Politically Motivated Attacks: Who, What & How

Tony Martignetti
Hello and welcome to Tony Martignetti Nonprofit Radio, big nonprofit ideas for the other 95%. I'm your aptly named host and the podfather of your favorite hebdomadal podcast. Oh, I'm glad you're with us. I'd suffer with dipsesis if I had to thirst for you not to tell me that you missed this week's show. Here's our associate producer Kate with what's up this week.

Kate Martignetti
Hey, Tony, here's what's up. Politically motivated attacks. Who, what, and how? Attacks on our nonprofit community are happening, and the environment is likely to get worse before it improves. Just last week, Elon Musk called our community a Ponzi scheme. The week before, he claimed only 5 to 10% of our work does any good and that the sector is a big scam and a giant graft machine. You need to know who is a potential target of the attacks, what form they take, and how to proactively protect your nonprofit. Tim Mooney from Alliance for Justice and Boulder Advocacy helps you understand on Tony's Take Two.

Tony Martignetti
Especially now, please follow your meds.

Kate Martignetti
We're sponsored by DonorBox. Outdated donation forms blocking your supporters' generosity? DonorBox— fast, flexible, and friendly fundraising forms for your nonprofit. donorbox.org. Here is Politically Motivated Attacks— Who, What, and How.

Tony Martignetti
It's a pleasure to welcome this week's guest. Tim Mooney, Senior Counsel at Alliance for Justice, has guided nonprofits through the maze of political and tax-exempt law for over 2 decades. He empowers organizations to elevate their impact, challenge the status quo, particularly relevant now. Hopefully it's not the status quo for very long. And drive meaningful progress. You'll find Tim @TimMooney on Bluesky, also on LinkedIn, and you'll find the Alliance for Justice at afj.org. Tim Mooney, welcome to Nonprofit Radio.

Tim Mooney
Tony, thank you so much. This is a real pleasure to be here.

Tony Martignetti
I'm glad. Thank you. Thank you very much for I'm glad it's a pleasure for you as well, because I always say that it is a pleasure to host you, host our guests. The Alliance for Justice, Boulder Advocacy, I don't know, you seem to be busting at the walls. I mean, I see you, I see the Alliance and Boulder Advocacy almost a couple times a week now. I spend a lot of time on LinkedIn and more now on Bluesky. I don't know, I will confess that before January, I had not heard of the Alliance for Justice or Boulder Advocacy. And now I feel like I'm seeing you several times a week. Yeah. What's the Alliance about and what's the Boulder Advocacy Program inside the Alliance?

Tim Mooney
Yeah, sure. We've been around for a few decades now at Alliance for Justice, and we are an association of, give or take, 150 or so organizations. And we all share a commitment to an equitable, just, and free society. And we, as our tagline says, we build the strength of progressive movements by training and educating nonprofit organizations on advocacy. I'm reading this, you can tell, while harnessing their collective power to transform our state and federal courts. If you wanna break that down, basically, my colleagues—

Tony Martignetti
I thought you had it. I just assumed you had it memorized.

Tim Mooney
Oh, I wish I did. One of these days I will.

Tony Martignetti
You confess.

Tim Mooney
Half of the office does a lot of work on courts and judges and making sure that these are the folks that represent the interests of the people, not other types of interests. My side of the office is Boulder advocacy, and we've been making some news lately just because of, you know, just broadly, all of this stuff that's been going on. We help equip nonprofits with tools, knowledge, understanding on how to be the best advocates that they can be. And we try to do that in the best way, which is to harness grassroots organizations to help reform systems, make positive policy change, but to be the leaders in the communities that they are. And that's been my job for— in a couple of different stints here for the better part of 10-plus years. And it's, uh, It's, it's more interesting now than it ever has been. I think I'll— I will say that.

Tony Martignetti
Uh, among the resources that you have, which are pretty vast at, at the, at Boulder Advocacy, uh, in that, that part of the site, um, you, you, you do counseling. I mean, people can talk to an attorney, not for representation naturally, but you can, you can chat or chat or converse with One of the Boulder Advocacy attorneys, right?

Tim Mooney
That's right. Myself and my colleagues are all lawyers, but as we like to say a lot, we're not your lawyer. We are all trained and I'll sheepishly say we are experts in this very strange, nichey area of federal tax law, a little bit of state law, a little bit of nonprofit corporations and things along those lines, election laws, that makes up what it means to be a tax-exempt organization, particularly around advocacy. And a couple of the things that we do, we are available for technical assistance questions. You can give us a call, you can send us an email, you can even fill out a little form on our website, and we try to get back to you within 24 to 48 hours with an answer. 9 times out of 10, we can answer most people's questions, so long as it's around you being an advocate as a tax-exempt organization. We also do trainings. We were talking offline before we started recording that I was just recently in Seward, Alaska, of all places, with the wonderful people there, child advocates, and Did a big training on what it means to be an advocate and the basics around lobbying activity as they're considering a ballot measure potentially in Seward itself. So do those types of things. We do trainings on the topic that we're gonna be talking about today, politically motivated attacks. During election season, we're pretty busy talking about what you can do around elections. We have publications, we have one-pagers, we even have a podcast of our own called Rules of the Game. And a lot of other things. So lots, lots going on at Boulder Advocacy.

Tony Martignetti
Yeah, there are. There's a ton of resources there. But I was particularly impressed by the fact that you can have a conversation with an attorney. Yeah. All right. All right. And that's now afj.org is where the Alliance for Justice is. Boulder Advocacy, remind us where we're going to find that.

