Nonprofit Groups Organize New Efforts to Sway Lawmakers

As candidates around the country campaign in national, state, and local races, many nonprofits are gearing up to help charities make their case to those contenders. Among them:

Nonprofit Vote. George Pillsbury, executive director of the Boston group, which advises charities on advocacy efforts, says the most heavily downloaded resource on the group’s Web site is “A Nonprofit’s Guide to Hosting Candidate Forums.” In the past, he notes, voter-registration tool kits were the most popular.

“Four years ago, we were talking with charities about voter education and voter turnout, and now we are talking more about what nonprofits can do with candidates,” Mr. Pillsbury says.

But voter-registration efforts remain a big part of nonprofits’ efforts to sway lawmakers. Nonprofit Vote is sponsoring a national voter-registration day on September 25, with more than 75 nonprofit groups participating, including Families International and the Alliance of Children and Families.

ServiceNation and Save Service in America. Both groups, which promote volunteerism and national service, are trying to protect national-service programs like AmeriCorps. ServiceNation is stationing field organizers in seven states—Iowa, Montana, Florida, Louisiana, Ohio, Kentucky, and Washington—where key lawmakers could influence votes on national service.

“We are trying to embolden our champions [on Capitol Hill] and mitigate our opponents,” says Christopher Cashman, communications director at ServiceNation.

The organizers will arrange town halls with candidates and mobilize people, including alumni of national-service programs, to meet with elected officials. Phone-bank callers will let candidates know they have constituents who care about national service.

Jewish Federations of North America. The organization is mobilizing its 157 federations, asking them to invite key members of Congress to visit social-service groups supported by the organizations. In presidential battleground states, such charities will be suggested to the candidates’ organizers as campaign stops.

In the weeks after the election, says Steven Woolf, the federations’ senior counsel for tax policy, “changes to the tax code could happen at the stroke of midnight behind closed doors, so we want to make sure we get in front of many of the people who will be there making those decisions.”

The federation is also deeply engaged in trying to assure that Democratic and Republican party platforms include language that is favorable to nonprofits, says William Daroff, vice president for public policy.

In May, representatives of the federations met with key White House staff members, asking for President Obama to downplay the charitable deduction as a deficit-reduction priority. The federations walked away feeling cautiously optimistic, Mr. Daroff says, as it also did after a similar discussion with an adviser to Republican hopeful Mitt Romney.

Catholic Charities USA. Representatives of the group, which oversees 1,400 social-services groups, routinely visit lawmakers on their home turf during campaign seasons. This year they have prepared talking points and data that underscore the importance of preserving the charitable deduction for people who itemize on their federal tax returns, says the Rev. Larry Snyder, Catholic Charities USA’s chief executive. “There is a real sense of urgency,” he says.

Council on Foundations. In May, the council took a new Foundation 101 program on the road to educate lawmakers and their staff members about the charitable tax deduction and other issues that affect grant makers. The first gathering was sponsored by the Louisville Community Foundation, in Kentucky. The Arkansas Community Foundation and the Winthrop Rockefeller Foundation, both in Little Rock, are hosting a session in August and others are expected to follow.

But there’s no guarantee that key lawmakers will hear nonprofits make their case, as Susan Barry, chief executive of the Louisville foundation, has discovered. She was disappointed that no one from Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell’s staff attended her group’s event, even though five other Congressional aides were there.

But the meetings could be a good first step, she says; one of the Congressional staff members, she noted, has asked for a follow-up meeting. “They learned some things about what we do. We learned how we can position ourselves to be resources, and relationships were formed,” she says. “That is a good place for us to be, especially when the landscape is changing.”

Like any relationship, she says, it will take time and trust: “It’s a slow dance.”