Gearing Up for Election 2025: Set Yourself Up for a Smooth Year

If you’re a leader at an organization that does political work, you’re already well aware that this is an election year. Electoral work may be the primary way your org carries out its mission – or elections may be its entire raison d’être. 

This may be daunting, as election year may be the point in time where everyone in your organization has to hit go at the same time, making things get quite complicated very quickly for your finance, operations, and compliance teams. But in this handy article, we’ll explain everything you need to know to be prepared, so read on. 

The basic idea: Money is treated differently based on how you use it

There are four key questions that determine how you’ll manage your organization’s political work:  the jurisdiction, the level of coordination with the campaign, the activity you’re doing, and the timing. 

Put differently, you can identify the rules to follow based on: 

1. Whether you’re participating in a federal, state, or local race 
2. Whether you’re working directly with the campaign you’re supporting 
3. What you’re actually doing for the campaign, and 
4. What point you’re at in the election cycle
   
   

Let’s start with No. 1: Jurisdiction 

To find out about the regulations you need to comply with, you can look up the regulatory body that oversees the jurisdiction where the race in question will take place. 

So for example, if your organization is engaging in a state legislative race, the websites of your state’s election commission, ethics commission, or secretary of state’s office should provide you with all the information you need.

There are also lots of online resources such as the National Conference of State Legislatures, the Campaign Finance Institute, and Bolder Advocacy, which can steer you in the right direction. 

No. 2: Coordinated versus independent expenditure 

Coordinated Work

As a general rule, if you’re doing coordinated work (often referred to as the “hard side”) – meaning you coordinate with the candidate committee you are supporting, and you are aware of campaign-side non-public information – you’ll be subject to stricter regulations. Jurisdictions differ, but depending on where you’re located, you may not be allowed to use certain resources or coordinate certain activities. California, for example, has especially stringent rules for coordinated efforts. 

What doesn’t depend on jurisdiction, though, is reporting in-kind contributions. In almost every case, if you’re dedicating staff time, office space, or other non-monetary resources to a campaign, the campaign will have to report them as in-kind donations, including the value and type of contribution, to ensure they aren’t exceeding contribution limits. 

The payoff of dealing with all that red tape is that you can explicitly support your preferred candidate while working in coordination with them – perhaps through an endorsement and list-swaps, which can be a major boost for a candidate. 

Independent Expenditures

If you’re doing independent expenditure work, you’re firewalled off. No one in your organization can have any kind of contact with the candidate you’re supporting, or their team. 

The main perk of engaging in a race in this way – often referred to as “IE” – is that your organization won’t be subject to the same contribution limits as the candidate campaigns, though you will still have to report your spending to the appropriate authorities. 

• When nonprofits work in the independent expenditure model, they often advocate for a certain issue or issues, rather than a specific candidate. So for example, if your nonprofit is in conservation, you might launch an effort in support of a proposed bill to protect a certain area from development – not the elected official or officials who are championing that bill. 

When it comes to compliance, the most crucial part is to ensure the “independent” part – make absolutely sure no one in your organization makes any kind of contact with the candidate committee or their team, including sharing resources, strategic information, or messaging. And make sure to report all of your political spending, though as we noted, IE compliance isn’t quite as onerous as it is for coordinated efforts. 

No. 3: Activity 

Next, there are specific steps you should take to prepare for electoral work based on the activity you’re engaging in: 

Digital ad campaigns: 

You might think these are plug-and-play, but they actually take a lot of foresight and planning. You’ll want to ensure your comms and finance teams have aligned on an appropriate budget, taking into account factors like campaign goals, audience size, and ad placement costs. Also, verify that roles within your comms team are clearly delineated, so everyone knows who will be launching, maintaining, and then evaluating the results. 

GOTV: 

Much of GOTV is communication campaigns, so the bulk of the preparations will fall on your comms team, though voter registration drives are very much an organizing effort. 

It’s important to return to the “coordinated” versus “independent expenditure” distinction here as well; if you’re doing IE work, your messaging will be purely encouraging people to vote, not persuading them to vote for a specific candidate. Your ops and finance teams should take care to maintain that distance. 

Direct mail: 

Like their digital counterparts, mail campaigns take more planning than you might think. First, you’ll need to segment your list of donors or audience (depending on whether the campaign is fundraising- or comms-oriented). Then your comms team will carefully craft personalized messages – potentially including A/B testing and other message testing – before you launch. Operations leaders should ensure these campaigns stay on the right side of data protection laws and postal regulations, as well as making sure the messages themselves don’t break any laws. Finance folks should evaluate the results on a consistent basis, keeping an eye on cost-effectiveness, as measured by donations or engagements. 

Paid canvassing: 

• Work with trustworthy vendors 
• Negotiate contracts 
• Make sure vendors are aligned on campaign goals and requirements 
• Manage and segment donor databases 
• Assess ROI 

Last but definitely not least: Timing

For IE work, you’ll need to report your expenditures within either 24 or 48 hours of making them. Whether it’s 24 or 48 depends on the point you’re at in the election cycle; you can look up the rules for the election you’re engaging in on the FEC’s website right here.  

https://www.fec.gov/help-candidates-and-committees/dates-and-deadlines/2022-reporting-dates/24-and-48-hour-reports-independent-expenditures-periods-main-page-2022/