Tim Mooney
We are now folded into the main AFJ website. So just go there and hit Boulder Advocacy at the top of the screen. It may be afj.org/boulder-advocacy, but don't quote me on that.

Tony Martignetti
You don't need that part. It's just all part of the Alliance for Justice website. Exactly. Okay. Let's get into what's been going on. We don't need to spend time on what's brought us to have this conversation, why I'm now seeing Boulder Advocacy multiple times a week since January 20th, essentially, or maybe it was the 22nd. And I think we know, regrettably, we share this common understanding of what's gotten us here. What are some of the organizational potentials? You know, I mean, I also regrettably, I mean, it could be 100%, but you're seeing attacks at certain types of missions, certain types of work. Why don't you flesh that out for us?

Tim Mooney
Yeah, I mean, this actually goes back before kind of the current administration. We've been seeing attacks against nonprofit organizations for a very long time. And what you said is exactly right. It tends to be on topical organizations. It tends to be organizations that are working in particular hot-button issues, modern-day DEI, LGBTQ rights, reproductive rights, immigration, the usual cast of characters these days. But, you know, it goes back even further. Civil rights organizations were targeted By independent organizations. A long time ago, you might have heard of a clownish group called Project Veritas that would go out and went after organizations. So this is a tactic that has been used.

Tony Martignetti
Project Veritas, let's just remind listeners, Project Veritas, that was the organization that was surreptitiously creating videos, right? Interviewing people without their knowledge, being videotaped, and then I think selectively editing those recordings and embarrassing— wasn't Planned Parenthood one of them?

Tim Mooney
Planned Parenthood was one. There were other— it has targeted groups through the years. I believe that it went through some interesting drama recently and the original founder left, but I do believe it still exists. Their big thing was they're an ideological organization that is trying to, you know, put a metaphorical stick in the front tire of the bicycle of these organizations to try and get them to go over their handlebars. But their Their tactics are mischievous and I would say unethical. I mean, it's very clear that they are selective in their editing. They would go after organizations in their most vulnerable places, speaking to volunteers or other folks that don't have that kind of training and essentially, you know, in a surreptitious way, lead them to say things that they know that they could edit in a way that makes it look bad. Right. Not good for that organization, even though that was a misrepresentation of the conversation and what the organization was doing. Those are the types of things that we've seen for a really long time. What we are seeing now is that still, because there are some keyboard warriors out there that are doing those types of things too, in addition to groups like Project Veritas and their progeny. But we're also starting to see this happen in official channels as well. And of course, this administration is rife with it right now. And what they're doing, that's almost its own category. But of course, we're seeing this at the state level as well. We're seeing questionable investigations by administrations at the state level against organizations, again, targeting organizations that are doing the type of work in these hot-button areas. It almost goes to say that they're being successful, these organizations, in convincing the public of their point of view on these types of issues. And so what has to happen? Well, these investigations, these phony investigations come about in a way to try to discredit them when they can't win on the merits of the argument. At least that's kind of my point of view on some of this. So that's what we're seeing a lot of. We are having a lot of organizations ask us when they give us a call, when they ask for our technical assistance, about what they can do to be prepared to fight back in those types of situations? And the honest answer is, is that, you know, if you're doing this after you've been attacked, you know, you're a little bit behind the 8-ball. You really do need to be prepared for these types of things in advance. And so we've created a variety of resources that will help organizations to think about, to plan, and to be ready in the event that they are attacked by one of these types of actors, official actors, state actors, or otherwise.

Tony Martignetti
Yeah, and we're gonna get to how to protect your nonprofit in advance. What should you— what should be dotted, what should be— what I's should be dotted and T's crossed in advance to reduce the likelihood, because you can't eliminate the possibility, but reduce the likelihood that you'll be targeted or that, you know, an attack would be meritorious at all, even on its face, that you'd be able to defeat it. What about in swing states? Are you seeing Are you seeing any greater activity now in the 6 or 7 swing states?

Tim Mooney
Yeah, I think we're starting to see it in, well, really in a lot of different states. Certainly in swing states, we're seeing that. Any place where there is a chance where there is a tipping point, I think that that's certainly a case. You see this all over the place too, red states, blue states, whatever. It's just a question of what are the tactics that are being used? I mean, we're starting to see a lot of them more in red states, at least the 2 that I'm thinking of, Texas and Ohio. recently. Missouri is a third one where, you know, traditional red states where there's been some state investigations. But, you know, you're seeing these attacks happen also in blue states as well, often by third parties. So there's no safe place, for lack of a better way of putting it, from these types of attacks. You need to be prepared for these types of things. You know, we, just like you have a good password on your computer because you're, you know, hackers are everywhere, you need to be prepared for types of things like this.

Tony Martignetti
Yeah, and we'll get into the preparation, which is essentially insurance to protect yourself in case you are targeted. What kinds of attacks? There are many different approaches that either government or some of these nefarious third-party actors are conducting. What are you seeing there?

Tim Mooney
Yeah, there's a wide array of tactics that we've seen. And the interesting thing also is, is that once something is successful, we tend to see some copycat action in there. The categories, though, that we see are claims of violation of the law is one really big one. So are you a public charity, 501? You know, there are certain restrictions on what you can do. There's a limitation in how much lobbying you can engage in. You're prohibited from doing things to support or oppose candidates. Claims that you're violating those types of restrictions is a pretty common thing. Yeah. Claims of engaging in voter registration fraud or some other type of election-related activity for a tax-exempt organization.

