To help your nonprofit prepare for this fall’s general election, the Center is offering a free webinar for nonprofits on the 2022 election on October 14 from 10-11 a.m. The webinar will include:

• A quick overview of what’s at stake in the 2022 election and why it matters to nonprofits.
• Answers to common nonprofit questions about election-related activities that nonprofits – and their staff and board members – can and can’t do.
• How to find and share basic information about the 2022 election.
• How to learn more about candidates’ positions on issues that are important to your nonprofit’s work.
• Five nonpartisan ways your nonprofit can help your staff, board, volunteers, and clients be well-informed voters this year.

Register today! In the meantime, we encourage you to check out some helpful resources on nonprofits and the 2022 election:

• The new Practical Guidance on Nonprofit Voter Assistance in North Carolina from Bolder Advocacy and the Democracy Capacity Project. This guide provides a good overview of several legal considerations – along with some practical tips – for nonprofits doing voter registration, voter education, and get-out-the-vote work during an election year.
• The Center’s tips on ways nonprofits can strengthen their programs and service by empowering voters (while remaining nonpartisan, of course).
• The Center’s blog post with five simple ways nonprofits can help their clients overcome obstacles to voting.

Earlier this year, the Center sent a candidate questionnaire on nonprofit issues to all North Carolina candidates for Congress and the NC General Assembly. The questionnaire asks candidates about their personal experience with nonprofits, their priorities if elected, and which nonprofit sector policy issues they would most enthusiastically support. The Center is pleased that more than a quarter of candidates on the ballot this fall have completed the questionnaire.

Now, it’s important for you to see what the candidates on your ballot said about nonprofits. Here are three things you can do today:

1. Take a few minutes to check out the interactive 100-county map of candidate responses to learn more about the candidates on your ballot.
2. Share these responses (by sharing the link to the map) with your staff, board, volunteers, and the people you serve.
3. If you see candidates in your county who haven’t responded, reach out to them to ask them to complete the questionnaire. We’ve made it easy with this template you can customize and send to candidates running in your county who haven’t yet replied – their names and email addresses can all be found with the interactive 100- county map. The Center will continue to update the response page through Election Day in November.

A special thank you to all the nonprofits that have already reached out to their local candidates. As the National Council of Nonprofits noted in this recent article, your participation has been critical to the success of this project!

As parts of North Carolina and other southern states continue to recover from Hurricane Ian, a national coalition of nonprofits continues to urge President Biden and congressional leaders to pass disaster relief legislation that – among other provisions – restores expired charitable giving incentives and the Employee Retention Tax Credit. These policy changes would help ensure that nonprofits have much-needed resources to support relief and recovery efforts in their communities.

If you are in touch with candidates for the U.S. Senate or U.S. House of Representatives leading up election, we encourage you to encourage them to prioritize disaster tax relief provisions that would help nonprofits better serve their communities and share the letter from the nonprofit coalition with them. Educating candidates about the importance of nonprofit issues can elevate the discussion of these issues before the end of the year and can also make it more likely that our newly-elected members of Congress will prioritize nonprofit policy priorities in early 2023 if Congress doesn’t pass them this year.

Earlier this year, both the NC Senate and NC House of Representatives approved legislation to expand Medicaid coverage to adults with incomes up to 133% of the federal poverty level. Unfortunately, leaders in the two chambers have been unable to agree on final details of the legislation. One way that nonprofits can advocate for legislators to approve Medicaid expansion this year is by putting a human face on the issue. The Care4Carolina coalition (the Center is a member) is seeking stories about individuals in the health insurance coverage gap –those whose income is too high to qualify for Medicaid unless North Carolina enacts Medicaid expansion but too low to afford health coverage under the Affordable Care Act marketplace. If you or someone who works for, volunteers with, or receives services from your nonprofit is in the health insurance coverage gap and are willing to tell your story to the media, please take a few minutes to share your story with Care4Carolina. Your information will remain confidential until Care4Carolina has talked with you about how you would like to use your story.

