Tim Mooney: Politically Motivated Attacks: Who, What & 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 5-10% 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 Bolder Advocacy, helps you understand.
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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 hebdominal 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. 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 2. Especially now, please follow your meds. We’re sponsored by DonorBox. Outdated donation forms blocking your supporters’ generosity. Donor box, fast, flexible, and friendly fundraising forms for your nonprofit, DonorBox.org. Here is politically motivated attacks. Who, what and how. 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. Uh, particularly relevant now, hopefully it’s not the status quo for very long and drive meaningful progress. You’ll find Tim at Tim Mooney on BlueSky, also on LinkedIn, and you’ll find the Alliance for Justice at AFJ Alpha Foxtrot Juliet.org. Tim Mooney, welcome to nonprofit radio. Tony, thank you so much. This is a real pleasure to be here. I’m glad. Thank you. Thank you very much for, uh, 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, I see you, I see the alliance and Boulder advocacy almost uh a couple times a week now. I, I spent a lot of time on LinkedIn and more now on Blue Sky. I don’t know. I, I, I will confess that, uh, 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. What what’s the alliance about and what’s the boulder advocacy program inside the alliance? Yeah, sure. We, we’ve been around for a few decades now at Alliance for Justice, and we are an association of, uh, 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 want to break that down, basically, I just assumed you had it memorized. Oh, I wish I did. One of these days 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 bolder advocacy, and we’ve been making some news lately just because of, you know, gestures broadly, all of this stuff that’s been going on. We help equip nonprofits with tools, knowledge, and 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 in a couple of different stints here for the better part of 10 plus years and it’s um It’s, it’s more interesting now than it ever has been. I think I will, I will say that. Uh, uh, among the resources that you have, which are pretty vast, uh, at, at the, at the 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? That’s right. Uh, myself and my colleagues are all lawyers, but as we like to say a lot, we’re not your lawyer. Um, we are all trained and, and I’ll, I’ll sheepishly say we are experts in this very strange niche 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, 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, um, we were talking offline before we started recording that I was just recently in Seward, Alaska of all places, uh, with the wonderful people there, child advocates, and uh did a big training on on what it means to be an advocate and the the the basics around lobbying activity as they’re considering a ballot. Measure potentially uh in Seward itself. So, um, do those types of things we do trainings on the topic that we’re going to be talking about today, politically motivated attacks during the 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. Yeah, there are, there’s a ton of resources there, but I, I, and I was particularly impressed by the fact that you can have a conversation with an attorney. All right. All right. And that’s, um, now AFJ.org is where the Alliance for Justice is boulder advocacy remind us where we’re gonna find that. Uh, 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. You don’t, right, you don’t need that part. It’s just all part of the Alliance for Justice. OK, OK. Um, let’s, uh. Yeah, let’s get into what’s been going on. I don’t, I, I, we don’t need to spend time on uh What, what’s brought us to have this conversation? Why, why I’m now seeing boulder advocacy multiple times a week, you know, since January 20th, uh, essentially, or maybe the 22nd. Um, and I think we know, regrettably, we, we share this common understanding of what’s gotten us here. Um, what, what are some of the, uh, organizational potentials, you know, I mean, I, I, I, I. Uh, I also regrettably, I mean, it could be 100%, but you’re seeing attacks at, at, uh, uh, certain, certain types of missions, certain types of work. Why don’t you flesh that out for us. 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 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, and modern day DEI LGBTQ rights, reproductive rights, immigration, the usual, the usual cast of characters these days. But you know, it goes back even further civil rights organizations were targeted by independent organizations uh uh 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 Project let’s just remind us is Project Veritas, that was the organization that was surreptitiously creating videos, right, interviewing people without their knowledge, uh, being, being videotaped, and then. I think selectively editing those recordings and embarrassing, wasn’t Planned Parenthood one of them. Planned Parenthood was one. There were other, there it is, it is targeted groups through the years. I, I believe that it went through some interesting, uh, drama recently and the original founder left, but I do believe it still exists. The big thing was they’re an ideological organization that is trying to, you know, put a metaphorical stick in the front tire of of the bicycle of these organs. to try and get them to go over their handlebars. But their tactics are mischievous and uh I would say unethical. I mean, it’s very clear that they are selective in their editing. They are would go after organizations um 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 