Tony Martignetti
And yet, and yet there are provisions that allow us to do all these activities.

Tim Mooney
Absolutely.

Tony Martignetti
And voter registration is perfectly bona fide. There's a certain degree of lobbying and advocacy that you can do as a 501, as long as you take the safe harbor.

Tim Mooney
That's right. And You know, you are allowed to lobby. You're allowed to lobby actually a fairly generous amount, but there are accusations by some groups that you're exceeding that and a complaint is lodged. Yeah. You are allowed to engage in a whole host of nonpartisan activities as a public charity around elections, voter registration, get-out-the-vote efforts. As long as it's nonpartisan, you're fine. What we'll see is accusations that these nonpartisan activities are really this kind of cloak-and-dagger, really technically partisan, trying to get somebody elected type of activity. And of course, usually that's a garbage accusation, but that's the kind of stuff that's put out there.

Kate Martignetti
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Tony Martignetti
That's so insidious because it, it creates a chilling effect. You know, it discourages the nonprofits from exercising the rights that they are given in the Internal Revenue Code for the types of things that you and I are talking about now, and maybe others, maybe other statutory frameworks as well. But I know the Internal Revenue Code as a start. So it creates that chilling effect. And then, you know, if you are— if you're not chilled and you do exercise the rights that your nonprofit has, you're attacked for it.

Tim Mooney
Yeah. And I think that Chilling effect is really the number one tactic here, or at least that's the endgame. Because it's to shut you up. It's to shut you up, but it's more pernicious than that even. A lot of these attempts will go after the funders of organizations that are doing the things that these folks don't want to have happen. And so what they're trying to do is they try to defund you. Now, of course, we're seeing that in a different way officially through the federal government in recent weeks. But then there's attempts to attack your funders, try to say, Shame funders into thinking that the grantees are doing something wrong or awful or terrible and try to leverage them to stop funding and pressure to withdraw that support. So chilling effect is really more than just directed at the organization. It's against the larger network that supports that organization too, including supporters too.

Tony Martignetti
How are they getting to the supporters? We use 2 good words, insidious and nefarious. Yeah, I love that. And pernicious. No, you said pernicious. Insidious.

Tim Mooney
SAT words, right?

Tony Martignetti
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. How are they getting to the funders? I mean, are we talking about like individual funders? So there's— I mean, there's institutional. They might be a little easier to get to, but individual funders, are we seeing it on that level also?

Tim Mooney
Well, what we'll see is certainly—

Tony Martignetti
Donors? We're talking about donors and donor couples.

Tim Mooney
Even against individual donors, the idea here is to try to discredit the organization in a way where it loses its support within the community. community as well. As you mentioned, institutional funders, private foundations and the like, those are a little bit easier to go after. There's, there's a sense that amongst many of them that they don't want to stick their head out. They don't want to fund something that gets them in trouble, that looks bad for them or their trustees. So there's certainly an angle there. But of course, you know, you go after an organization with a campaign that's meant to denigrate what they do. Well, that also is meant to create a funding gap by basically shaming people from giving money to them within their own communities. You know, if they do a good enough job making a community organization look like a villain, well, that certainly is going to impact their ability to fundraise amongst individuals too. So there's bank shots involved here. There's all sorts of different things where the idea here is to discredit and defraud and to otherwise make it so that these organizations All right.

Tony Martignetti
There's going after the donors, whether institutional or funders. You have a broader term, funders. Also insidious. All right. There's other— there are other methods of attack.

Tim Mooney
Yeah. Things like investigations. And sometimes that'll be by official sources. Attorney— states' attorneys general have been doing some of that, but also third-party organizations will. have a quote unquote investigation of their own and look into these types of things, you know, of fraud or abuse, and will publish their findings on such things. There's also intimidation lawsuits as well that we're starting to see against certain organizations. And that, of course, you know, even if the lawsuit is meritless, that still costs the organization money to defend and time and effort. And reputation. And reputation.

Tony Martignetti
And reputation. Exactly.

Tim Mooney
All of this works together against that chilling effect. And sometimes it's multiple tactics that we've mentioned here before. Sometimes it's multiple organizations, it's tag-teaming together. All of these things are designed to discredit the organization, reduce its standing in the community, and eventually hope that it goes away. Prominent example, ACORN was a target of Project Veritas years ago, and it It ceased to exist eventually over what we now know are largely false accusations, or at least accusations that were much broader than anything that was actually going on within the entity.

Tony Martignetti
Some of these official investigations or other actions, the officers are working within their statutory authority. Like a state attorney general. I mean, they're authorized. Most, maybe all state attorneys general's offices have charities bureaus. So there's authority to do what they're doing, but they're doing it under color of authority, but in a nefarious, backhanded way.

Tim Mooney
Yeah. And these are the ones that are the most politically motivated we tend to see. You know, the Missouri attorney general recently sued Media Matters over what seems to be ludicrous types of The interesting thing here, and in Texas, the Texas Attorney General has done this, Ohio has done it as well. What's interesting here and what's difficult, what's challenging here is exactly what you said, Tony. These attorneys general are all empowered and have a great deal of latitude for their investigative authority. And so when they make these pronouncements that are based often on weak records, questionable complaints, you know, they are not necessarily acting outside of the law. Now, I would argue that there is a line that they could cross where it would become problematic, but they have a great deal of latitude and authority to pursue these types of investigations and to eventually get into administrative complaints and some other types of things. And that's what's really tricky for this particular category is that there's not a lot that you can do other than make sure that you're— and we'll talk about this later— be prepared in advance, make sure you're dotting your i's and crossing your t's and know that your compliance is right. And if this type of a thing comes after you, you're gonna have to defend it. It's gonna take time and it's gonna take money. But, you know, if you feel confident that nothing is wrong, well, you can continue to work on the things that are making these attorney general— attorneys general upset at you and maybe have your revenge that way as you later on win, or the— what I would argue potentially is a frivolous complaint would eventually get withdrawn. Yeah.

