Chicago, and was the Green Party candidate for Cook County board president in 2010.
Before Rahm Emanuel, the former White House chief of staff, was elected mayor of Chicago last month, I wrote an op-ed piece for the Huffington Post about the role nonprofits would play in that election.
Regretfully, the answer turned out to be none.
Chicago’s creative community, in the form of the League of Chicago Theatres and the producing organization Broadway in Chicago did co-sponsor a February mayoral forum at the Ford Center for the Performing Arts. Unfortunately there were no arts-related questions to the candidates.
Mayor-elect Emanuel has announced his transition team, and the good news is that of the 118 members (58 men and 60 women), 85 are from the nonprofit and civic world (social services, education, arts, government, policy, environment, community development, labor).
What can Chicago’s nonprofit community do to influence the new mayor, as well as the new city council that will be seated in May with many new faces? And what lessons can nonprofits in other cities glean from the answer?
John Bouman, president of the Sargent Shriver National Center on Poverty Law, in Chicago, has some advice. John was a lead organizer for the Responsible Budget Coalition, a statewide effort composed of 272 nonprofit organizations and unions that was “committed to building the support needed to solve Illinois’s budget crisis by raising adequate revenue to prevent harmful cuts to essential services and jobs in the public and private sectors.”
The coalition was instrumental in rallying support for the recent revision of the Illinois budgeting and taxation system, securing the first increase in the state’s income-tax rates in decades. Mr. Bouman reflected on how his coalition made a difference in Springfield.
“We had groups working together that have not usually cooperated, including labor,” he said. The coalition mounted a prolonged and energetic public campaign to inform the public that Illinois’s nonprofits were unable to serve their constituents due to the state’s perpetual budget crisis.
At one point late last summer, the state owed Illinois’s nonprofits more than $1.4-billion in unpaid bills. The coalition sent thousands of people to demonstrate at the state capitol and to meet with legislators and had an aggressive media and online-petition campaign.
This was a combined effort to demonstrate power. “If you think about it, all the clients, the staff, and the board members of Illinois’s nonprofits and social-service groups—that’s a lot of voters,” Mr. Bouman said. “The ‘no new taxes’ cry was the safe haven for politicians before. But we used our ‘people power’ to show that voters cared about these issues and that that position was no longer a political safe haven.
With this message in mind, I urge nonprofit leaders in Chicago and elsewhere to:
• Fight to increase city and county budgets for the arts and social services.
• Review and suggest improvements to local government services offered to the disadvantaged–for example, in the areas of juvenile justice, public heath, welfare, shelter care, and drug rehabilitation.
• Influence the selection of relevant commissioners and board members.
• Make sure nonprofit leaders are always represented on blue-ribbon commissions and civic efforts that have anything to do with community improvement and business development.
• Advocate for local colleges to include public-policy classes that expose students to the global issues in the third sector.
Here are some ways to influence the powerful:
• Rally and show your numbers. Bring a few hundred people to City Hall and you’ll be heard!
• Start a Human Agenda PAC (political-action committee), screen candidates based on an agenda checklist, and reward candidates who say they back your plans.
• Create a forum in which candidates come to answer questions about the local nonprofit community and its issues. Be sure to collect contact info for all attendees. You’ll need that information later. (You would have to set up a separate organization to engage in electoral politics, however.)
• Organize a training session that encourages nonprofit leaders to run for local office and shows them how to translate their caring skills into votes.
A final word from Mr. Bouman: Figure out the “key principles and issues that everyone can agree on. Without that, there is no coalition.” And without the coalition, there is no hope of acquiring power.
Tell us what’s going on in your state. Contact Suzanne Perry to share your story.
