Lobbying for Charity

A growing number of nonprofit groups are hiring Washington representatives to seek federal money

Ohio Valley General Hospital, a 119-bed facility in Pittsburgh, is getting $400,000 this year from the federal government to help build a new wing for its surgery and obstetrics-gynecology units.

The federal dollars came

after the organization spent months lobbying Congress to earmark the money for the institution. Hospital officials are so pleased by the results that they have hired a professional lobbying firm to help them ask Congress for $1.5-million.

Like the hospital, small local groups are joining big national charities in hiring professional lobbyists and spending substantial sums in the hopes of getting money earmarked for them. To get an earmark, charities often spend up to two years drafting testimony to be submitted at Congressional hearings, staying in touch with Congressional staff members, and attending meetings on Capitol Hill. In addition, many groups spend a lot of time trying to come up with a compelling request and recruiting influential supporters whose endorsement carries weight with lawmakers.

Earmarks are different from other types of federal aid that charities receive by submitting proposals for grants and contracts to federal agencies, which then decide which groups most deserve the money. Members of Congress put earmarks for specific groups in spending bills, bypassing the competitive process.

The rigors of seeking earmarks have intensified in recent years as lawmakers have been besieged with more and more requests for help. Many have sought to control the process by introducing forms, deadlines, and other requirements that differ from lawmaker to lawmaker. Says Marilyn Berry Thompson, a Washington lobbyist who represents dozens of nonprofit groups: “The Appropriations committees and subcommittees have made it so layered that only the most stalwart stay at the table.”

Broad Perspective

The difficulty of landing an earmark, especially for charities located far from Washington, however, is not the only reason organizations hire lobbyists to help them. Lobbyists routinely scour legislation under consideration in Congress and analyze spending plans of federal agencies. That gives them a broad overview of government funds that have been or may be earmarked.

“They can say that your program would be important to this or that agency, and they can tell you whether you would do better to pursue an earmark or a federal grant,” says Scott Jackson, senior vice president of external relations at World Vision, a relief organization in Federal Way, Wash.

At the suggestion of its lobbying firm, World Vision approached lawmakers in 2003 and won a $1.5-million earmark for a Northern Virginia project to prevent gang violence; the earmark was included in legislation governing spending by the Department of Justice. The following year, World Vision received another $400,000 line-item appropriation, as earmarks are sometimes called, for a similar program in Washington by following the lobbyist’s advice to approach the Congressional subcommittee that oversees federal spending in the nation’s capital.

Hiring a lobbyist is not inexpensive, although some lobbyists occasionally do pro bono work. Ms. Thompson, for example, represents some cities and counties that seek federal funds, and she occasionally advises charities in those areas at no cost.

But most lobbyists that assist nonprofit groups charge a low of $24,000 to $36,000 annually and, at the high end, $120,000 to $150,000 or even more, depending on the amount of legwork they determine is necessary to get a line-item appropriation. Expenses, such as travel or taking a Congressional staff member to lunch, are usually extra.

Charity officials say the cost of the lobbyists is often minor compared with the amount of federal money they secure. Among the organizations that have hired lobbyists:

• The Seattle Art Museum has paid $160,000 plus expenses to lobbyists, or about $40,000 for each of the past four years, to help it get five earmarks totaling $3.4-million. The money is helping to turn an industrial site into an 8.5-acre waterfront sculpture park that will open next year.
• Special Olympics, in Washington, paid a lobbyist $75,000 last year and spent another $25,000 to fly board members and other top officials to meetings on Capitol Hill. The result: two earmarks totaling $4-million, which will pay for nearly a third of the cost of holding a weeklong competition for disabled athletes in Ames, Iowa, next year. The cost of lobbying, says Terri Hasselman, a consultant who has helped raise money for the project, “was a great ratio to the dollars raised.”
• Junior Achievement, in Colorado Springs, received two earmarks worth $6.5-million last year. The money is being used to improve and expand curricula at two facilities where fifth- and eighth-grade children learn sound financial practices and other skills to help them become productive adults. Junior Achievement paid its lobbyist $325,000.

Regardless of whether they hire a lobbyist, some charities win earmarks more easily than others, particularly if their offices are in a state that has a senator or representative on a Congressional subcommittee or committee that approves spending bills.

Children’s Hospital Medical Center of Akron, in Ohio, got four earmarks in five years totaling $2.9-million — all without hiring a lobbyist — to help pay for medical equipment, a burn unit, and a center to prevent and treat child abuse.

For each earmark, hospital officials approached either Sen. Mike DeWine or Rep. Ralph Regula, both Republicans from Ohio and members of the Appropriations committees.

Mr. Regula also chairs the House Appropriations subcommittee that determines spending by the Department of Health and Human Services, the agency that has issued all of the hospital’s earmarked funds.

“This senator and congressman get more because of the fact that they’re in the majority party,” says Morton Braunstein, the hospital’s director of grants administration. “We really didn’t have to do very much.”