uh. Not good in for that organization, even though that was a misrepresentation of of the conversation of 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 are doing those types of things too in addition to groups like Project Veritas and then their progeny. But we’re also starting to see this happen in official channels as well. And of course, you know, this administration is rife with it right now, um, 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, uh, investigations by administrations at the state level against organizations. Again, targeting organizations that are doing the type of work in these hot button areas, um, You know, it almost goes to say that they’re being successful, these organizations in, in, 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 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, if you’re doing this after you’ve been attacked, you know, you’re a little bit behind the eight 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. Yeah, and we’re gonna get to how to protect your your nonprofit in advance. What should you what what what should be dotted, what should be what I 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, uh, you’ll be targeted, uh, or that, uh, you know, an attack would be meritorious at all even on its face that you’d be able to defeat it. Um, what about, uh, in swing states are you, are you seeing any greater activity now in the, in the 6 or 7 swing states? Yeah, I think we’re starting to see it in, well, really in a lot of different states, you know, certainly in swing states, we’re seeing that any place where there’s a chance where there’s a tipping point, um, I think that that’s certainly a case, um, you know, and, and, you know, 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 two that I’m thinking of, Texas and Ohio. Recently, Missouri is the 3rd 1, where, you know, traditional red states where there’s been some state investigations, but you know, you’re you’re 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, um, 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. Yeah, and we’ll get into the preparation, which is essentially insurance to, to protect yourself in case you are uh you are targeted. Um, what, what, what kinds of attacks, there are, there are many different approaches that either government or some of these nefarious third actor, third party actors are, are conducting. What, what are you seeing there? Yeah, there’s a wide array of tactics that we’ve seen. And the interesting thing also is that once something is successful, we tend to see some copycat action in there. Um, the categories though that we see are claims of violation of the law is one really big one. So are you a public charity, 501c3, um, 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, uh, claims of engaging in voter registration fraud or some other type of election related activity for a tax exempt organization. And yet, and yet there are provisions that allow us to do all these activities. Absolutely, and voter registration is perfectly bona fide. There’s there’s a certain degree of lobbying and advocacy that you can do as a 501c3 as long as you take the safe harbor. That’s right. And, and, and, you know, there you are allowed to lobby, you’re allowed to lobby actually a fairly generous amount, but it, you know, there are accusations by some groups that you’re exceeding that and a complaint is lodged. Um, you are allowed to engage in a whole host of nonpartisan activities as a public charity. 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. It’s time for a break. Imagine a fundraising partner that not only helps you raise more money, but also supports you in retaining your donors. A partner that helps you raise funds both online and on location so you can grow your impact faster. That’s DonorBox, a comprehensive suite of tools, services and resources that gives fundraisers just like you, a custom solution to tackle your unique challenges. Helping you achieve the growth and sustainability your organization needs. Helping you, help others. Visit donorbox.org to learn more. Now back to Politically motivated attacks. Who, what and how. That’s so insidious because it, it creates a chilling effect, you know, it, 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, I know the Internal Revenue Code as a, as a start. So it creates that chilling effect and then. You know, if you are, if you’re not chilled and you do uh do exercise the rights that your nonprofit has, uh, you’re, um, you’re attacked for it. Yeah, and I think that chilling effect is really the number one tactic here, or at least that’s the the end game, because it’s just, it’s to shut you up, but it’s more pernicious than that even. Uh, 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 at a in a different way, officially through the federal government in in recent weeks. But then there’s, you know, attempts to attack your funders, try to say, uh, 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 it’s against the larger network that supports that organization too, including supporters. How are they getting to the supporters? We use two good words, insidious and and uh nefarious. I love the pernicious. No, you said pernicious, insidious words, right? Yeah, yeah. Um, how are they getting to the funders? I mean, are we talking about like individual funders? Uh, so there’s, I mean, there’s, there’s institutional, they might be a little easier to get to, but individual funders, are we, are we seeing it on that level also? Well, what we’ll see we’re donors and donor against against individual donors. The idea here is to try to discredit the organization in a way where it loses its support within the 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 they do a good enough