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Welcome to tony martignetti non-profit radio big non-profit ideas for the other ninety five percent. I’m your aptly named host and it’s friday, september twenty third, two thousand eleven i certainly hope you were with me last week when we talked about learning office lease lessons. First we talked through the walk through how do you find the best space and use different spaces to strategically head into your lease negotiations? My guest was george grace, who has done this work for dozens of non-profits then what least terms do you need to be careful about? And what are the negotiating points? I was joined by attorney robert j smith and kate piela, executive director of dance new amsterdam, and we talked through the dance companies less than desirable lease to bring out lessons to help you get the best lease next time this week, it’s prospect research on women donors recorded at the fund-raising day conference in june. Samantha cohen of the american civil liberties union is going to reveal how tow reveal reveal how to reveal wth e-giving potential for your female prospects that is often hidden and learning lobbying limitations are legal contributors jean takagi and emily chan explained the limitations on lobbying by non-profits what activities are lobbying, how much can you do, and how do you report all that on tony’s, take two in between the segments, thinking is underrated. My block post this week, the aptly named host of tony martignetti non-profit radio. We’re going to take a break. I hope you’ll stay with us and then prospect research on women donors. You’re listening to the talking alternative network. Are you suffering from aches and pains? Has traditional medicine let you down? Are you tired of taking toxic medications, then come to the double diamond wellness center and learn how our natural methods can help you, too? He’ll call us now at to one to seven to one eight, one eight, three that’s two one two, seven to one eight, one eight, three or find us on the web at www dot double diamond wellness dot com. We look forward to serving you. Is your marriage in trouble? Are you considering divorce? Hello, i’m lawrence bloom, a family law attorney in new york and new jersey. No one is happier than the day their divorce is final. My firm can help you. We take the nasty out of the divorce process and make people happy. Police call a set to one, two, nine six four three five zero two for a free consultation. That’s a lawrence h bloom two, one, two, nine, six, four, three, five zero two. We make people happy. Hey, are you crazy listeners looking to boost your business? Why not advertise on talking alternative with very reasonable rates? Interested simply email at info at talking alternative dot com. Hi there and welcome back right now i have a pre recorded segment for you from june at fund-raising day in new york, we talked with samantha cohen of the american civil liberties union about prospect research on women donors hears that pre recorded sessions welcome back to tony martignetti non-profit radio coverage of fund-raising day two thousand eleven at the marriott marquis in new york city. My guest right now is samantha cohen. She is director of principal giving at the american civil liberties union. Samantha welcome, welcome. Thank you. Pleasure to have you samantha’s topic is prospect researchers research on women donors how to research female donors and out of female research female, major and planned e-giving donors what is the importance of females in individual giving? Let’s start with that, samantha. Well, i think it’s very important to realize that women are outliving man, and at the end of the day, the wealth transfer is going from the man to the women. So a large proportion of e-giving will be directed by webbing, women, both outright and very much a steak gaps. Is it often hard to find the what the wealth of women? Is it often? In the husband’s name now the deceased husband’s name or is that a problem? That certainly can be a problem, but you can you can find some of the resources. I think the key with the research is to pay very close attention to the holistic picture when you’re doing a profile, not just looking at the particular name on the real estate records, but looking at all of the real estate records, looking at the names on the e-giving history when you could look at it as a whole, you get a much better sense of what the individual. Okay, so you’re advocating holistic prospect research? Absolutely okay, not only looking at the financial records you’re you’re part of the workshop was really about using the prospect research to on on women to best advantage, but what do you as a gift officer? What do you like to see as the product that’s that comes from the prospect researcher? So i am very dependent on prospect research. Sure, i am certainly interested in the wealth indicators i’m looking at the estimated wealth capacity, the gift capacity, but i am as interested in the indicators that tell me about e-giving. Priorities. So i’ll give you a very good example. We had a fabulous case study that i talked about today, and the research showed some great wealth. All of the real estate was in the husband’s name, all of the giving history was in both of their names and e-giving seemed to be to certain extent schizophrenic it seemed to be all too human and health services and education for half the guests, and the other half of the gifts were women’s rights and reproductive rights, and that didn’t make sense holistically. So i use that to drive a lot of questions, asking the couple individually what their priorities were came to find out the only thing they shared wass thie, my organization, and that, in fact, we were their single biggest shared priority, which, when i looked at their