Nonprofits have gone quiet — and the silence is costing us

There was a time when nonprofit organizations were among the most active voices in public life. They testified at legislative hearings. They organized their communities around policy questions. They made the case — loudly and clearly — that the issues they worked on deserved public investment, legal protection, and community attention.

That voice has grown quieter. Not because the issues are less urgent — they aren't. Not because nonprofits have less to say — they have more. But because, somewhere along the way, a significant part of the sector decided that advocacy was too risky, too political, too far outside the lane of a charitable organization.

That retreat has consequences. And I think it's time to talk honestly about them.

The myth that keeps nonprofits silent

The most common reason I hear for why nonprofits don't advocate is some version of: we can't because of our tax status. It's not true, and it's worth saying that directly.

501(c)(3) organizations are prohibited from partisan electoral activity — they cannot endorse candidates or use resources to support or oppose a political party. But advocacy is not the same as electoral activity. Nonprofits have a broad and largely unrestricted right to engage in public education, community organizing, executive and administrative action, and a meaningful amount of direct legislative lobbying. The legal space for nonprofit advocacy is far larger than most boards and executive directors believe.

What keeps most organizations quiet isn't law. It's fear — of controversy, of donor reaction, of appearing political in a polarized environment. Those fears are understandable. They're also, in many cases, costing organizations the very policy and community support they need to do their work.

What advocacy is, more broadly defined

Advocacy doesn't have to mean showing up in a state capitol with a lobby day agenda. It can look like a board member educating their city council representative about the value of an after-school program that uses public funding. It can look like an executive director writing an op-ed about the community impact of a proposed policy change. It can look like a nonprofit convening community leaders to develop a shared response to a public crisis. It can look like a development director building a relationship with a foundation officer who influences how grant dollars get allocated.

BoardSource puts it simply and well: advocacy is what happens when board members — as influential, connected, mission-driven community leaders — take their voice outside the boardroom and into the world. And the voice of a volunteer board member, speaking out of genuine belief in a cause rather than professional obligation, is one of the most powerful voices in public discourse. Possibly more powerful than any paid lobbyist.

What the silence costs

When nonprofits go quiet, the ecosystem that supports their work erodes. Policy decisions get made without the sector's perspective. Funding priorities shift without anyone making the case for what the data shows. Community awareness of the issues organizations work on — homelessness, food insecurity, environmental health, early childhood development — fades when the organizations that know the most about those issues stop talking about them publicly.

The decline in nonprofit advocacy at the state and federal levels has not been neutral. It has left a vacuum that gets filled by other voices — voices that may not share the values or the evidence base that the nonprofit sector brings. And the organizations that most need a supportive policy environment — those serving the most vulnerable communities, working on the most underfunded issues — are often the least equipped to advocate for themselves.

What boards can do

Boards are uniquely positioned to lead advocacy because they occupy a different space than staff do. They are volunteers. They are community members. They chose to be here. When a board member speaks to an elected official or writes a letter to a funder or shows up at a public hearing, they carry a credibility that a paid staff person cannot fully replicate.

Building board advocacy capacity starts with a simple shift in how boards understand their role. The job of a board member isn't just to govern the organization from the inside. It's to champion the mission from the outside — to serve as a connector, an ambassador, and when the moment calls for it, an advocate in the fullest sense of the word.

This is exactly the kind of work I focus on in board governance engagements — helping boards understand their full role and build the capacity to play it.

That means equipping board members with the story — the data, the human impact, the community stakes — so they can speak confidently about the work. It means creating structures for advocacy: knowing which officials represent the organization's geographic area, knowing which policy conversations are relevant, knowing when a phone call or a letter from a board member could actually change something.

And it means asking, at every board meeting: who can you talk to today to advance our mission? That question — simple, direct, forward-looking — is the beginning of a board that understands its role not just as a governance body, but as a community of leaders standing for something.

The work nonprofits do is too important to be invisible. The communities we serve deserve organizations that are willing to speak up for them — in boardrooms, in community meetings, at legislative hearings, and in every conversation where the mission has a stake in the outcome. Finding our voice again isn't a risk. Staying silent is.