Twitter, Facebook and Charitable Campaigning

I tweeted about this and got a mass of responses syaing "people can't really be that stupid." But they are. I think you've hit the nail on the head - for many people, politics are a (big) part of their public self, and people put their whole public selves online, not just pieces.

@Alanna: Thanks for the good words!

Re the skeptical tweeters, I would have liked to link to the examples I cited--and there are more I could have mentioned--but for something like this, where someone could get in trouble, I prefer not to point the way!

That's the thing in the legal biz (and not just for nonprofits). You see a lot of stuff most people don't see or seldom notice for the dangerous things they are.

A few examples:

* A charity that submitted its 1023 with articles of incorporation that issued shares & distributed profits to shareholders

* A board "Perks Committee" to give directors vacations, money and other prizes to reward successful fundraising & programs

* Hosting repeated campaign rallies for a prominent donor -- but not for his opponent or politicians from the opposite party

I could go on. A good rule of thumb in my gig: if something sounds too dumb to have happened, it probably did.

I was hopeful when you linked the "audited for its page links" phrase that you had an actual example of that happening. But instead it's a link to more fear-mongering about this silly ruling. I agree that the ruling is worth a read and consideration, but much of what I've read has been a pretty severe overreaction. I wrote about that in a comment on this blog entry. If anyone hears of any actual page link audits happening, I'm very interested to hear about how this ruling gets practically implemented.

Additionally, I'm not sure that I buy all three of your examples above. If the Twitter account is primarily identified with the charity, then of course - this is way out of bounds. But if it's clearly an individual's account, even if that individual tweets primarily about the organization, isn't that a bit less clear?

As for your second example, Facebook's user rules put people in a bit of a bind. One account per real person, end of discussion - no firewall is legitimately available to you. So I can't have one account for work and one for personal, and my organization can't create an "account" per se; only Groups and Pages that are tied to individuals' profiles. So, if I have an account and use it to create a Facebook Page or Group for my org, I will be publicly identified as being the owner of that group or page. Does that then mean that all political content is verboten on my personal profile? I don't think so. I think it's pretty clear that if you click from my organization's Page through to my profile, that you're now seeing my profile, not my organization's, and that whatever is there is not necessarily done on behalf of the organization. Especially since the IRS officially endorses the "affiliations for identification only" work around, I think that the firewall you advocate needn't be so all powerful. Now, that said, there may be mission-based reasons to make the disconnect clearer and stonger; my organization is an advocacy organization and in addition to our legal obligations, our ability as individuals to get things done with legislators and other public officials must be taken into account. Our advocacy staff in particular are very careful not to publicly affiliate themselves with any campaigns even as inidividuals. But that's to ensure their professional effectiveness, not protect their employer's 501(c)(3) status.

Finally, on the charity message board - I think it probably depends on who's posting or encouraging those messages. I don't think that candidate-supportive messages by an organization's constituents are obviously off-limits. Certainly organization staff and officers should stay out of any such discussion, and any discussion shouldn't be limited to one candidate. But in the comment linked above, the poster and I consider briefly the impact of Federal legislation that protects providers of "interactive computer services" from being liable for the specific content that their users produce on 501(c)(3)s. I don't have a definitive answer, but it seems to me that actual Federal law trumps individual policy rulings by Federal agencies.

In short (heh), I think that orgs need to be smart and respectful of the limits that 501(c)(3) status places upon their activities without being over-reactive and ending up unecessarily stifling the individual expression of their officers and stakeholders.

@Thomas: Thanks for the comment!

More often than not a court will follow an agency's interpretation, so, silly or no, it's a useful piece of data when developing a risk management strategy.

The identification-only exception works only so long as the IRS perceives it as identification only. The agency tends to take a facts-and-circumstances approach to each situation, which is fake legal precision for "we call 'em as we see 'em."

Many organizations prefer to minimize risk rather than create a situation in which allowing folks to engage in arguably permissible activity creates an environment in which someone might clearly break the law. That's why I emphasized that charity managers have to consider more than just the IRS--they also have to think about what their own organization is willing to tolerate.

By the way, personally I support repealing the prohibition on campaign speech. It's unclearly defined, inconsistently enforced and contrary to the spirit of the First Amendment.

But like the drinking age and income tax, it is, alas, the law.

As an analogy for skeptics, consider the potential IRS response to ad--allowed to be placed free by a national newspaper--in which a charity leader identified themselves as such, referred folks to the charity's website, printed the charity's logo, used a charity email address, encouraged people to contribute to the charity, notified people of the charity's events, expressed a point-of-view on abortion and urged people to vote for the presidential candidate who agreed.

I would not advise an organization to do this.

I mean, really not advise.

The IRS has said that 501(c)(3) does not stop at the boundaries. As lawyers are apt to do, officials analogize to a familiar context.