other giving based on research, were five figure gives suggested to me that there was a seven figure gift for us so that’s a great example of your talking about researching female prospects, but again, holistic approach. You have to be talking to the husband as well, if he’s still living? Absolutely, absolutely. What about other family? Are you often? Involved bringing in other family members aside from the spouse, we are very involved in doing multigenerational giving, and we actually talk sometimes two, three and four generations of families and it’s very interesting that families, when we’re dealing with wealth at the top one percent top ten percent that those families often erm having formal meetings, formal discussions and learning about who the power players are within those discussions within those families is incredibly valuable. We had done on older, older child, for instance, very influential to the mother and father. Absolutely. We had done some research and found that the man was in the health insurance business very, very wealthy. All of the money was his, and he had generated it. But in conversations with him came to find out that the family, he, his wife and the children make the decisions as a family, but that it’s, very democratic and the women in the family actually usually out vote the math. So instead of continuing to meet with him alone, i asked if i could come and meet with the women. So the role of women is not only because greater longevity no, not at all, they’re making a lot of the decision now you said you are very interested in the wealth indicators. What do you like? Sort of specifically like to see from prospect research in as you’re preparing? I want to see if there is political gether. If there is political giving, i’m looking not just amount, but who and what they’re giving it to. I want to see real estate, i want to see a publicly traded company information i’m also interested in news articles about why companies were founded as particularly valuable when i’m dealing with a woman and she has owned and founded her own company, finding out more about why she created that company and they’re often profiles business journals and community journals. That information could be very directive into how these in having these conversations is there. Is there value in? Well, clearly there is value in the financial information. Are you reluctant to meet with someone before you have some prospect research on them? What’s your what’s, your personal pride election that way so i want to have something i want to know some of what i’m going into, but i’m not going to have the lack of that information stop me from meeting. So with some people, you confined very little and some you confined, nothing is not going to stop me from having the meeting. There is nothing more powerful than standing face to face with someone and asking the questions, that thing. The thing you’re listening to the talking alternate network. E-giving thank you. Good. Are you stuck in your business or career, trying to take your business to the next level, and it keeps hitting a wall? This is sam liebowitz, the conscious consultant. I will help you get to the root cause of your abundance issues and help move you forward in your life. Call me now and let’s. Create the future you dream of. Two, one, two, seven, two, one, eight, one, eight, three, that’s to one to seven to one, eight one eight three. The conscious consultant helping conscious people. Be better business people. Dahna hi, this is psychic medium. Betsy cohen, host of the show. The power of intuition. Join me at talking alternative dot com mondays at eleven a. M call in for a free psychic reading. Learn how to tune into your intuition to feel better and to create your optimum life. I’m here to guide you and to assist you in creating life that you deserve. Listen every monday at eleven a, m on talking alternative dot com. Are you feeling overwhelmed in the current chaos of our changing times? A deeper understanding of authentic astrology can uncover solutions in every area of life. After all, metaphysics is just quantum physics, politically expressed, i and montgomery taylor and i offer lectures, seminars and private consultations. For more information, contact me at monte m o nt y at r l j media. Dot com talking alternative radio twenty four hours a day. Hi, i’m kate piela, executive director of dance, new amsterdam. And you’re listening to tony martignetti non-profit radio. Big non-profit ideas for the other ninety five percent. And how important do you find the meeting to be in feeding back to prospect research? I think that’s something that has been missing a lot in the business there’s a lot of push out of information from research officers are not very good at sharing it back. We tend to like to do a full circle, so i’ll come back and say, i heard that they were very involved, maybe in a different country, maybe in a different state. Can we do some research there? I’ll bring that back, our researcher will do more information, and it becomes his fabulous feedback loop that includes the donor that just creates this beautiful fall fall because there’s there’s nothing better than sitting with someone right over a meal for an hour, hour and a half or in their office for thirty minutes that i’ve always thought that’s the incredibly valuable prospect research you’re finding out wealth of information you find out more than you ever can from the database, and it sounds like you’re using the written material when you do have it to inform the questions that you’re going to ask, right? I mean, you’re you’re running the meeting? Absolutely. Talk a little about running them, running the prospect meeting for us. So for me, for the meeting, i don’t want to spend a lot of time talking about mission or about