Advocacy Question of the Week

Question: One of our projects has been to identify whether or not different recommendations coming out of our organization could be implemented via executive authority by the president or would need to be legislatively implemented by Congress. We would like to take this a step further and actually provide draft executive orders and legislation so as to allow the pressing issue we work on to be addressed as quickly as possible in the first 100 days of the next president’s term. As a 501(c)(3), are we allowed to draft legislation or executive orders?

Answer: Yes, under federal tax law a 501(c)(3) organization can certainly draft legislation or executive orders. If you plan to share the draft legislation with a legislator, that would be considered direct lobbying. Direct lobbying occurs when you contact a legislator and express a view about specific legislation. In the case of presenting draft legislation to a legislator, you would definitely be expressing a view on the legislation. In that case, a 501(c)(3) would need to make sure it is tracking this activity as direct lobbying. Executive orders are not considered “specific legislation” under tax law, so working on executive orders does not count as lobbying. As a result, a 501(c)(3)’s time and resources spent on drafting executive orders would not be limited at all.