We Should All Be Advocates
Advocacy needs to be a part of your financial capability practice, as it is just as important as financial counseling and education.
Good day, Talking About Money Community, I hope you are well. 🙏🏽
In this post I want to discuss with you the importance of advocacy in your professional role as a financial capability expert. This comes on the heels of a training that I was presenting recently (in person, can you believe it!). We were talking about one aspect or another of financial capability program management when the conversation drifted toward the role of advocacy among nonprofit financial capability professionals. As I climbed up on my soapbox for the 999th time, this time to exalt the benefits of advocacy within the financial capability and asset building field, the participants countered my arguments.
“But Kimberly,” they said, “we can’t serve as advocates for financial capability. We work for 501(c)(3) nonprofit organizations, and our managers/directors/board members won’t let us participate in advocacy-related activities.”
Sigh.
Direct service and issue advocacy doesn’t have to be an either/or proposition. You have stories to tell about what works (and what doesn’t work) in existing programs for the households that you serve. If you currently work on government contracts, I bet that at least once you have thought to yourself, “why are we delivering this service this way? I have an idea about how to do it better.” And you have an established community of current and former clients whom you talk to, and who have opinions on how to do things better themselves.
So, you might ask, what can you do to improve social policy on the local, state, or federal level that improves the financial lives of the people that you serve?
Reader, I am so glad that you asked! I want to share with you a great resource from Bolder Advocacy. It is called The Rules of the Game: A Guide to Election-Related Activities for 501(c)(3) Organizations. While this publication is positioned to assist nonprofits in knowing how to stay in their lane during an election year, it provides concrete how-to’s in what you can or cannot do during any year on the calendar.
To highlight some of the useful information contained in this publication, your organization may want to consider actions such as:
[Note before we proceed: This blog post is for educational purposes only and should not be considered legal advice. For advice as it pertains to your specific nonprofit organization, please consult an experienced attorney.]
Issue Advocacy
Issue advocacy is when your organization communicates its position on issues of concern to its mission. You might conduct a campaign to educate your audience on topics such as financial literacy in high schools, baby bonds, down payment assistance for first-time homebuyers, or matched savings programs, to name a few. You might ask your community to take part in advocacy themselves and communicate directly to their elected officials to request that these types of programs be offered your community. A key point to issue advocacy is to keep all communications focused on the issue, and not on any candidate for office (as in, you cannot tell your clients who to vote for). A best practice is to conduct issue advocacy consistently and on an ongoing basis, regardless of what year it is in the election cycle.
Voter Education
As a way of educating your clients on policies that impact them and their households, your organization may want to host voter education events. This might involve inviting an elected official or a candidate for elected office to speak on issues that impact your organization. The trick here is for the organization to take steps to neither support nor oppose the candidate, and if it is an election year, to extend invitations to comparable events to all candidates in that same election. Your organization might even host a candidate forum, as long as it is conducted in a nonpartisan fashion.
Voter Registration & Get-Out-The-Vote (GOTV) Activities
You may have members of your community who are not already registered to vote, and you want to help them to become full participants in civil society. Especially for younger citizens, as well as those for whom English is not their first language, this might be a daunting process. You can help them to register to vote! Back in the day I worked as the Citizenship Center Coordinator at the International Institute, and my favorite events of the year were naturalization ceremonies. After these moving ceremonies concluded, my volunteers and I would work the crowds and register these brand-new American citizens to vote.
GOTV activities are allowed as long as they educate your constituency about the importance of voting in general, and do not show any preference for any candidate or political party specifically. You might place reminder calls to clients, help them find their polling place, or even give them rides to the polls. All these actions can serve as great community-building activities for your organization (again, as long as they are conducted in a nonpartisan fashion).
Candidate Education
Your organization might want to educate candidates for political office in your jurisdiction, to inform them about the issues that your agency grapples with on a daily basis. This education can come in the forms of personal visits to candidates, phone calls, mailing them materials, or hosting issues briefings for candidates or their staff. If you plan to educate your local candidates, remember to reach out to each and every candidate for a particular race, provide the same materials, and speak your truth and share the mission of your organization.
Personal Activity of 501(c) Staff, Volunteers and Board Members
Even though you may work for a nonprofit organization, you do not give up your right to free speech and association. That said, you should be aware that activity conducted specifically for or against a political candidate should be conducted on personal time, using personal resources, and avoiding representation of the nonprofit organization that you work for.
As you can see, working for a nonprofit organization does not preclude you from participating in advocacy, as long as you keep your eyes open and take the appropriate precautions. And you as a financial capability expert are uniquely positioned to serve this role, since you have training and on-the-ground experience on what it takes for working households to manage their finances and while trying to build assets and get ahead. Who better than you to communicate your hard-won knowledge and wisdom to your elected officials?
