So, my SRP advisor was arrested(Or how I learned about nonprofits and political advocacy)

This past Saturday, one of my onsite SRP advisors was arrested in Fountain Hills at protest blocking the road to a Donald Trump event. He was detained for 14 hours and then released. You may have seen his mugshot on the local news

I mention this because it ties in with the topic of this week's blog post, the political advocacy of nonprofits. Before I begin, however, I want to make a few things clear: This post is not in support or opposition to Donald Trump, nor do I want a discussion/argument over Trump himself. Also, Mike, my supervisor, was not at all acting in his capacity as executive director of DCC during the protest. Rather, he was participating in a protest organized by Puente Arizona, a migrant rights nonprofit.

With all that established, lets talk about nonprofits and the political advocacy. Due to their tax exempt status, non-profits face very strict rules in how they go about influencing politics, and these rules can vary, depending on nonprofit. For the purpose of this discussion,however, we are going to focus on two types of nonprofits: 501(c)3s and 501(c)4s. 501(c)3s are defined by the IRS as organizations with goals to provide "charitable, religious, educational, scientific, literary, testing for public safety, fostering national or international amateur sports competition, and preventing cruelty to children or animals." There is a noticeable lack of any explicit mentions of  political activity in that definition, and as a result, 501(c)3s are extremely limited in how they can influence the political process. Most significantly, they cannot participate in any election campaign. That means they cannot even issue a written statement in support or opposition of a candidate. However, they are allowed to educate and mobilize voters in the communities they serve, as long as they do so in a non biased and nonpartisan manner. For example, a 501(c)3, such as DCC, could publish a voter guide as long as it did not clearly favor one candidate over the other. 501(c)3s can also engage in a limited degree of legislative activities, more commonly known as lobbying. However, this lobbying cannot form a substantial part of the organization's activities. There are two tests to determine if 501(c)3 violates this rule: the substantial part test and the expenditure test. The substantial test, according to the IRS, is based off of a variety of factors, including the time a 501(c)3's compensated and volunteer workers spend on the lobbying and what percentage of its expenditures the 501(c)3 spends on lobbying. The expenditure test is more rigid and harder to explain, so I pasted the IRS table describing it:

If the amount of exempt purpose expenditures is:	Lobbying nontaxable amount is:
≤ $500,000	20% of the exempt purpose expenditures
>$500,00 but ≤ $1,000,000	$100,000 plus 15% of the excess of exempt purpose expenditures over $500,000
> $1,000,000 but ≤ $1,500,000	$175,000 plus 10% of the excess of exempt purpose expenditures over $1,000,000
>$1,500,000	$225,000 plus 5% of the exempt purpose expenditures over $1,500,000

If a 501(c)3 violates these rules, its tax exempt status is revoked by the IRS, which can be a huge blow for the organization, as all of its expenditures become taxable.

The second type of nonprofits discussed in this post are 501(c)4s. Their primary purpose is to maintain the social welfare of the communities they serve. As a result, they allowed more freedom to participate in the political process. They can lobby legislation related to the welfare of the community they serve. They can also participate in a candidate's election campaign, either in support or opposition. However, it cannot comprise a majority of their activities.

So what does this mean for DCC? Since they are a 501(c)3, they cannot officially engage in any explicit political advocacy. However, that does not mean they cannot influence their local government or focus on certain political issues. For example, if there was a candidate running on an anti-immigration and pro-deportation platform, DCC would be able to inform their local community about this candidate and his or her beliefs, as long as it is a nonpartisan manner(they can't take a side). DCC can also use its services to support other nonprofits(specifically 501(c)4s), that engage in political advocacy. For example, during the "Yes for Dysart" vote on whether to continue an override to fund Dysart Unified School District Schools, DCC lent its space to the Valley Interfaith Project(VIP), a 501(c)4 dedicated towards maintaining and raising school funding throughout the Valley. Using DCC's space as base of operations, VIP was able to run a door to door campaign throughout El Mirage. As cuts to education can particularly affect low income neighborhoods, DCC engaged in an indirect form of political advocacy by supporting groups that represent the interests of their clients. However, DCC cannot discriminate in how it offers its services. That means if a group opposed to the override want to use DCC's services in a similar way to VIP, DCC could not deny them.

Unlike DCC, whose primary goal is to provide services to the community of El Mirage, Puente(who organized the Donald Trump protest) seeks to represent and maintain the social welfare of their community, immigrants in Arizona. Therefore, they are classified as a 501(c)4. As a result, they can play a far more direct role in the political process, such as the protest they organized last Saturday against Donald Trump. However, they are not solely political in their methods, as that would violate IRS rules. Outside of their political campaigns, Puente also runs arts programs that help migrant communities express and describe their experiences and also organizes courses that educate migrants on their legal rights when detained by immigration enforcement officers.

That's the basics of political advocacy and nonprofits. In the future, I hope to expand on the relationship between the funding nonprofits receive and the political advocacy they engage, as well as the national role of nonprofits in the political process.

Week 5: Grants

This week, the majority of my research focused on grants and the grant writing process.  Therefore, I should probably talk about then, especially since they are such an important part of the nonprofit sector.

