Alliance for Justice, Influencing Public Policy in the Digital Age: The Law of Online Lobbying and Election-related Activities:

This is an age of vibrant and rapidly evolving communication technologies. It’s the era of Facebook and Twitter and YouTube, Websites and blogs, smartphones and tablets. The way we share and consume information, and engage in interaction with others, has been radically altered just within the last few years. That’s the case in our private lives, of course, but also increasingly true in the context of how nonprofit organizations communicate and advocate. Change is happening so fast it’s hard to keep up. Between the time I write this and the time you read it, almost certainly new ways to communicate will have been brought to the market and injected into our cultural andpolitical systems.

No one had ever heard of—or even imagined—things like Facebook or Twitter when the rules were written that govern advocacy and political activity for nonprofit organizations. But that doesn’t mean that the rules don’t apply. Today, questions abound about what’s permissible for 501(c)(3)s, 501(c)(4)s, and 527s, in the context of social media, blogs, Websites, and the whole host of rapidfire, far-reaching technologies that now dominate our lives.

This publication was created to address the many questions nonprofit organizations have about advocacy in the new environment of dynamic digital communication. Our hope is not merely to ensure that nonprofit advocates stay within the law, but to demonstrate that robust participation in our nation’s democratic process is not just possible, but actually enhanced by new technologies. Our view with electronic advocacy is the same as it is for more traditional forms: the more nonprofits know and understand the rules, the more confident they will be in taking full advantage of their right to be actively and meaningfully engaged in virtually every aspect of our nation’s policy and political processes.