As we explained in a Care4Carolina blog post this summer, the Center strongly supports Medicaid expansion because it would support the work of charitable nonprofits in three ways:

1. Complementing the work of many nonprofits that provide services to North Carolinians who don’t currently have adequate health coverage;
2. Providing health coverage for some employees of nonprofits that don’t offer group health plans and whose salaries leave them in the health care coverage gap; and 
3. Providing payment for some types of Medicaid-eligible services that nonprofits currently provide to clients for free.

The Center continues to work with our partners to advocate for legislators to come to an agreement and pass Medicaid expansion this year. 

One of the easiest ways nonprofits can help promote elections is by giving your staff paid time off to vote during Early Voting or on Election Day. To help ensure that nonprofits show leadership when it comes to empowering the millions who work daily to create a more equitable society, Nonprofit VOTE, the National Council of Nonprofits, and several other national organizations have launched the Nonprofit Staff Vote campaign.

The Center has proudly signed on to the Nonprofit Staff Vote campaign, and we encourage your nonprofit to join also. To model best practices, the Center is sharing its policy (below) allowing staff to take time off to vote or to volunteer as nonpartisan poll workers. Feel free to borrow this language and adapt it to fit into your organization’s personnel policies. And let us know if your nonprofit is also giving staff time off to vote in this year’s election.

“Voting and Election Day. The Center encourages all employees who are eligible to vote to participate fully in the electoral process. Any Center employee may take paid time off work on Election Day or during the Early Voting period to vote in any primary, general, or run-off election. Employees should notify their supervisors of the time they plan to take off for voting.

“Center employees also may take up to one day per year of paid time off to volunteer in a nonpartisan role as a poll worker on Election Day or during the Early Voting period. Employees must get prior written approval of their supervisors (which shall not unreasonably be denied) before taking this paid time off. Employees volunteering for political parties or campaigns on Election Day or during the Early Voting period may not be paid for their time engaging in partisan political activities, but they may take annual leave for any time spent volunteering for candidates or political parties.

“Paid time off for voting and nonpartisan election volunteer work is in addition to annual leave, sick leave, and personal leave that employees have accrued. Employees are not required to use annual leave, sick leave, or personal leave when they take paid time off to vote or to volunteer as a nonpartisan poll worker pursuant to this policy.”

Nonprofit employees have a month left to take advantage of the temporary Public Service Loan Forgiveness (PSLF) waiver. This temporary waiver makes it possible for many nonprofit workers to receive credit for past periods of repayment that would otherwise not qualify for the PSLF program, thereby reducing or potentially eliminating student loan debt. 

The PSLF program forgives the balance of most federal student loans after ten years working for charitable nonprofits and governments. Many nonprofit workers with student debt may not be aware of the benefits of the PSLF program or realize that the temporary waiver can provide immediate forgiveness for some borrowers. So far, borrowers from North Carolina have been approved for more than $246 million in student loan forgiveness under the waiver.

Here are three things your nonprofit can (and should) do today to help ensure that your eligible employees take advantage of the temporary PSLF waiver:

1. Remind your employees about the temporary PSLF waiver and the October 31 deadline in any upcoming staff meetings or communications with your employees. You can share the U.S. Department of Education’s free resources about the waiver (note that the website has had some delays recently due to the high level of interest in the waiver).
2. Make it easier for your employees to apply for the waiver by making sure they know your nonprofit’s employer identification number (EIN) and the contact information for the person on your staff to direct PSLF forms and related questions.
3. Encourage your employees to check out The Institute of Student Loan Advisors (TISLA), a nonprofit with free information about PSLF, how you might qualify, and all things student loans.

Second quarter lobbying expense reports are due to the NC Secretary of State by Friday, October 21. Nonprofits that are registered as lobbyist principals and nonprofit staff and contractors registered as lobbyists must submit their expense reports each quarter. For more information on lobbying registration and reporting requirements, check out the Center's summary of NC lobbying laws for nonprofits.

The Center provides Nonprofit Policy Update each week as a benefit to its nonprofit members. However, to help all North Carolina nonprofits respond to the COVID-19 pandemic, we're temporarily providing this newsletter to non-member nonprofits. Don’t miss out – become a member to ensure you continue receiving these updates along with many other valuable benefits.