Tony Martignetti
People abbreviate, you know, AGs, and I always think, no, it should be A's G.

Tim Mooney
It is A's Journey.

Tony Martignetti
I know, but nobody's gonna do it. It's Attorney General.

Tim Mooney
I think there was a whole episode of The West Wing on this. Yes,

Tony Martignetti
it doesn't matter. It's completely frivolous and doesn't even deserve a footnote. But I don't know, I just always think, no, it's supposed to be A's G. All right, what about— I've seen press too about the possibility of False Claims Act liability when a nonprofit is accused of submitting a payment to a government entity and they are not complying with, you know, the latest executive order on DEI. And so now there's a statute that they've committed fraud when they request their next payment. Please explain what's the potential here.

Tim Mooney
Yeah, I mean, I have to confess a lot A lot of that is a little bit outside my lane of expertise, but I will say this. This is another example of a politically motivated use of the laws in a way that is meant to cost an organization its standing, cost the organization actual money and time to defend. And whether or not there is any truth in those types of things, technical or otherwise, it doesn't matter, I think, because again, this goes to that chilling effect. I think that the The point of a lot of these intimidation lawsuits or enforcement actions or whatever they are, it's not so much the substance of that individual action. Okay. The idea is to say, look at this organization here. You don't want to be that organization, do you? Well, you better back off from your DEI program. You better make sure that you're doing things that, that don't make you a target. Get out of helping folks who are undocumented immigrants. You know, it is meant to intimidate. It is meant to chill. And that is honestly the real reason here. A whole host of the things that we're seeing in the last few weeks since the inauguration are of questionable constitutional value. Oh, there are a lot of things that will ultimately potentially by courts be reversed. But the point is that here and now there's this flood the zone, Mm-hmm. That's happening right now. Try to make it seem like that there's little hope, that the powers have turned and everybody is subject to the whims of a person or a group of people or a political party or whatever. And the idea is to chill and intimidate, and that is the real tactic here because so many of these things are probably not going to be considered legal at the end of the day when things are all said and done at the court level.

Tony Martignetti
That's such an important point, Tim, that the purpose of a lot of this is intimidation, discouragement. Oh, there's so much happening. Flood the zone. That goes back to Steve Bannon, Trump's advisor, particularly in the first presidency. That's his strategy. Flood the— well, it's the way I've seen him say it on his podcast, flood the zone with shit. Yeah.

Tim Mooney
Yeah.

Tony Martignetti
Just overwhelm people, overwhelm the, what, 200 and some executive orders within the first couple of days of the administration, that alone. But then everything compounded after that, the federal employment major upheavals, veterans, the different agencies being targeted. The latest is weather, the National Weather Service, for God's sake, and NOAA. You know, it's all part of the strategy. So you need to recognize that a lot of what's happening is intended to have the effect that you don't want it to have, to put you off, to just say, I'm overwhelmed, so I can't pay attention to anything. And a couple of articles I've read on strategy and how to deal with this is, Just pick some things that are important to you. You know, you don't need to doom scroll on your phone 12 hours a day now. You know, keep that to a minimum, and especially not during— right before you go to bed. But, you know, pick some issues that are important to you and focus on those. Don't let them defeat you with their strategy of flooding the zone to just overwhelm.

Tim Mooney
And I think that one of the reasons why flooding the zone is so successful is that it's the shiny silver object that takes you away from some of the bigger ticket things that are happening in the tax-exempt space. I, I don't have to tell you, but maybe the listeners will be interested in knowing that we're now starting to see some things happen at Treasury and the IRS. And what that is going to do to impact tax-exempt organizations and the exempt organization division within the IRS is an open question right now. Um, but the, the IRS has been insulated since post-Watergate years, post-Nixon. From politics. And that seems to maybe be changing now. So, you know, on top of all of the things that we're talking about, there seems to be an attempt perhaps to distract from those types of things and that Dogefying of Treasury and the IRS that's been in the news lately too. So there's a lot of really substantive things that are going on that are related to the topic that we're talking about as well. It's all part of the flood the zone that we've been mentioning here.

Tony Martignetti
Is there anything more you want to cover that we haven't talked about, or maybe more detail on something in terms of the forms of attack?

Tim Mooney
No, I think that the biggest thing is that when it comes to the attacks, we've been talking a lot about PR attacks and that type of thing, but there's also online attacks that we've been seeing. And I mentioned kind of the keyboard warrior situation. You know, there's certainly an element of online attacks going after databases and things along those lines as well. And part of what we are recommending as part of our prep is to make sure that you've got, you know, good password protections and things like that, making sure that your online world is safe too. But, you know, so much of what we do and how we do things are online these days that we've got to be really buttoned up in that area. Because that tends to be one of the big vectors that we end up seeing.

Kate Martignetti
It's time for Tony's Take Two.

