Why Lobbying Is a Duty

To the Editor:

Mark Rosenman is right that it is important for social-service organizations to give advocacy a high priority (“Why Social-Services Groups Must Mobilize,” Opinion, October 16). Perhaps even more important, all charities need to become more comfortable with engaging in lobbying as a critically important means of achieving their missions.

The matter of charities engaging in lobbying was addressed head on by the noted religious leader Paul H. Sherry, who stated, “The primary role of voluntary associations in American life is not service delivery but to continually shape and reshape the vision of a just social order…, to argue for that vision with other contenders in the public arena, and to press for its adoption and implementation. For voluntary associations to do less than that is to abdicate their civic responsibility.”

Recent remarks by the Honorable Timothy E. Wirth, former U.S. senator from Colorado, to the Global Philanthropy Forum underscore the same point. He said, “If we believe in what we are funding, and are hopeful about replicability, we have to work the system. That means we have to educate, persuade — and sometimes lobby — our government. Good laws and good governance are essential to good public policy, and I for one want to help define what ‘good’ means.”

Recent research by Charity Lobbying in the Public Interest, OMB Watch, and Tufts University shows that 69 percent of all charities lobby only infrequently. Clearly, charities need desperately to be educated not only as to their rights but also as to their obligation to lobby in the public interest.

Bob Smucker
Executive Director
Charity Lobbying in the Public Interest
Washington