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Lessons Learned from Legislative Battle over Anti-Advocacy Language

In every legislative fight, there are challenges nonprofits must face. Whether it is how to frame the debate to how do you pick leadership of a coalition, most legislative advocacy efforts include these challenges. A recent legislative battle in the House provides illustration of a few issues you may encounter.

On October 26, 2005, the House of Representatives passed the Federal Housing Finance Reform Act (H.R. 1461), which includes an Affordable Housing Fund (AHF).  With language promoted by the Republican Study Committee, the AHF within the GSE (government sponsored enterprise) bill to create a new regulator for Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, was altered to include a provision that would disqualify nonprofits from receiving money from a new affordable housing fund if they have engaged in voter registration and other nonpartisan voter participation activities or lobbying for certain groups within 12 months of applying for the money. They would also be barred from these activities during the grant period, even if non-federal funds were used to pay for it. More specifically, the bill would sweepingly restrict any group that affiliates with an organization that engages in such activities from applying for funds under the affordable housing fund.

Led by the affordable housing community, the nonprofit sector banded together to stop the heinous provision in its tracks. The strategy included direct lobbying, grassroots mobilization, and analyses of the provision.


In a legislative fight, it is essential for information to be spread quickly in the early stages.  It is important to build a base of galvanized supporters at the state and local level, which will have the most impact motivating a member of Congress to support an issue.  While it is important for organizations to have a clear analysis and reasoning, organizations need to build support in at the state and local level to make a member care about the issue at hand.

In the GSE legislative battle, the information campaign got off to a rocky start. Groups specializing in protecting free speech for nonprofit advocates saw reports of the provision, and they contacted the housing groups to find out more information.  The housing community was assured by members they knew that the threats were just rhetoric that would not make it to the final bill.  They were encouraged not to act on the language.  However, the coalition learned later that some groups had been consulted on the language and had rejected it.  With better-established networks, it might have been possible that other groups concerned about the language could have begun a grassroots information campaign without upsetting the goals of the housing community.

Trusting the organizations you are working with is essential any legislative battle.  The better-established networks an organization has, the more quickly a leadership structure is established and the organizations can begin to work on disseminating similar information to their networks.  More often then not, the groups that come together on an issue do not have the extensive contact that establishes a level of trust.

Once it was clear that the anti-advocacy language would be added a the manager's amendment (a manager's amendment is an amendment to fix technical problems in the bill. It is offered by the the bill's manager, usually a co-sponsor), the coalition came together quickly. So quickly, in fact, there was not time to completely address issues like how to frame the debate. Some groups wanted to stress the voter provisions – they are easy to understand and communicate.  Other groups wanted to go with a broader message and focus on the more complex affiliation language. These issues even included the "naming" of the provision.  A number of groups began calling the provision the "Nonprofit Gag Provision", which some of the faith-based groups – essential members of the coalition - were uncomfortable with, given the connotations "gag" has in other policy areas.


As essential factor to a successful legislative fight is a strong coalition – a group of organizations working in tandem on a given issue.  Working in collaboration with other organizations can heighten the level of expertise on an issue and expand the national, state, and local contacts.  Every nonprofit brings a different audience.

Working in coalitions, although they can be beneficial to the organization's objective, can be difficult as well. Coalitions need leadership. Because the GSE coalition came together so quickly, there was hesitation on who should take the lead. Organizations should not be afraid to step up to the challenge, but good leadership requires that a leader must be able to understand the interests of the participating organizations.  When there is a hesitation in leadership, there is hesitation in decision-making as well. In a short time frame, decisions must be executed on an almost hourly basis. So while having a large coalition is important for establishing a large grassroots network, it is also important to establish a smaller, decision-making structure – which has buy-in from the coalition at large.

Leadership Means Being a Resource Leaders of the coalition serve as the clearinghouse for the coalition's information – which may be letters to members of Congress, testimony, or newspaper stories.  It is important that the members of the coalition stay up to date as the issue progresses – and have access to the resources on it.

This was a problem during the GSE fight.  While a resource center was established to serve as a clearinghouse of information, not all documents were always sent around to everyone. As much as possible, a resource center should contain any articles, testimony or letters written. Organizations can use this information to convince legislators that they should support/oppose an issue if there are letters or articles from their district.
 
Listserves can be very helpful in ensuring that everyone has access to the materials and are kept up to date.  However, they must be organized correctly.  Because of the limited time, there was confusion with multiple listserves and email lists.  Some members of the coalition would receive multiple messages and some not at all. It was not uncommon for conversations to begin, "Did you see so-and-so's email?" It is of organizational importance to maintain only one or two listserves to which everyone can post. A large coalition may want two listserves, one for the entire coalition and another for a smaller "steering committee."