Tony Martignetti
Thank you, Kate. Especially now with all the attacks going on against our nonprofit community, obviously the show today devoted to that. I'm hearkening back to our guest Meico Marquette. Whitlock and his advice when he was last on the show to follow your meds, your mindset, exercise, diet, and sleep. You know, mindset, manage, manage yourself. You know, if you feel depression, you need to get help with that, not let it fester. You know, do things that Exercise, of course, taking just equal care of your physical body like you're doing with, with mindset. And you know what exercising is right for you, what it is that invigorates you, gets those endorphins going. All important. Diet, you know the foods that are right for you. Doesn't mean you can't indulge now and then. Yeah. But you know what's right for you. But being careful not not overeating out of out of stress and sleep getting adequate sleep. We're all supposed to get between seven and eight hours if we're adults. Well, probably adults are listening to this. I don't I don't think there are any children under twelve listening to nonprofit radio. Not likely unless they're future you know aspiring nonprofit CEOs. Maybe that could be or board members. Maybe. Maybe you have a 9-year-old who aspires to be a nonprofit board member. Could very well be. But, but if not, 7 to 8 hours recommended sleep. So please, this important advice, particularly around challenging this challenging time from, from Meico. Mind your MEDS: the mindset, exercise, diet, and sleep. And that is Tony's Take Two. Thank you.

Kate Martignetti
Kate? Yeah, a little self-care moment never hurts. Get a mani-pedi. That's my, that's my favorite, like, uh, thing for me to take care of myself. Love going to get my hair done. A little mani-pedi, that really, like, calms me down. I don't know why.

Tony Martignetti
I see. All right, well, so then we have to, we have to modify Meico's advice to, like, IMEDS.

Kate Martignetti
I for indulgence.

Tony Martignetti
Indulgence.

Kate Martignetti
Indulgence.

Tony Martignetti
Mindset. Exercise. Diet. Sleep. Yes, IMEDS For, uh, for our associate producer Kate.

Kate Martignetti
Maybe we can add an F in there too, so it's like FIMEDS, so it's like also family and friends.

Tony Martignetti
Family and friends, that's FIFAMEDS. Okay, all right.

Kate Martignetti
We've got beaucoup buttloads more time. Here's the rest of Politically Motivated Attacks: Who, What, and How.

Tony Martignetti
Let's, let's go then to what we can do in advance. The point you made earlier, we don't want to wait until someone comes after us, starts asking, well, you know what, we're just asking questions. We're just, we're just asking questions about whether they're in compliance. That's all we're doing. And if they're not, we certainly want to find that out. But we don't want to wait until they come after us. Right. But we won't know if we don't ask the question. And of course, there's no predicate to ask the question. There's no reasonable basis for asking the question, but we're doing it. All right. So in advance, in advance, what should we be doing? You've got some— we have plenty of time left together, you know, so what should we be doing now? Reviewing, making sure that we can, as I said, do the best we can, which is to just minimize the likelihood of of success of an attack or maybe even stave off an attack in advance?

Tim Mooney
Yeah, I think that the most important thing that you can do first is know the narrative around your organization. You know, is there a common but false narrative about your activities, particularly from folks that are opposed to your point of view? So are you a voting rights organization? You know, while the common narrative often for voting rights, particularly civil rights organizations, Oh, they're registering illegal voters, the common narrative. If you are with an organization that is interested in criminal justice reform, the concept of what defund the police means and how that is impacted by your organization. Are you a civil rights organization working in the DEI space? Well, we all have heard about the narratives around that. So know your organization and know what the potential attacks are. What are those common but false narratives are? From that point, everything sort of opens up from there because when you know where those potential vulnerabilities are, what are the narratives that tend to have resonance with folks that are false? That's the good starting off point. And, and sometimes that's as simple as just kind of opening up social media and looking at what the other side is saying about your stuff, and then kind of taking it from there.

Tony Martignetti
Okay. Be aware of what people say about you, what they may— including what's, what's potentially false.

Tim Mooney
Exactly.

Tony Martignetti
Other stuff, you know, compliance related, you know, your organic document compliance. Let's, let's talk about

Tim Mooney
Yeah, I think compliance is a really important piece, and it taps into a whole bunch of other things that you'll want to do as well. You know, you've got to know what laws your organization is subject to, and, and for many organizations, that's going to be starting off with federal tax law because that's what sort of organizes us as tax-exempt organizations. If you're a public charity, as we mentioned before, you're allowed to engage in lobbying. You're just limited in how much you can do. Right. There are reporting requirements around your lobbying activity. This is a common area. Anytime that there's any kind of limits or reporting requirements, especially for the type of work that you do, you've got to make sure that you know what those are, when you have to register, if there's a registration component, and what your reporting obligations are. And because often this will happen not just at the IRS level, but also at the state and perhaps even local level as well. You know, I've been talking about lobbying, but this could be something as simple as charitable solicitation registration? You know, what are the rules in your state? Are you doing things outside of your state where you might be subject to those states' charitable solicitation rules? All of these types of things are really important because if you are a small nonprofit and maybe you don't have a lawyer on your board of directors or somebody who really understands compliance and these types of things, but you're aiding undocumented folks in your community, and someone wants to come after your organization, well, they can just look at the charitable solicitation records and say, oh, look at this fraudulent organization that hasn't registered and reported. You know, and that's small potatoes comparatively, but that's the kind of stuff that you've got to be careful about. You want to make sure that compliance is a big part of what you do, especially if there are those common false narratives there. So you do really want to make sure that that's an important type of thing. It also gets to the point with where the vectors come in. And often what'll happen is, is that there'll be attempts by organizations or investigators or whomever that will try to interact with your staff or your volunteers. It may be a public event and start asking questions. We often call these odd questions or weird questions because they're really trying to route the person that they're talking to to quote unquote admit something. And so what you need to do there is this interfaces on the compliance side, but also on the training side as well. So say you're an organization that's doing nonpartisan get-out-the-vote work, and that's perfectly legal. It's perfectly legal under all sorts of different rules and regulations. But if you have a volunteer and someone comes up and says, oh, thanks for doing this nonpartisan event, but really you're here to register people in this one party, right? What are they trying to do? They're trying to get that person to, you know, trip up and admit those types of things.

