Advocacy and Grantmaking – Part 1

Join Alliance for Justice’s Bolder Advocacy program, the MacArthur Foundation, and Forefront for the first in a two-part advocacy training for foundations. The coronavirus pandemic and resulting economic crisis has thrown enormous challenges in front of the nonprofit sector. Our communities are facing unprecedented needs with record unemployment, school closures, evictions, and lack of access to medical care. In response, organizations and communities are pushing for additional stimulus funding, changes in the charitable deduction, release of incarcerated people from prisons and immigrant detention facilities, moratoriums on evictions, and so much more. In addition, with the national elections only months away, groups are implementing their traditional voter and candidate engagement work, but also fighting to ensure fair and safe elections and voting methods. Grantmakers can and should support these efforts.
 
This 90-minute training for foundations will address why advocacy is so important, how to distinguish advocacy from lobbying, and ways in which foundations—both private and public—can fund the advocacy work of their grantees. In addition to walking through the definitions of lobbying, we will discuss how the rules differ between private and public foundations, and best practices for how to legally and efficiently fund grantees that advocate.