the organization. I already know the organization, they often know the organization and with our members, they’ve known it probably longer and better than i ever could. So i want to know about that. I want to ask questions like, how do you make your philanthropic decisions? Why do you give to us? Why did you first give to us? Do you and your husband make the same decision to have the same have the same priorities? Those of the questions i want to ask and learn about when do you make your decisions? I wanted to drill down and find out, are they ultimately are their assets that they can give that we couldn’t find? Have they considered including real estate, how they concluded considered including in a state gift? So i normally spend probably two thirds of the meeting asking those sorts of questions, finding out a lot more about what they do, why they do it, and then i’m going to make a solicitation, i don’t like meeting without making the ass outstanding gift officer. Of course, you mentioned the hard to find assets. What kinds of questions do you ask to try to find out about what’s? Not so public. So one of the things that we’re seeing a lot of now as the economy is starting to finally take up is an increase in pose cos they’re starting to go public again. Let’s, identify that now. Tony martignetti non-profit radio we have george in jail. I would hate for you to be subjected. Jog, jail, right? I don’t have my keys. I sometimes have warden. I don’t have them. So just define aipo for people. So when i po it’s, an initial public offering and it’s when a private company is listed on a public exchange, the dow jones, the nasdaq on a public exchange so the public can invest in it, brings in a huge influx of cash to the business and becomes often a liquidity event on opportunity for the owner before the company was private to get some of their investment out. Okay. And though so, there could be some significant tax benefits that can be syntax considerations if you think of it as a year in which you have more money. What do you do with that money? So so how do you how do you get to dahna? Well, you would know, i guess, from the research that they do own a privately held business, i will and that’s normally about all i know. Okay, so how do you go from there? I will ask questions about how the business is doing. What’s going on with the business from research, i will also often see an uptick in marketing material. So all of a sudden, there are more news articles on the business, there’s, more press and there’s no reason why, after ten years in business, they should be in every business journal for the last six months. It’s suggest to me they’re trying to build their brand and something is going on, so i’ll actually ask about that. And then at that point, someone could often say, well, we’re on the verge of going public, and then i can have a whole different conversation you want to give stock now, do you want to give stock after there’s a whole different conversation? So i’m looking for information. To know where the business is. Conversely, it could also be looking tio here that someone is divesting themselves of a private business. They’re retiring, they’re going to give it to their kids, that’s a whole different liquidity event. So i’m looking for those and that’s information that i confined sometimes for research, but much more from the conversations that’s an outstanding example of using the research to go much, much deeper in your meeting this’s tony martignetti non-profit radio coverage of the fund-raising fund-raising day two thousand eleven with samantha cohen, director of principle you have the right principle giving at the american civil liberties union, and we’re talking about prospect research for females with female prospects and using that using that research wisely, i’ll ask you sort of ah, you know, softball question, what else would you like to say about using the valuable research? I think that we need to use the research we have. We need to be careful. We need to be analytical in that research, but we can’t depend solely on recent okay, lack of research shouldn’t stop you from getting out the door. That’s right on. How much of your time would you say you spend out of the office not nearly enough, but i would like to be out of the office at least seventy five percent of the time. Okay? And what is it that keeps you in when you’d like to be out or if you if you don’t want to say that so much, what strategies do you have for getting more time out of the office in with donors and prospects? How do you minimize that office? Time to get you more out a targeted portfolio, so really weeding out the prospects in the in the portfolio that aren’t going to produce. So i’m doing a lot more qualifying meetings to look at people to figure out know this person is not going to be a major donor, and i’m removing them from the portfolio so that my portfolio is becoming much more targeted, which allows me to spend more time with fewer people, produce better results, okay? And as you’re as your meeting with those better prospects, let’s, go back to the cycle ing back of information to the prospect research team. You use a call report for that if you have a sit down what’s the what’s the mechanism for getting that information back to prospect research. So the formal mechanism is a contact report that i write within twenty four hours of the meeting meeting think memory things get lost, so i write it down very quickly. I get that into our database very quickly, and then i’ll often go and sit down with our prospect researcher when i’ve had a particularly illuminating meeting and share with her the types of things you wouldn’t necessarily put into writing. Yes, okay, and might that conversation include people that the person knows who? Maybe a c l u knows or