The Increasingly Blurry Line Separating Tax-Exempt Issues Advocacy from Partisan Hackery

Here’s another reason for nonprofits to cheer the ascendancy of online advances: According to Elizabeth Wasserman, writing in Contribute magazine, the Internet has allowed the sector to skate closer to the line separating issue advocacy from political advocacy than ever before.

With the need to woo more young, social-networking converts to their causes, issues-advocacy nonprofits — 501(c)(4)s — have been flocking to the Internet in droves, from the left-leaning MoveOn.org Civic Action to the right-leaning Christian Coalition.

Don’t underestimate the online power of nonprofits in public policy debates. MoveOn.org was formed to use the Internet to fight the impeachment of President Clinton in 1998 and wound up generating enough support to help convince the U.S. Senate to acquit Clinton of the charges — even after the U.S. House of Representatives had voted for impeachment. Since then, conservatives have used the Net — in sites like Focus on the Family and Citizens Flag Alliance — to push for legislation banning gay marriage, as well as to force a vote on whether to make flag-burning illegal. Liberals, in turn, also have successfully used sites like MoveOn.org to exert political pressure. One example? Their 2005 campaign to discredit U.S. Supreme Court nominee Harriet Miers and get her to withdraw her name from consideration.

Not everyone is clapping. Some observers worry that the new paradigm the ‘Net has opened up is causing nonprofits to trip over that line I mentioned above. They think the IRS should be more specific in what constitutes tax-exempt advocacy and what does not. Of course, then you bump against free speech concerns and questions of whether taxpayers should be subsidizing partisanship. Anyone else’s head hurt? | 501(c)