Tony Martignetti
This is the Project Veritas.

Tim Mooney
It's that model right there.

Tony Martignetti
Methodology.

Tim Mooney
But it could be an official investigation as well. Exactly. You know, the idea here is, okay, you got to make sure that anybody that's public-facing has got to understand that, you know, just because someone comes up and is friendly and is asking questions and maybe asks Right. And asks the question over and over again just to elicit a response, that, you know, you've got a responsibility to represent the organization, right? And the organization, on the other hand, needs to make sure that those folks are trained. And so we've got a whole host of a variety of different recommendations for that type of a thing. But most importantly is that you've got a point person at any given public event where if that volunteer feels like they're getting a little browbeat with these questions, that they know they can say, hey, I don't know the answer to your question. I'm gonna go get Susie over there and come and talk to you. That, that's the kind of stuff that you— that puts the separation between that type of a thing. Now, is every single person asking these types of questions part of some Project Veritas or state attorney general investigation? Of course not. But at the same time, these are the types of things that you want to do from a best practices perspective to make sure that you're buttoned up, to make sure that your organization not only is doing the things legally, but doesn't get tripped up by bad actors with bad intentions to say something that makes it look like, especially with some creative editing, that you're acting contrary to how you're actually acting.

Tony Martignetti
We need to be more vigilant now, more, more con— more conscious of, of the potential for the, the kinds of, you know, um, bad actors, whether they're official or unofficial, being out there lurking, you know, trying to, trying to, trying to set us up, trying to trap us. We need to be more aware than we did a year ago.

Tim Mooney
I don't know about you, Tony, but—

Tony Martignetti
Of the potential.

Tim Mooney
I was a big Spider-Man comic book fan and cartoon fan when I was younger. Well, actually, I still am, but just between you and me. Okay. I'm a big fan of my Spidey sense. You know, if you don't— if you're not familiar with Spider-Man, if you're a listener, Spider-Man has this unique superpower where Where if something bad is happening, if he's about to get hit by a supervillain, or if somebody has launched a missile at him or something along those lines, he gets a little tingle. And in the comics, it's these little lines over his head. I think we all have that in some way, shape, or form. Our instincts are usually pretty good. If your Spidey sense is going off, you know, it might be good to listen to that, especially in the context that I've been talking about. Yeah. It's, uh, our instincts are pretty finely honed in those areas, and it's pretty good to listen to those too.

Tony Martignetti
A couple of weeks ago, we had Gene Takagi on, and, uh, he was talking about— I'm sure you know Gene.

Tim Mooney
Oh yeah, absolutely.

Tony Martignetti
Yeah, he's our legal contributor. He was talking about compliance with your own organic documents, your own originating documents, your, your bylaws, uh, uh, your— even your mission statement. Gene talked about it, but it's been a few weeks and it's important. So I'd like you to— you'll end up amplifying what Gene said about compliance with your own documents, please.

Tim Mooney
So Gene's one of the smartest lawyers in the biz. So shout out to Gene. You need to make sure as a function of state law that you are complying with your nonprofit corporation laws. One of the many different ways that comes into play is when you tell the state, because you're getting a deal from the state by registering as a nonprofit corporation. Mm-hmm. And that deal means you've got to operate in a particular way. You've got to have a certain number of board members. They've got to be operating in a particular way. You have to make sure you're complying with that state statute around that. And your articles of incorporation are talking about the methods that you're going to engage in and the type of topics Topics that you're going to be working under. But then your bylaws are really going to dig into the details. And very often organizations will have bylaws that they haven't looked at in decades, and they no longer follow them. Their board meeting minutes are done differently. They don't operate with the same type of procedures that their bylaws and maybe even their articles require. And it's It's critically important that you're following those types of things because if you don't, then you are likely in some type of breach of the laws around the nonprofits within your state. And that is something that could be potentially actionable, but it's certainly something that could at least again be highlighted. You know, oh, look at this organization. It's supposed to have open meetings for its members and they haven't done that since 1978. Hey, look, they're— it's a scofflaw organization. Or if you've got an attorney general who is particularly disinclined to like your organization, they will certainly like to dig into what your procedures are. Are you following your articles of incorporation? Are you following your bylaws? Are you in breach? I talked about charitable solicitation rules. There's a whole host of different things. There are taxable events for some tax-exempt organizations from time to time. You're not necessarily Are you in compliance with those filings? So making sure again that you know what your exposure is, what your obligations are, and especially the calendaring of those obligations. File on time. Don't file late. If you change your activities, and that's subject to another law, you know, election-related activity is often one of these types of things. Are you getting involved in a ballot measure? Right. Are you getting involved in a ballot measure? Measure. You may have registration requirements because you're participating in a ballot measure as a charitable organization. It's totally fine. It counts as lobbying, but under state and local rules, you may have to register and report separately on top of that. You got to make sure you're doing that, and if you're not, you could be subject to fines. You could be subject to other types of actions by the state or local law. And so these are the types of angles that could be taken On the official level, but also outside of the official enforcement agencies to try to embarrass and to denigrate and to show to funders. Funders do not like it, do not care for organizations that are not following the laws. So highlighting these things for organizations that work in subject matter areas that we've already talked about to try to get them to lose standing in their community, lose standing in their funders, that's all. Yeah. It's all part of the game plan here. And that's why it's important that you got to make sure what your obligations are and follow them.

