Nonprofit organizations often stand on the sidelines during election season. Fears that they could violate IRS regulations and lose their nonprofit status are the primary reason, but the law actually allows 501(c)(3) nonprofits to engage in a wide variety of election activities including voter education, voter registration, and get-out-the-vote activities. There is only one one restriction: the activities must be nonpartisan.

What does that mean, exactly? A nonprofit organization can’t campaign for or against a particular candidate or party, or express a preference for or against parties or candidates who have stated particular positions on issues.

So, what can we do, as a chapter, to get involved in future elections? Here are a few ideas. It may be too late to pursue some of them this year, but we can keep these in mind when setting our chapter goals and programs for next election season.

• Post a voter registration link on our website.
• Encourage our members to volunteer, support, and vote for candidates of their choice.
• Participate as a group in non-partisan voter registration campaigns and ‘get out the vote’ efforts.
• Encourage our members (freelancers, retirees, and those who are able to take a day off for volunteer programs) to work as election inspectors at their local polling places.
• Solicit input from our membership on issues of local and national concern such as health care, social security, small business regulation, and other issues of interest to our members, and send a summary to platform committees, campaign staff, candidates, media, and the general public.
• Issue a candidate questionnaire to foster discussion among candidates, public officials, and voters about the issues that affect us.
• Attend candidate debates and pose questions about those issues.
• Organize educational events in cooperation with other local organizations to raise awareness of issues that affect our members.
• Sponsor a candidate forum at one of our fall program meetings, or as a special event.

None of these activities, conducted properly, will violate our nonprofit status. They do, however involve thought and hard work. Why should we bother? We live and work in a local community, a region, a nation, a world. We share the responsibility to help make those places better.