Summary "action item" emails are also helpful in keeping all coalition members on task.  Having an organization take notes at the meetings and phone calls and then send out emails with meeting notes including what people are going to do.  In the GSE fight, we did not do this and it would have helped – people did not remember the tasks they had taken on, or changed their mind about what they wanted to do without consulting people.  It also helps keep people on task, reminding them that they have taken an assignment and when it is due.


In some legislative fights, organizations may already have a champion, while in others; they have to start from scratch.  It is important to establish and nurture contacts with key members and staff on the issue. Staff can help provide information on a bill's progress, direct you to other key staff members and help deploy a legislative strategy.


Particularly with non-sexy issues is the need to educate staff – on the technical merits of the legislation but especially on the impact it will have in a legislator's district. One of the successful ways that we did this is asking state and local groups to provide examples of how the provision, if enacted, would be impacted.  The state and local groups provided the information to the national groups within 24 hours. It was an outstanding response by our grassroots networks.  

One of the ways we could have used, but because of the short time period, did not, is holding a briefing on Capitol Hill.  Briefings can help educate a large number of staff in a short period.  While they are not always appropriate in every legislative fight, a briefing in this fight would have helped because we were faced with an extremely short period and spent much of the ten days in meetings with individual staffers.

What made our education campaign more difficult were the mixed messages that leadership and other members were sending to the coalition.  Some organizations in our coalition had pre-established relationships with staff on the Banking committee because of their on-going work.  It was tough for the coalition to figure out how best to strategize and what roles to play when the members were receiving different messages from various staffers.  Organizations also feared stepping on each other's toes by calling staffers that another group had a well-established contact with, while being able to ascertain what reliable information was.

The coalition also gave mixed messages to legislative staff. Because the time frame was short, the "asks" changed daily. For example, one day I was calling a member's office to ask if they would sign a bi-partisan Dear Colleague, and the next I was asking them to speak out on the floor against the Manager's Amendment. Having a more clear-cut strategy at the beginning would have helped this.


Advocacy groups have a special role to play in the legislative process. They bring issues to light that would otherwise go unnoticed. They assure that the unrepresented do not go unnoticed in the public debate. They also push the limits of the public conversation so that issues other than sexy, easy to understand issues get noticed by the public.

To do this well, it is essential that representatives from nonprofits understand the legislative process. It is often difficult, since many issues before the coalition involved an understanding of the tax code as it relates to nonprofits and the complexities of the legislative process.

In this case, the pre-established relationship was a both a help and a hindrance. Pre-established relationships can provide immediate access to the legislators an organization is trying to influence. This helps to convey the relevant information in a short period of time – which was essential for any sort of success in the GSE battle.  However, this also means that the legislator might wield more influence in the coalition than they should.

Once the coalition was aware that Oxley was going to introduce a manager's amendment, the coalition worked with pertinent legislators and Democratic leadership to establish a strategy. Yet the goals of coalition and the goals of the members were not the same.  Unfortunately, the legislators that were serving as our "champions" viewed the addition of an AHF as a "win" – yet the coalition felt that an AHF with such restrictions did not equal a win.  The coalition was told that the Democrats were "in line" on this issue, but in separate conversations with staffers, we realized that they were not.  

This is where the coalition education efforts can fail if not executed properly.  Because of the importance of the AHF to Democratic legislators, they were willing to trade the rights of groups to affiliate for the ability to say they got an AHF.  For example, when the Manager's Amendment containing the provision passed, Rep. Barney Frank (D-MA) offered a motion to recommit with instructions. A motion to recommit with instructions is a motion to send the bill back to committee, but the instructions provide that it come immediately back to the floor in an altered form.  Before the floor debate started, the coalition believed that Frank was going to offer a motion that struck the entire provision. Instead, his motion was only to ensure that the faith-based groups were not precluded from participating – as long as they did not do any of the actions prohibited by the anti-advocacy provisions.  The coalition was later told that Frank had done what was "politically possible."

The lesson from this is to keep in mind that legislators will often have different objectives, even if they agree with you. In this case, an AHF with the restrictions was better than no AHF at all to certain legislators.  Yet because they kept telling us that they would strike the provision, we never mobilized against the bill.

Additionally, some coalition members felt that they could have had better direction from the champions – while others felt that the legislators had too much influence within the coalition.  This is in part because of the differences in coalition members understanding of the legislative process.  Having a better understanding of the legislative process would have helped the decision making process within the coalition, because while you must work to obtain, then retain, your champion, a coalition must also do what is right for its sector.