doesn’t know your prospect knows them absolutely connectors and new prospects are things that regularly come up in our durney meetings that we share not just one on one with our prospect researchers, but as a major gifts team, we often have conversations about that and you’re your portfolio what’s the what’s, the age range of your portfolio. I have donors in their twenties, i have donors in their nineties, so we are full, full across the board are average, doner is in their sixties, but the age of our large donors is quickly decreasing, so we’re getting over forties and fifties, it has as much to do with our targeting and multi generational conversations. Is anything else? Okay? The conversations, the meetings that you have with women let’s, let’s focus on women that’s the subject of your seminar women in their eighties nineties how do you how do you talk about there? Differed or plant e-giving how do you open that conversation with them? So when somebody reaches their eighties and nineties, they’ve often already got their plans sorted out. So it’s a little late to be asking to be included in someone’s estate, although we certainly wouldn’t shy away from making the ask it is a little late, but if we if we talk about people women in there, maybe a little younger in their sixties and seventies, we’re talking about a similar generation. I’m often asking questions about what they want to leave behind as a legacy, and i’m asking questions about do they want their gifts and their legacy to reflect the life that the woman maybe shared with her husband? Is it about honoring his memory? Is it about honoring him or, as we often find, once the husband passes away, the woman has a different focus and wants to make gifts that matter. So asking about priorities and legacy and what they what message they want to leave behind to their families into the world that’s often what the conversation is about how do you manage it if you’re in that situation the husband has recently, he passed. Well, let me ask, is most of your portfolio women, or is there another proportion? I would say it’s probably sixty five percent women, okay, they’re slightly slightly when you’re when you’re dealing with a man or a woman whose spouses recently deceased, and you suspect that it was the spouse who was the primary giver, my mary-jo donorsearch too american civil liberties union. How do you approach that surviving spouse? Wait, i think the most important thing is we do approach them, we don’t assume because the spouse who was the instigator of the e-giving has deceased, we don’t see him that e-giving can’t continue, and i think that’s a very key point, you don’t just let people go away exactly, and we don’t leave them alone for months and years on end. Obviously you need to be respectful and not be there the next week, but we want to let them know that we’re still they are and that we still care and we’re still interested in them and so we try to have a meeting pretty quickly, and often it becomes a nostalgia conversation about this, about the husband, about why he gave, which will allow us to talk about what do you share those some of those same values? Are you as interested as your husband wass in civil liberties? That conversation can lead us while my husband was interested in a particular area, but i’m more interested in this area of your work, so we can recon target our messaging that’s good that’s a home run. They’re still interest in your work. Just a different part of it. Absolutely or we may find they may not be interested at all, at which point we can talk about the possibility of a gift in memory of they’re loved their loved one. Alright, so still keeping the door open until they absolutely say no more, no more giving to your organization, but it’s it’s nass ity tour you don’t really give up until you actually shown the door. How many years do you have in individual giving? I’ve been doing individual giving for fifteen years. Shows senior out senior senior gift officer c o l c a c l u is lucky to have you, samantha. Thank you. This is tony martignetti non-profit radio coverage of fund-raising day two thousand eleven. I’ve been with samantha cohen. She is director of principle e-giving yes, at the american civil liberties union and samantha, i want to thank you very much for being a guest was a pleasure. It was a pleasure. Thank you very much. That was my pre recorded segment from june fund-raising day here in new york city. Right now, we’ll take a break, then, after the break, it’s, tony’s, take two, and then after that, learning, lobbying limitations with our regular legal contributors, so stay with me. You’re listening to the talking alternative network. Yes. Are you feeling overwhelmed in the current chaos of our changing times? A deeper understanding of authentic astrology can uncover solutions in every area of life. After all, metaphysics is just quantum physics, politically expressed hi and montgomery taylor and i offer lectures, seminars and private consultations. For more information, contact me at monte m o nt y at r l j media. Dot com are you concerned about the future of your business or career? Would you like it all to just be better? Well, the way to do that is to better communication, and the best way to do that is training from the team at improving communications. This is larry sharp, host of the ivory tower radio program and director at improving communications. Does your office needs better leadership, customer service sales, or maybe better writing, are speaking skills. Could they be better at dealing with confrontation conflicts, touchy subjects all are covered here at improving communications. If you’re in the new york city area, stop by one of our public classes, or get your human resource is in touch with us. Website is improving communications, dot