Some nonprofit organizations have used earmarks as a building block to obtain additional forms of government support from the same federal agencies directed by Congress to provide them with funds.

The American Museum of Natural History, in New York, has received about $30-million in Congressionally directed earmarks from NASA since 1997. The money has primarily been used for educational projects such as its online newsletter about scientific endeavors and the Digital Universe, a three-dimensional, computerized atlas of the universe.

The museum’s earmarks have been attacked by some scientists who charge that those payments to the museum have drained money away from NASA’s space projects and circumvented the peer-review grant process NASA uses to award money for research, education, and other projects.

Museum officials defend the earmarks, saying that they have used them to build a relationship with NASA. “We really took the Congressional appropriations as a way to learn the agency and learn where our goals were aligned,” says Lisa Gugenheim, the museum’s vice president of government relations.

For instance, she says, the institution in 1999 decided to expand the number of research scientists affiliated with the museum to include those working on astrophysics and other sciences supported by NASA. Those scientists now compete for grants reviewed by other researchers to determine whether they meet NASA’s objectives and requirements.

Over all, the amount the museum received in the form of competitively awarded grants from NASA and other federal agencies was $7-million last year; its earmarks totaled $1.5-million.

Other Approaches

Other charities have decided to focus less effort on obtaining earmarks and instead have worked to persuade members of Congress to put their organizations’ names in other types of legislation.

Earmarks, which are included in spending bills, are often criticized as pet projects of particular lawmakers. That’s why some charities want their names in legislation that authorizes spending for specific federal programs and efforts.

Such legislation usually receives more scrutiny than earmarks do and has broader backing of lawmakers, so it is less controversial. What’s more, the legislation usually spans several years while earmarks are almost always one-time payments. The downside, however, is that lawmakers are usually not required to give any money to programs included in authorizing legislation, so charities still need to lobby lawmakers who direct appropriations.

After obtaining several earmarks in the early 1990s, Boys & Girls Clubs of America in 1996 was able to persuade Congress to write its name into a five-year anti-crime measure. Under the legislation, Congress directed the Justice Department to give the organization at least $20-million annually for five years. In an unusual step, the charity ended up receiving more than that amount when the Appropriations committees decided how much to give the organization, and it received a total of $170-million over five years. Last year, the legislation was extended, and the charity is now eligible to receive at least $450-million.

Robbie Callaway, senior vice president for government relations at Boys & Girls Clubs, says he works long hours to convince lawmakers at both the federal and state level that his charity’s after-school programs deter kids from crime, drug use, and other problems that end up costing the government money.

“It’s hard,” says Mr. Callaway. “We go into tough areas where it is hard to raise money and there are disadvantaged kids who need services and there are no existing programs to serve them. We optimize the taxpayer dollars. We are not taking them unless we’re convinced we are saving the taxpayer money.”

Boys & Girls Clubs relies on Mr. Callaway to do most of its lobbying, not on hired Washington experts. A 23-year veteran of the organization, he is also one of its best-paid officials. Mr. Callaway earned $365,042 in salary and benefits last year, according to the charity’s informational tax return.

Evan McElroy, the charity’s national vice president of marketing and communications, said in an e-mail message that Mr. Callaway’s salary was justified by his success in obtaining “millions of dollars in federal government support, while also initiating significant funding efforts in 41 states. This support has played a critical role in the growth of Boys & Girls Clubs during the last two decades, when the number of clubs and youth served has more than doubled.”

Although few charities have succeeded as well as Boys & Girls Clubs in getting large sums through authorization legislation, many agree that the organization’s approach is better than seeking earmarks.

“It’s a good way to go, it is more permanent and not perceived as pork,” says Joseph Romer, executive vice president of public affairs at Easter Seals. The charity has a 17-year-old program, authorized by Congress and operated in conjunction with the Department of Transportation, to make public transit accessible to people with disabilities. Project Action, as the program is known, is eligible to receive at least $3-million each year, and typically gets that amount annually.

Even so, Easter Seals occasionally pursues earmarks on behalf of its local affiliates. For instance, it has received $1.7-million earmarked for a center in Silver Spring, Md., that will offer health, education, and other services such as daycare to both preschoolers and adults with disabilities. Mr. Romer says the organization only agreed to seek an earmark because the project had strong support from the people it would serve and was not likely to generate much criticism.

“Every time we are associated with getting federal money, we bring a lot of scrutiny to these projects,” says Mr. Romer. “When you get into this area of Congress giving out money, you have to be careful.”

The perception that earmarks are simply a form of pork-barrel spending, he adds, “is the baggage that goes with earmarking, regardless of how great a program is.”

Fear of controversy over the practice of earmarking, however, does not bother officials at Ohio Valley General Hospital. “Sure, there are some questionable things, but these appropriations exist, and they do a lot of good things,” says Julie Marshall, executive director of the hospital’s foundation. “Should it be more regulated? Maybe. But I think it is just the way our government works.”