Tony Martignetti
Tim, what are the limits that Boulder Advocacy can take? I mean, you said you're attorneys, but you're not— we're not— we're attorneys, but we're not your attorney. But what types of questions around what we were just talking about can you field or maybe even not field? What would go over the boundary?

Tim Mooney
Yeah, the line is, you know, since we're not— we do not have an attorney-client Right. Relationship, we don't give legal advice. And it's a fine line between technical assistance and legal advice. But essentially what we can do is we can help explain what the rules are. If it gets to something that's more specific, you know, where an organization is asking a very specific question and asking for essentially more of an opinion than what the law says, that's where we start getting into the legal advice perspective. And that's where we'll kind of You know, say, well, this, this is the line we can't cross. But this is a good time to tell you, you should retain local counsel to be able to properly answer that question. I think the thing that we do really well is most of the questions that we get, we can answer. The vast majority, I would say. When it gets to the point where someone is asking for legal advice, we can help them get to the point where they can have that conversation with their lawyer Whether it's their internal lawyer or external counsel, and sort of fast-forward them a little bit in the conversation, maybe save them a few bucks. And that's, that's kind of one of the big reasons why we were founded all those years ago, why I think we've been supported by a lot of organizations and by, of course, a lot of private foundations as well, because we're able to give that kind of service within the boundaries of what we're able to provide and to serve Thank you.

Tony Martignetti
All right. Let's talk about data security. You mentioned it briefly earlier, but now in our discussion of how to protect yourself, data security, personally identifiable information, etc.

Tim Mooney
Yeah, it's interesting. You know, I'm of a certain age where I was around before the internet, and I remember when I was a kid, I remember the time before the internet, and I think that those of us who are sort of in our age range—

Tony Martignetti
You're not the only one in this conversation who really—

Tim Mooney
There you go. Gen X kids.

Tony Martignetti
Let's represent, right? Before the internet, yes.

Tim Mooney
Yeah. Yeah. I mean, we came in with the idea of, oh, you're going to put your credit card into that machine, and it's going to give you a book later that gets delivered? Well, that's strange. We really got comfortable with all those things. And I think that a lot of folks who are a little bit younger than us just got— were thrown into the world where, you know, oh yeah, of course you share your personal information on the internet in your social media accounts and things like that. And so I think what we're seeing is a retrenchment of that a little bit, that maybe we don't necessarily need to put absolutely everything out there. And the reason why is that Our individual activities as, say, employees of a nonprofit organization are sometimes used to suggest that the nonprofit is doing things that it shouldn't do. So on my own personal time, on my own dime, I can support a candidate of my choice. I can't do that in my role as senior counsel for Alliance for Justice. It's a 501. We don't do that. We don't support candidates out of the C3. But these malicious actors will often try to cherry-pick and take that information that's sort of out there and create a feeling that, oh, that organization is just full of people that all they want to do is see this person elected or that person defeated. All you have to do is look at their social media posts. And that's the kind of stuff that we often see is that conflation. And of course, Of course, the traditional stuff, the cyberattacks, the hacking, the phishing. I mean, I can't tell you how many times I have gotten an email where it's very clear, or text even today, where it's enormously clear that it's a phishing attack. But we do training internally, and I have thought of myself as a very smart person who will never get caught in a phishing attack. And one of our training tests absolutely caught me. Oh, wow. Absolutely caught me. What did they say? I even have my prop for this. It was it was it was months ago before these came in. We have new swag for those of you who are on the video. You might be able to see we have swag for our our organization now.

Tony Martignetti
Says frontline frontline of democracy.

Tim Mooney
Yeah, front lines of democracy on the front lines of democracy fja.org. Really great sweatshirt. Very excited for these things. Well, we were we got a faux phishing attack that basically said oh. Oh, put in— click here to put in your size. And they got me on that one. Yeah. So phishing attacks can— and this was— I can't emphasize enough, this was a test just to show how often these types of things can really dig in and look legit when they really aren't. So do those internal trainings. Know what's coming after you. Have your complex passwords. Make sure that they get reset every couple of months or whatever is kind of best practice. 2-factor authentication, all that kind of stuff. If someone nefarious gets into your database, they've got so many opportunities to wreck you, to lock things up, or to make things— to plant things perhaps even that make it look like that you're doing things that you're not. It's a really, really pernicious type of a thing. So making sure that you've got good hygiene for your own personal online type of things. And doxxing, of course, is another type of a situation that we've been seeing as well. And, you know, we're seeing a movement, I think, again, to start to retrench how much personal stuff that we put out there. But it is remarkable how much information, individual personal information, is out there. You know, if your password, for instance, is your favorite sports team's most recent championship, And as a Buffalo Bills fan, I do not have that, so I can use that as an example. Mm-hmm. You know, and, you know, that's the type of thing. It's like, oh, well, that person is a big Philadelphia Eagles fan. Well, if it's Eagles and then the date of their most recent Super Bowl win, you know, trust me, they're going to try those types of things. You know, that's the kind of stuff that we'll see that is sort of these attacks to get in, but also the doxxing element of things when we learn You can learn where people live and have protests in front of their house and things along those lines, and then release that information out into the general public with an intent to create harm or at least discomfort for that person. All of this stuff is out there, and it's stuff that we've got to be mindful about because, you know, when you sign up to work for a nonprofit organization, you're not signing up To be on the front page of the New York Times or to necessarily be subject to the whims of some of these types of personal attacks, but we do see that. We've seen election officials, local election officials, get doxxed and harassed online. And this is the type of attack that we're seeing. It's to the organization, but But it's narrowed down to the personal. And so making sure that you've got your individual online home buttoned up a little bit more, think about how much you want to be out there. That's another thing as well.