com, that’s, improving communications, dot com, improve your professional environment, be more effective, be happier, and make more money improving communications, that’s the answer. Hey, all you crazy listeners looking to boost your business? Why not advertise on talking alternative with very reasonable rates? Interested simply email at info at talking alternative dot com hello there. Welcome back, it’s. Time for tony’s. Take two. My block post this week is thinking is underrated back in what for me were dark days when i was a lawyer practicing law i usedto have to account for my time in six minute increments tenths of an hour and there were lots of billing codes for things like court appearances and drafting motion for summary judgment and responding to motion to dismiss and telephone conferences. But there was never a billing code four thinking about your case, and i always thought that a lawyer’s best contribution to a client’s situation, which is usually a problem situation not always, but usually would be thinking, i’ve spent my time thinking about your case strategically and the attorneys who were involved in the other parties that are involved and your needs. And but there was never a billing code for thinking, so my day’s got much brighter because i only practiced law for about two years. And now, in the brighter sonny your days, i do a lot of thinking, and i don’t have to account for my time anymore in increments of six minutes and that’s what the block post? Is all about encouraging you to think just spend time thinking actively consciously about things that are moving and important to you, whether their personal or professional. In the blood post, i mentioned a lot of things just as examples that i spend time thinking of an and that i spend a lot of time on vacation and also on the subways, actively just giving thought to things in my life and that’s. What the block post thinking is underrated is about encouraging you to do the same, and that is tony’s take two for friday, september twenty third, two thousand eleven want to welcome jean takagi and emily chan are regular legal contributors. Jean takagi is principal of neo the non-profit and exempt organizations law group in san francisco. He edits the popular non-profit law blawg at non-profit law blogged dot com. Emily chan is an attorney at neo-sage, the principal contributor to the no non-profit law blawg, gene and emily. Welcome back. I think it’s a pleasure to have you. We’re talking this week about lobbying limitations. So what? Gene are some of the activities that could constitutent lobbying just so people are are conscious of what they might be doing that could become lobbying great question tony and way to think about a lot of wealth, so jobs loving is essentially attempting to influence legislation and the activities that might constitute lobbying our writing legislation, trying to meet with legislators or legislative bodies and influence how they might act on a proposed bill and things of that that nature. We might do that with a ballot measure and go out to the people or talkto our members or the public and tell them to contact their legislatures about specific bill constitutent ok, and can also include the use of social media and blogging. Absolutely, tony, great point, so blogging is just on dh social media use is just another way to communicate, and if you’re communicating to legislative bodies or legislators, legislators better have have their own social media sites or have their own blog’s and websites, and many of them do that khun b lobbying and if you are getting your members or you’re encouraging the public to engage in the same types of activities to influence legislation and contact legislators, that could all be lobbying using social media and blog’s and twitter and facebook and all the rats, okay, so i want to come back to social media in a few minutes after we’ve talked about some of the some more details because that’s that’s really interesting and also the point of the possibility of someone posting on non-profits site and whether that might be considered lobbying, but i think we need to do a little detail work first, and emily, there are laws, there are no, they’re not laws yet there are bills and acts under consideration now that non-profits might be interested in commenting on one way or another, right? Yes, tony so loving is getting some renewed or re energized attention as of late because of some things that were seeing on both the federal and state level recently on the federal level, there was the budget control act that was fined and that’s calling for one point five trillion dollars cut decided by that twelve person bipartisan committee, and certainly there are many non-profits better concern that they’ll be at the chopping block with that cut. Additionally, we just saw the proposed job will act. I’m spoken about which will limit the charitable deduction for certain we’ll be individuals, and then on the state level, we’ve seen some pushback in massachusetts. The attorney general earlier this year tried to propose legislation that would require prior approval by the attorney general’s office before non-profit could compensate executives, but these are the types of legislation that non-profits may want teo voice an opinion on or put out communications that reflect the view on that, encourage others to contact legislators or for themselves to go ahead and do that as well. Right? So we’re not just talking about federal law, but also and any state initiatives that could impact non-profits and that they might want to comment on and emily so how do we decide how much lobbying a non-profit can do? So in the internal revenue code for public charities under five, oh, one, seat three, it says god, public charities cannot engage in more than an insubstantial