job, uh, 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 and defraud and to otherwise make it so that these organizations have a much harder time operating and being funded. All right, there, there’s, uh, going after the donors, whether institutional or funders, you, you, you have a broader term funders, also insidious, uh, there’s other, there are other methods of attack. Yeah, I, things like, um, investigations and and sometimes that’ll be by official sources, attorneys, states attorneys generals have been doing some of that, but also the third party organizations will have a quote unquote investigation of their own and and look into these types of things, you know, a fraud or abuse and and will publish their findings on such things. There’s also intimidation lawsuits as well that we’re starting to see against certain organizations, um, and that. Of course, you know, even if the lawsuit is meritless, um, that still costs the organization money to defend and effort and reputation and reputation. 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 are are designed to discredit the. Organization reduce its standing in the community and eventually hope that it goes away. A prominent example, Acorn um was a target of Project Veritas years ago. And uh it it it ceased to exist eventually over over what we now know are largely false accusations or at least uh uh accusations that were much broader than anything that was actually going on within the entity. Some of these official investigations or other actions, um, the, the, the officers are, are working within their within their statutory authority, like a, like a state attorney general, and they’re, they’re authorized most maybe all state attorneys general’s offices have charities bureaus, so there’s, so there’s authority to do what they’re doing, but they’re, they’re doing it under color of authority. In but in a in a nefarious backhanded way. Yeah, and, 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 uh over what seems to be ludicrous types of of arguments. The interesting thing here and and in Texas is the Texas Attorney general has done this, Ohio has done as well. What’s interesting here and what’s difficult, what’s challenging here is is exactly what you said, Tony. These attorneys general are all empowered and have a great deal of 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 uh 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 going to have to defend it. It’s going to take time and it’s going to 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, um, and maybe have your revenge that way as you later on when or the the what I would argue potentially is a frivolous complaint would eventually get withdrawn. People abbreviate, you know, AGs, and I always think, no, it should be A. I know, but nobody’s gonna do. It’s attorneys general. I think there was a whole episode of the West Wing on this, yes. 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 ASG right um. What, what about the, I’ve seen press too about The possibility of uh False Claims Act liability when a nonprofit is accused of submitting a payment for to a government entity. And they are not complying with, you know, the latest executive order on DEI. And so now there’s, now there’s a statute that they’ve committed fraud when they request their next payment please explain, explain what’s the potential here. Yeah, I mean, I have to, I have to confess 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, um, in a way that is meant to cost an organization it’s standing, cost the organization actual money and time to defend. And whether or not there is any truth in those types of things, um, technical or otherwise, it doesn’t matter, I think, because again, this goes to that chilling effect. Uh, I think that 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. 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 uh don’t make you a target. Get out of. uh folks who are undocumented immigrants. You know, it, 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, since the inauguration. are of questionable constitutional value. Oh, there are a lot of things that, that, um, will ultimately, uh, potentially by courts be reversed. But the point is that here and now there’s this flood the zone method that’s happening right now. Try to make it seem like that there’s little hope that that the the the powers have turned and everybody is, is uh 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. That’s such an important point, Tim, that the, the, the purpose of a lot of this is intimidation, you know, discouragement. Oh, you know, there’s so much happening. Flood the zone is that, that goes back to Steve Bannon, uh, Trump’s, uh, adviser, particularly in the, in the, in the first, uh, presidency. That’s his, 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, just overwhelm people, overwhelm the, the, the what, 200 and some executive orders within the first couple of days of the administration. That alone. But then, you know, everything compounded after that, the, the, the federal employment. Major upheavals, you know, veterans, the, the different agencies being, being targeted, you know, the latest is weather, the, the National Weather Service, for God’s sake, and NOAA, you know, uh, it’s all part of the strategy, so you need to, need to recognize that that a lot of, a lot of what’s happening is, 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 it’s, it’s, and, uh, uh, 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. And I think that one of the reasons why flooding the zone is so successful is that it, it, 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, uh, there seems to be an attempt perhaps to distract from those types of things and and that um dosifying 