Grants are sums of money given by foundations to nonprofits to fund certain programs or, in the case of general support grants, the nonprofit as a whole. As they provide a means for a nonprofit to fund programs without having to engage in fundraising or collect dues its members, they are obviously very enticing. However, grants hold certain limitations that oftentimes makes it unwise for nonprofits to solely rely on them for funding. First and foremost, the vast majority of grant applications are denied. If and when a grant is awarded, the money can only be used for a specific program unless the grant is a general support grant, which are rare. Many grants are not renewed and even if they are, nonprofits can risk focusing too much on certain programs merely to ensure they receive the grant. Most important, however, is the fact that grants make nonprofits beholden not to the community which they serve, but rather the foundations which dole out grants. As a result, most nonprofits, such as DCC, try to draw funds from a variety of sources, from foundations to local fundraising.

The actual grant application process starts with researching foundations to ask for grants. Foundations focus on a certain issues(adult education, environmental awareness, etc.) and will hand over grants to nonprofits that runs programs that address such issues. For example, DCC handles adult education, human services, and youth education and applies for grants from groups such as Valley of the Sun United Way that have an interest addressing problems in those fields.

Once a potential foundation and grant have been identified, the grant proposal is drafted, which begins with developing the case statement. The case statement describes the nonprofit applying for the grant, what issues the group addresses, and how the nonprofit hopes to address the issues. The case statement also includes information about the groups history, structure, and financials. The case statement is not include in the actual grant proposal; its more of a reference for when nonprofits have to describe themselves when applying for grants.

Once the case statement is finished, the cover page and executive summary, which briefly outlines the project the nonprofit hopes to fund with the grant, is written. Generally, the cover page does not exceed a page and serves to briefly summarize the goals of the nonprofit. Next, the grant proposal should further elaborate upon the issue which the nonprofit hopes to address, outline the organizational structure of the nonprofit along with its history and successes, and its goals and strategies.  The proposal should also include a budget for the program, as foundations prefer to how money is being raised to help run the program they are being asked to contribute.  Some foundations also require extra documents, such as the names of the nonprofits board members or a copy of the IRS letter listing the nonprofits status as tax exempt. The final part of the grant proposal is the cover letter, which, since it is generally the first part of the proposal read, tries to establish a relationship between the nonprofit and the foundation.

Once a grant is submitted, it can take often months for a response. Usually, that response will be a denial. However, if the grant is awarded, the process does not end. Nonprofits have to file regular reports with foundations regarding the status of the programs that their grants are funding. These reports include information on how successful the program is as well as what the grant money is being used for the program. Furthermore, effort has to be made to maintain a relationship between the foundation that provided the grant, so that they may be more willing to renew the grant.

That is the basics of the grant application process. There is probably a lot more I could go into, but I think I will save that for a later blog post, which I can also hopefully combine with some of the personal experience of the staff at DCC in regards to applying for grants themselves.
Sources
Robinson, A. (2004). Grassroots grants: An activist's guide to grantseeking. San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass.

Week 4: Surveys

This week I began drafting my survey to administer to DCC's clients. To help me do so, I used resources such as a guide by the University of Wisconsin-Madison on the fundamentals of survey writing. The survey had two goals: to determine the demographics of the community DCC helps and to figure out how satisfied the community is with that service. Considering DCC offers a multitude of services, my survey could easily pass 50 questions(which it did in its first draft). However, as I wanted to minimize the response bias of my survey, I needed to limit my questions to a maximum of 20 questions. To do so, I condensed several of my questions and allowed for more opened ended answers. At the same time, I ensured that the instructions for each question were clear, sometimes to point of redundancy, so that the none of the respondents misinterpret the questionnaire reduce the reliability and validity of my results. Thankfully, I was able to reduce my draft to about 15 questions, albeit a few more may added or cut as the survey is reviewed by my advisors at both BASIS and DCC. Hopefully, I can begin administering the survey the week after next.
I also began reading some literature one of my supervisors at DCC, Mike Cassidy, recommended I read so that I can better understand the relationship between nonprofits like DCC and the communities they serve directly. One of the most interesting pieces I read was from a book "The Revolution Will Not Be Funded" which discusses the dysfunctions and contradictions of modern nonprofits in a collection of essays written by those who have worked in the nonprofit sector. One of the major focuses of the book is on how the nonprofit sector has become increasingly corporatized, with foundations focusing more and more on obtaining grants and not on actually helping and empowering their community. As nonprofits have become increasingly businesslike, the book argues, they lose their power to bring about real social change as they begin to treat the communities they serve as victims.  It also draws a contrast with the current state of the nonprofit sector in the US with Latin American social and political movements, such as the Landless Workers Movement, that eschew a traditional hierarchy and are "horizontal based", meaning they seek a group consensus.
Finally, I spent the majority of this week at DCC reorganizing the filing system of their executive director, Mike. Despite sounding deathly boring, it was actually a pretty interesting process, mainly because it allowed me another insight into the inner machinations of nonprofit management. Most of what I sorted through was junk that Mike threw away, but some of it was pretty interesting, such as the partner resources from other nonprofits that DCC would refer people to when they needed help. The ecosystem of nonprofits is quite fascinating to learn about, which I will go into in a future blog post.