Tony Martignetti
And your CRM database. And so in light of all this talk about data security, I want to remind listeners that that same show a few weeks ago where we had Gene We also had Amy Sample Ward, our technology contributor, and she gave a very good explanation of managing your data, making sure you're not saving data that you don't need, that's personally identifiable and could be compromised. So that's all in the episode called Prudence in Our Political Environment, just a couple of weeks ago.

Tim Mooney
Yeah, retention policies, all of that. Make sure that's all buttoned up. There's a lot of best practices out there and a lot of resources that are out there to allow you to not have to reinvent the wheel on this kind of stuff.

Tony Martignetti
Whistleblower protection, another one.

Tim Mooney
Indeed.

Tony Martignetti
Another one.

Tim Mooney
Yep.

Tony Martignetti
What about openness and transparency with our funders, whether again institutional or individual, as a method of again protecting ourselves, you know, being open about And truthful about what our work is. Maybe part of that is defeating false narratives that may be out there or could— that are out there or could be out there, but just openness with our funding community.

Tim Mooney
When you are attacked, the instinct is to, oh, we've got to huddle up and we've got to keep this quiet. I think that our advice is kind of the exact opposite as you're suggesting here. We need to make sure that we're being open when a false attack comes at us. We need to make sure that we tell our allies, our community, and indeed our funders what's going on. And the reason why is there's copycat attacks. So we're going to help prevent that by getting that out there. But we're also going to be open about what's going on. And in doing that, you are huddling up more broadly, not just internally, but more broadly with your allies, with your community, with your funders, Because they are on your side. And, you know, an attack against one is really, in a sense, an attack against all, from my perspective at least. And so what that does is it will help everybody within your coalition and your funding community understand what is happening and what may be coming. And there may be an opportunity that comes out of this attack rather than just the cost of the attack. And the cost, of course, be time and money and opportunities. But, you know, if it is easily revealed that there is, say, a political animus behind this type of a thing, this might be something that actually gets broader attention. And there could be a backlash against that attack. And that might actually end up being— it's never good to be attacked, but it might be in the long run a positive Because what you're doing is you're showing the tactics of this other side that are negative and unethical and spurious, and that they're doing it because you're succeeding in doing things that they don't like. And that just doubles down on all of that and may ultimately mean more support ultimately when all is said and done. But that doesn't happen unless you got a plan, you are good on your compliance, you've trained your staff, and you're ready for the types of attacks that are based on the false narratives that you should know about just by being active in your field.

Tony Martignetti
You said that you believe an attack against one is an attack against all. Um, I believe that the nonprofit community is much stronger when we all stand together and protect any one of us under threat or any segment of Under threat. And whether that's a mission that we believe in or it's one that we find antithetical to our being, but they're still a 501 and they're part of the community and they're under attack. And you never know when the attack may point toward you. So leave us with the strength of the community when it stays together.

Tim Mooney
The attacks often are ideological, but I think that you're exactly right. This should span ideology. The nonprofit community is strong because we represent our communities, and, you know, an attack against a nonprofit is an attack against a real pillar within our communities broadly and it's a bummer that this tends to have political ramifications to it. It shouldn't. Tax-exempt organizations span ideology. They serve communities. They're charitable. They're educational. They're scientific. They shouldn't— this shouldn't be subject to those political whims and I'm saddened that this is— in the latter part of my career— been that type of a thing. Yeah. But you're absolutely right that by going after these types of entities, it's really trying to hobble one of the important legs of a stool of what our communities are built on. And, and, you know, I think that nonprofits are critically important in our communities, and by going after them in any way, shape, or form really is taking a hatchet to good things and good people and good ideas, and to do it over the sense of ideology is a really sad thing to me.

Tony Martignetti
Tim, thanks for sharing all your advice, your advice from Alliance for Justice. Thank you very much.

Tim Mooney
Thank you.

Tony Martignetti
You'll find the Alliance at afj.org, and there you'll find the important Boulder advocacy half of the Alliance. You'll find Tim, he's @TimMooney on Bluesky and also on LinkedIn. And Tim, thank you again.

Tim Mooney
Thanks so much, Tony. I really appreciate it.

Kate Martignetti
Next week, great value in sustainable giving. If you missed any part of this week's show,

Tony Martignetti
I beseech you, find it at tonymartignetti.com.

Kate Martignetti
We're sponsored by DonorBox. Outdated donation forms blocking your supporters' generosity? DonorBox— fast, flexible, and friendly fundraising forms for your nonprofit. donorbox.org. Our creative producer is Claire Meyerhoff. I'm your associate producer, Kate Martignetti. The show's social media is by Susan Chavez. Marc Silverman is our web guy, and this music is by Scott Stein.

Tony Martignetti
Thank you for that affirmation, Scotty. Be with us next week for Nonprofit Radio, Big Nonprofit Ideas for the Other 95%. Go out and be great. There's one sentence I need you to reread in the politically motivated tax block. You need to know who is a potential target of the attack. So we need attacks. So why don't you just say that sentence that starts, you need to know?