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. Um, it’s all part of the the flood the zone that we’ve been mentioning here. Is there anything more you want to cover, uh, we haven’t talked about or maybe more detail on something uh in terms of the, the forms of attack? No, I think that that the biggest thing is that when it comes to the attacks, there, we’ve been talking a lot about PR attacks uh and that type of thing, but there’s also online attacks that that we’ve been seeing and, and I mentioned kind of the keyboard warrior situation, you know, there’s certainly an element of online attacks going after data. Bass and things along those lines as well. And and part of what we are recommending as part 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. It’s time for Tony’s Take two. Thank you, Kate. Especially now with all the attacks going on uh against our nonprofit community. Obviously the show today, devoted to that. I’m harkening back to our guest Miko 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, if you feel depression, you need to get help with that, not let it fester, you know, do things that are good for you mentally. Exercise, of course, taking just equal care of your physical body, uh, like you’re doing with uh 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, uh, doesn’t mean you can’t indulge now and then. But being careful, not, not, uh, overeating out of, out of stress. And sleep, getting adequate sleep. We’re all supposed to get between 7 and 8 hours for adults. Well, probably adults are listening to this. I don’t, I don’t think there are any children under 12, uh, listening to nonprofit radio, not likely, unless they’re future, uh, 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, Uh, 7 to 8 hours recommended sleep, so please, uh, this. Important advice, particularly around challenging this challenging time from uh from Miko, mind your meds, the mindset, exercise, diet, and sleep. And that is Tony’s take too. 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, little medi pedi that really like calms me down. I see. All right, so we have to modify I for indulgence indulgence mindset. Yes, meds for uh for our associate producer Kate. Maybe we can add an F in there too, so it’s like meds, so it’s like family and friends. Family and friends, that’s the different meds. OK, meds. All right. We’ve got Voco but loads more time. Here’s the rest of politically motivated attacks. Who, what and how with Tim Mooney. Let’s let’s go then to um. What we can do in advance, the point you made earlier that we don’t want to wait until someone comes after us, starts asking, well, you know, what we, we’re just asking questions. We’re, 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 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. Um, alright, 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. Yeah, I, 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 uh uh uh a voting rights organization, you know, all the common narrative often for voting rights, particularly civil rights organizations, is, oh, they’re registering illegal voters, the common narrative. Um, if, if you are um with an organization that is, um, Interested in criminal justice reform, the the the concept of what defund the police means, and and 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, the, the, 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 is, 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, um, and then kind of uh taking it from there. OK, be aware of what people say about you, what they may, including what’s what’s potentially false. Um, other stuff, you know, compliance related, you know, your organic documents, compliance, let’s let’s talk about that. 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 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. 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, 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. Um, you know, I’ve been talking about lobbying, but this could be something as simple as charitable solicitation registration, you know, are 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 a a small nonprofit and maybe you don’t have a lawyer on your board of directors or or somebody who really understands compliance in these types of things, but you’re you’re aiding um uh undocumented folks in your community and someone wants to come after your 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 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 you do really want to make sure that that’s an important type of thing. Um, it also gets to the point with where the vectors come in. And often what will happen is that there will 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 uh the person that they’re talking to to quote unquote admit something. And so what you need to do there is this interface is on the compliance side but also on the training side as well. So say you’re an organization that’s doing uh nonpartisan get out the vote work. And that’s perfectly legal. It’s perfectly legal under all sorts of different, different uh rules and regulations. But if you have a volunteer and someone comes up and says, oh, thanks for doing this uh 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, to, uh, you know, trip up and admit those types. This is the Veritas. It’s that right now but it could be an official official investigation as well. Um, you know, the idea here is, OK, you gotta 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 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, 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 Suzie over there and come and talk to you. That, that’s the kind of stuff that you that that puts the separation between that type of a thing. Now, is every single person asking these types of questions a part of some Project Veritas or a 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 you’re 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. We need to be more vigilant now, more, more more conscious of, of the potential for the the kinds of Well, you know, um, bad actors, whether they’re official or unofficial, uh, being out there lurking, you know, trying to, trying to, trying to set us up, trying to trap us. We, we need to be more aware than we did a year ago. I don’t know about you, Tony, but I, 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. 