amount of lobbying and the default test for that is really all facts and circumstances. The irs will look at everything, including the time spent the resource is such expenditures on decide whether the organization has now stepped over that line into substantial lobbying activity that really leaves many organizations uncertain and scared in many. Ways, because there is no strict percentage or limit on that. So what organizations can do is elect to be measured by something called an expenditure test, which is under section five a one eighth of the internal revenue code. And unlike the people in this one, is measured only on expenditures. So it really gives organizations a better gauge as how to measure their own lobbying limits within compliance with the law. Okay, holy cow. All right, so that’s a ton of stuff. So? So you have to do lobbying that’s? Well, i shouldn’t say less than substantial because that’s not what’s in the code. So you have to do lobbying, that’s insubstantial or or less if you’re a five a one c three. Right? Okay. Cancel amount of total activities. Another way too. Wait, i’m sorry. Say that one more time in a substantial amount of total activities. Ok? And so then there are two different tests you’re saying to measure whether you’re you’re meeting that threshold or your or your exceeding it, right? Is that that’s standard? I should say that standard or you’re exceeding it. Is that right? Yes. That’s correct. The default. Substantial part. Okay. There’s the expenditure testament organizations can elect to be measured by filing a one page form. Okay, before we go into too much detail. So let’s talk about the substantial part test you say substantial, substantial part of what substantial part as activities. So it goes back to the language and five oh one c three and saying that organization can army engaged in an insubstantial amount of lobbying and there’s no exact equation as to how the irs will do this, it will just look at all facts and circumstances. Okay? And you said that this is the default test. So careful around jargon jail, because for lawyers, default is very clear. But for others may not necessarily be. That means that everybody’s covered by this test, unless they choose the other one, right? Yes. That’s correct. And then that’s, when they would file a form form fifty seven sixty eight and elect into the expenditure. Okay. And jean, let me turn to you and ask when should a non-profit or what types of non-profits should try tio or should apply to be under the expenditure test. Well, it’s going to be most non-profits tony that are going to be benefiting from from falling under that test. The five oh one h expenditure test really works out for all charities, particularly if their annual budgets are under seventeen million dollars a year. And i would think that that’s going to cover most of the people listening, okay, organization and how do you come up with that number? What is that? But under the substantial part test that emily was talking about again, if you don’t do anything, and that’s how the irs is going to look at your lobbying and they look at everything assembly was talking about and the general rule of thumb that people use that professionals use and trying to give guidance. Tio non-profits is saying that well, there is an old court case that five percent of your organizations, time and effort spent on lobbying. That’s not substantial. So it’s okay to do up to that amount, but anything over them that we’re not really sure of. So if we took a look at five percent that’s that’s going to be not a lot of money for a small charity for, you know, a million dollar charity we’re talking about a cz little as a five thousand dollars when we go into the expenditure test, their specific limits that we know we would need teo comply with in order to stay under that threshold, and the limits are pretty generous. Tony twenty percent of your first five hundred thousand dollars in expenditures in furtherance of your mission would be insubstantial. So that’s one hundred thousand of your first five hundred thousand dollars that you spend would be insubstantial fifteen percent of the next five hundred thousand ten percent of the next five percent of the next. It ends up being tapped at one million dollars. So when we look at that one million dollar mark, and then we go back to the substantial part, tess, we know that at about seventeen million dollars that’s when the substantial part tests and expenditure test looks to be fairly, even if we’re just looking at that five percent mark as the rule of fun rule of thumb with substantial part test okay, biggest benefit of the bible in h expenditure tests for most smaller non-profits tony is that all volunteer time spent on lobbying doesn’t count of lobbying? Volunteer time doesn’t spend doesn’t count, so so you can have lots of volunteers going out and knocking on lots of doors or leafleting and doing things, and none of that time counts. None of the expense of that time counts toward the calculation. Well, none of the volunteers time town on that calculations are only expenditures. That you might have in that equation would be factoring what staff time that you might be paying for to organize the volunteers and maybe some printing materials. But for low cost or no cost lobbying measures, the five of one age expenditure test is of great benefit. Okay, we’re going to take a break, and my voice just cracked like i’m fourteen years old, and when we return, we’re going continue learning, lobbying limitations. This is excellent detail to stay with us. Talking alternative radio, twenty four hours a day. Are you stuck in your business or career trying to take your business to the next level, and it keeps hitting a wall? This is sam lebowitz, the conscious consultant. I will help you get to the