Election Skulduggery in Nonprofitdom

There once was a charity named “Helping Hand Charity” whose mission was to help teenage boys and girls through adolescence, teaching them skills, mentoring them, providing sports and recreation, and role model images.

This charity received substantial funds from government programs, one of which was the “No Child Left Behind” program of one of the more conservative administrations who really didn’t like children but wanted to appear to be “doing good” in order to satisfy its critics.

The Board of directors of “Helping Hand” learned that the “No Child Left Behind” program was about to be abruptly ended by the Republicans in Congress, as it was thought to be too expensive for what it had produced, and the Republicans were looking forward to enacting a sweeping tax cut for the wealthy. Thus they were out cutting expenses and downsizing government as best they could under the watchful but useless eye of a Democratic Congress.

In an effort to save the NCLB program, the Board of Directors at “Helping Hand” voted $100,000 of its cash reserves to give to an organization of like-minded charities that, in turn, would employ a lobbyist to generate support among the few left-leaning Republicans still in Washington who would admit to being such.

All this happened during a state senate election campaign where “Helping Hand” was located. Among those running was Senator Hugh Jossey, the Republican incumbent, and he wanted to go to Washington as the next U.S. Senator from this area. So he was looking to be re-elected, then in a year or so he planned to resign and run for the U.S. Senate.

Now it happened that the Democratic challenger in this state senate race was Marian Brown, who had stepped away from a seat in the state House of Representatives to run for the state Senate.

Marian was a strong candidate, much favored by, among other constituencies, nonprofit human welfare and services agencies, because she had often served as a staunch advocate particularly for indigent, neglected and abused children.

During the summer campaigning, Senator Jossey came to feel that the polls are right when they said that Marian Brown had a strong lead and was very likely to win the election. He therefore needed something that would turn public opinion in his favor.

As it happened, Senator Jossey’s old college roommate, Jerry Hastings, was a member
of the Board of Directors for the “Helping Hand Charity.” And Jerry very nicely took it upon himself to mention that “Helping Hand’s” Board had just voted to join in hiring a lobbyist to help their cause against Republican programmatic cutbacks.

Well, Hugh Jossey immediately sensed that he might have a good issue here: “Helping Hand” might just have overstepped its bounds and gotten into lobbying, and thus could be held to account and forfeit its tax-exempt status. Wonderful! he thought.

In the hurly-burly that would attend that announcement, the good Senator could
interject a public message that the types of human service agencies supported by his opponent Marian Brown typically liked to walk the thin line and “often” overstepped their boundaries. He could use this, then, as the reason why members of the voting public should re-elect him, so he could be in Washington to keep a watchful eye on those nonprofits and prevent them from lobbying without the sanction of loosing their IRS tax-exempt status.

Our questions for the day are: “Does Hugh Jossey have something here, or is he blowing smoke? Will he be right, or will he embarrass himself in public by taking this tidbit of information seriously?”