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 if something is bad is happening, if he’s about to get hit by a villain 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, um, you know, it’s, uh, our instincts are pretty finely honed in those areas and it’s pretty good to listen to those two. A couple of weeks ago we had Gene Takagi on and uh he was talking about, and I’m sure you know Gene. Oh yeah, absolutely, yeah, he’s our legal contributor. He was talking about uh 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. Uh, you’ll you’ll end up amplifying what Gene said about compliance with your own documents, please. 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 by registering as a nonprofit corporation, and that It 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, the methods that you’re going to engage in and the type of topics that you’re going to be uh 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. The board meeting minutes are done differently. Um, they don’t operate with the same type of procedures that their bylaws and maybe even their articles uh require. Uh, and 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 a. But it’s certainly something that could at least again be highlighted, you know, oh, look at this organization, it’s supposed to have um uh open meetings for its members and they haven’t done that since 1978. Look, there, there, there’s, it’s a scofflawer 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 uh 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 exempt across the board in some states. 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, uh, 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? 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 gotta 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 of angles that could be taken on the official level, but also outside of, of, 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 you know, highlighting these things for organizations that work in subject matter areas that we’ve already talked about, um, to try to get them to lose standing in their community, standing in their funders, that’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. Tim, what are the limits, uh, that bolder advocacy can take? I mean, you, you said your attorneys, but you’re not, uh, we’re not, we’re attorneys, we’re not your attorney. But what, what types of questions around what we were just talking about, could, can you field or or maybe even not field what would go over the, over the, the boundary? Yeah, the line is, you know, since we’re not, we do not have. Attorney-client relationship, we don’t give legal advice and the 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 uh perspective. And that’s where we’ll kind of, you know, say, well, um, 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, um, and to serve the broader nonprofit community that way. Thank you. All right. Um, let’s talk about data security. You mentioned it, uh, you mentioned it briefly earlier, but now in our discussion of how to protect yourself, data security, personally identifiable information, etc. Yeah, it’s interesting, you know, I, I’m of a certain age where I was around before the internet, and I remember time before the internet and you know, I think that those of us who are sort of in our age range, you’re not the only one in this conversation you go Gen X’s right, yeah, yeah, you know, I mean, we, we came in with the idea of, oh, you’re going to put your credit card into that machine and it’s gonna, you know, give you a book later that gets. Delivered well, that’s strange, you know, and then we eventually got comfortable with all those things and, and I think that a lot of folks who are a little bit younger than us, uh just got were thrown into the world where, you know, oh yeah, of course you share your your 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 act 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 501c3. We don’t do that. We don’t support candidates out of that, out of the C3. But these malicious actors will often try to Cherry pick and and and and take that information that’s sort of out there and create a a a feeling that, oh, that organization is just full of people that all they want to do is see this 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 the traditional stuff, the cyber attacks, the hacking, the phishing, I mean, I can’t tell you how many times I have gotten an email where it’s very clear a text even today, where it’s it’s enormously clear that it’s a phishing attack, but we do training internally and I have um thought of myself as a very smart person who will never get caught in a fishing attack and one of our training um uh. Thats absolutely caught me, absolutely caught me. Why did they say? I I even have my prop for this. It was, it was, it was months ago before these came in. We have a new swag for those of you who are on the video, you might be able to say we have swag for our, our organization now. So frontline, front line of democracy? Yeah, front lines of democracy on the front lines of democracy FJ.org, really great sweatshirt, very excited for these things. Well, we were, we We got a faux phishing attack that basically said, oh, put in click here to put in your size, and they got me on that one. 