root cause of your abundance issues and help move you forward in your life. Call me now and let’s. Create the future you dream of. Two, one, two, seven, two, one, eight, one, eight, three, that’s to one to seven to one, eight one eight three. The conscious consultant helping hunters. People be better business people. Dahna this is tony martignetti aptly named host of tony martignetti non-profit radio big non-profit ideas for the other ninety five percent technology fund-raising compliance, social media, small and medium non-profits have needs in all these areas. My guests are expert in all these areas and mohr. Tony martignetti non-profit radio fridays, one to two eastern on talking alternative broadcasting do you want to enhance your company’s web presence with an eye catching and unique website design? Would you like to incorporate professional video marketing mobile marketing into your organization’s marketing campaign? Mission one on one media offers a unique marketing experience that will set you apart from your competitors, magnify your brand exposure and enhance your current marketing effort. Their services include video production and editing, web design, graphic design photography, social media management and now introducing mobile marketing. Their motto is. We do whatever it takes to make our clients happy. Contact them today. Admission one one media dot com talking. Lively conversation. Top trends. Sound advice, that’s, tony martignetti non-profit radio. And i’m ken berger from charity navigator. Welcome back to the show i’m with our regular legal contributors, jean takagi and emily chan. We’re talking about lobbying limitations. Gene, you mentioned that where this five percent is based on an old case. So how come it’s ok to rely on this old case? Because we don’t have anything else, tony so we don’t really have anything else to rely on. There may be some private letter rulings, but theres so specifics with facts and circumstance is that they don’t really touch on an overall level anymore. So all we have is that old court case that’s at five percent of time and resource is that that was insubstantial and okay, okay, and you invoked a lot of mathematics. You know, i went to law school because i’m poor at math, so but i was able to follow your explanation, but that’s about as far as i can go, so don’t bring in any algebra or anything. Just keep it tio addition and subtraction. Andi, i’ll be okay. So and what is the form that non-profit uses to elect the the more advantageous one that’s for small non-profits the five oh one h test it’s form fifty seven. Sixty eight and has emily mentioned one page form super easy to fill out one of the easiest forms that the irs has? Okay, fifty seven, sixty eight there’s no t on the end of that it’s not fifty seven. Sixty eighty no tony from from the earned income was that elearning yeah, i like the tee form. See if you can find some more of those that have a tv in them. Okay? And then let’s just based our conversations on those. So so we have to do research. Well, you do find all the forms and have teas, and then we’ll talk about that that’ll be the subject for future future shows that you’re on so let’s see, emily, how do we oh, so let’s, talk a little about social media now, okay, so now we know the two different tests. So emily suppose somebody posts puts a block post aren’t just comments on a block and a non-profit advocating, you know, opposition to the charitable deduction limitation that you were that you mentioned earlier. Does that fall under lobbying? Tony it’s really going to depend it’s going to depend on the facts and circumstances around that situation? Social media is certainly a place where the risk is there, um, and it really is going to fall on how the organisation is monitoring its own social media. So, for example, what kind of user agreements it has if it has a moderation policy, the dance that an organization takes on the way that they control their own platform is going to possibly affect whether the irs decides to say that that’s lobbying and challenge them and as well how courts are going to interpret the factions. There’s actually a really good resource that recently came out from alliance for justice called influencing public policy in the digital age. And it’s, a resource precisely on social media and a lobbying an election related activities. Ok, is that alliance for justice dot org’s? Do you know it isn’t free and it came out okay. Okay. It’s. Always troubling when you know when you when you guys say and i think this related to earned income also it depends on the facts and circumstances. That’s, it’s, it’s. So nebulous though, hyre. And you also said emily it it depends on the way the non-profit is monitoring their blawg. What do you mean there and could you could talk a little bit louder for us, too. There are different schools of thought as teo, how organizations should approach monitoring their own platform. So on one hand, organizations can decide to have moderating policies where they say they will take down information, not violate their community by lines of their terms. And if something were to happen, such as lobbying by a user who came on, you know, they may be able to show good faith, but at the same time they take on that responsability and apparently the administrative burden of monitoring that forum. On the other hand, there are organizations that choose not to moderate the forms, and they just put out a disclaimer that they don’t moderate it. They don’t stand behind necessarily what’s being put on there and it’s not a reflection of the organization. While that does take away some of that burden, then of going through in filtering the comments, it may be more difficult than to show that they are taking the responsibility to ensure that they’re not engaging in substantial amounts of lobbying lobbying, and it also creates a bigger risk that then, you know the free for all on their forum for whoever comes across it and whatever they want right there, you can’t just say we don’t monitor it and it’s not the opinion of of our non-profit that’s not going to be good enough? You can say that, but there is a question as to what position that puts you in certainly the law and the irs. They’re trying to catch up with these new avenues of social media and how to apply these very traditional rules to these new forms of media that, you know, create opportunities that weren’t previously available. Yeah, the laws are not keeping up with the changing digital landscape, certainly let’s. See so jean, did you find any there’s tea forms? Gene on the break, by the way, looking way had a two minute break it and i thought you come up with half a dozen by them. So there must be a reporting mechanism. If we’re concerned about the substantiality of lobbying activity, there must be some way that non-profit have to report backto irs. Absolutely so the form nine ninety is their annual information returns and whether you form filed the form nine, ninety or the nine ninety easy version you have to file a schedule c, which reports all of your lobbying activity and there’s two ways to report it. So if you are under that substantial part test, you didn’t do that that five o n h election and you fall into the substantial part test. You have to last her a lot of questions about whether used volunteers and what other resource is air being used for lobbying? But if you file that five o one h election, as i recommended for most organizations, especially smaller organizations, then you just record your expenditures and on the social media issue that really works out to your benefit as well, tony, because how much money did it cost to lobby when he just got a comment back from somebody that put in a lobbying position? It might have cost you almost nothing, right? So then you don’t worry about it so much if you paid that election and we’re talking here about the tax implications. But there is another federal requirement around lobbying activities to reaching that’s, right? So if you’re gonna be live ing on federal issues, you may also have to look at the registration and reporting requirements in the lobbying disclosure act, and those can be fairly complicated, but those air outside of sort of the tax requirements of around lobbying and you’ve got to talk with attorneys who understand the lobbying disclosure act on the federal level and possibly if you’re looking at state level issues or local level issues, you’ve got additional registration reporting with state and local authorities as well. Okay, so, uh, substantial, and what about the let’s? Say the pastor? This comes up in new york, a lot of pastor on a pulpit around election time on dh he or she is advocating for either one of the one of the ballot initiatives for against or for or against a candidate. Jean how does that fall into what we’re talking about? Well, when they’re talking about a ballot initiative, then we’re talking about a form of lobbying. So in the case of a pastor preaching to his congregation or even to the broader community we’re talking about typically grassroots flopping, which is lobbying where you’re going out to the people and telling them how to vote or tell their legislatures on how to vote sametz i’m going to actually back-up one step, however, if the people on a ballot initiative, if it the people themselves of the lawmakers and not the legislators, legislative bodies, then that would be called direct lobbying because you’re going directly to the people who make the law the people themselves. Well, but if you’re on the if you’re on the pulpit, you’re talking teo anaugh audience of congregants, and they’re all voters. What is that then? It’s still lobbying? So if you’re if you’re got a position on the law and telling them how to vote on the law, it would be lobbying the one thing that you mentioned that might be a segway for another show tony is, is when pastor on the pulpit start telling you who to elect for public office. Okay, now we’re talking about candidates, not issues, right? Okay? And in that case now we’ve got an election hearing activity and five a onesie three organizations, including churches, are prohibited from engaging in that type of political activity where they’re endorsing a candidate. Okay, that does sound very good. Why don’t we talk about that next month? Because there’s an election in november so we can talk about election earing and the limitations around that in october has that sound sounds perfect and, well, look way need that. Yeah, yeah. The subject is off the table if there’s no tea forme because tony form. So forget about it. You know we’ll do election next time. That’s. Emily chan and jean takagi emily gene, thank you very much. My pleasure, gene is principal of neo, the non-profit exempt organizations law group in san francisco. And emily chan is an attorney at neo. I want to thank both of them and also my first guest, samantha cohen from the american civil liberties union and all the very thoughtful people at fund-raising day who enabled us to have that booth on the exhibit floor to do the interview with samantha and and a bunch of others. Those interviews have been playing for the past couple months next week. It’s employee engagement deshele dorsey from changing our world is with me to talk about how your non-profit khun gained from company programs in giving, volunteering, mentoring and even loaning executives and also our regular prospect, researcher contributor maria simple, the prospect finder will be with me as well next week. You can keep up with what’s coming up! 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