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 do those internal trainings, know what’s what’s coming after you. Uh, have your complex passwords, make sure that they get a reset every couple of months or whatever is kind of best practices, two-factor authentication, all that kind of stuff. If someone nefarious gets into your database, they, they, they’ve got so many opportunities to wreck you, to lock things up, or to make things to plan things perhaps. And then 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. Um, and doxing, of course, is another type of a situation that that we’ve been seeing as well. And, 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, uh, your, 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. Um, you know, and, 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 gonna try those types of things. Um, you know, that’s the kind of stuff that that that we’ll see that is sort of these attacks to get in, but also the doxing element of, 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 uh out into the general public with an intent to create harm or at least um discomfort for that person. All of this stuff is, 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, you’re not signing up to be, you know, on the. Front page of The New York Times or to necessarily be be subject to the whims of some of these types of personal attacks, but we do see that, um, we, we’ve seen, um, election officials, local election officials, um, get, get doxed and and harassed online. And, and, and this is the type of of attack that we’re seeing. It’s, it’s to the organization, but it’s narrowed down to the personal. And so making sure that you’ve got uh your Your individual um online home buttoned up a little bit more, um, think about how much you want to be out there. That’s, that’s another thing as well. And your CRM database, um, and, and so in light of all this, uh, 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, uh, 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. Yeah, retention policies, all of that. Make sure that’s all buttoned up. Um, 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. Whistleblower protection, another one, another one, what about, uh, openness and transparency with our, with our funders whether again institutional or, or individual, as a, 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, uh, that aren’t out there or could be out there, but just open this with our, our, our funding community. When you are attacked, the instinct is to, oh, we’ve got, we’ve got to huddle up and we’ve got to keep this quiet. I, I, I think that our advice is kind of the exact opposite as, 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, um, from, 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, the attack, and the cost of course can be time and money and and and opportunities, but you know, if it is easily revealed that there is a, a political animus behind this type of a thing. This might be something that actually gets a broader attention and there 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 thing 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 of a sudden 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. 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 us under threat and that whether that’s a mission that we believe in or it’s one that we find antithetical to our to our being, but there’s still a 501c3 and they’re part of the community and they’re under attack and you never know when the attack may point toward you. So I leave with the, the, the strength of the community when it stays together. The, the attacks often are not are ideological, but I, I, I think that you’re exactly right. This should span ideology. The the the the 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, and, and it’s a bummer that this tends to have political ramifications to it. It shouldn’t. The tax exempt organizations span ideology. They serve communities, they’re charitable, they’re educational, they’re scientific. They, they, they shouldn’t, they shouldn’t be subject to those political whims. And and and I’m I’m saddened that that this is the latter part of my career been that type of a thing. 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. Tim, thanks for sharing all your advice, advice from Alliance for Justice. Thank you very much. Thank you. 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 at Tim Mooney on BlueSky and also on LinkedIn and Tim, thank you again. Thanks so much, Tony. I really appreciate it. Next week, great value in sustainable giving. If you missed any part of this week’s show, I beseech you. Find it at Tony Martignetti.com. We’re sponsored by DonorBox. Outdated donation forms blocking your supporters’ generosity. Donor box, 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. Mark Silverman is our web guy, and this music is by Scott Stein. 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, uh, you said. You need to know who is a potential target of the attack. So we need a tax, so why don’t you just say that sentence. That starts, you need to know.
As our 2024 Nonprofit Technology Conference coverage continues, Janice Chan returns with the savvy idea of adapting team meeting principles to a team of just one. She’ll have you thinking of yourself as a team leader, rather than one person doing everything. Janice is at 
We’ve got good stories about bad actors. You’ll also hear the practical steps your nonprofit can take to prepare for cybersecurity incidents to reduce their impact. And we’ll empower you to hold incident prep discussions with your leadership or staff. Steve Sharer, who says “Security is a team sport,” joins from 