When Politics Hits the Mission

Nonprofit leadership requires something harder than silence—or taking a side.

By Kristin Peck, MSW, Founder & Principal, Peck Advisory Group

Politics has a habit of entering nonprofit organizations disguised as something else. It arrives as a reimbursement rate. A donor says something over lunch. A board member forwards an article with, “We need to respond to this.” A staff member wants the organization to sign a public statement. A legislator asks to tour the program. A proposed regulation changes who qualifies for services.

Suddenly an executive director is being asked a question that sounds political but may actually be about funding, governance, employee relations, reputation, advocacy, development—or all five at once.

This is why I don’t find “stay out of politics” particularly useful advice for nonprofit leaders. But I don’t find “everything is political” very useful either. Both eliminate the part that requires leadership: discernment.

The more useful question is not “Is this political?” It is: What kind of decision is this, whose voice are we using, and what does the organization actually have at stake?

That distinction matters more now than it did even a few years ago. Independent Sector’s 2026 research found that nonprofits remain the most trusted major institution it measures, with 56 percent of Americans reporting high trust. It also found something more interesting: Americans increasingly see nonprofits as institutions capable of bringing people together. Half of respondents said nonprofits are making divisions in the country better.

That is an asset. It is also something organizations can spend.

Not every political conversation is actually about politics

This is the first distinction I would want an executive team to make.

Imagine that Congress changes SNAP eligibility and a Kansas City food-assistance organization explains what that will mean for families it serves. That is not fundamentally a conversation about Democrats or Republicans. It is a conversation about hunger.

Harvesters, for example, publicly advocates around SNAP, TEFAP and the Farm Bill because those policies materially affect food insecurity and the organization’s work.

Children’s Mercy has an entire government-relations function addressing local, state and federal policy. Roughly half of its patient population is covered by Medicaid, according to the hospital. Medicaid policy therefore isn’t an abstract political subject for Children’s Mercy; it is part of the operating environment for pediatric healthcare.

This distinction is easy to miss. A nonprofit can become so nervous about appearing “political” that it fails to explain the systems producing the conditions it exists to address.

The opposite mistake happens too. An organization can take an issue that genuinely affects its mission and unnecessarily translate it into partisan language.

Both lose information.

A food bank can tell you exactly what a reduction in nutrition assistance will mean without telling you whom to vote for. That is often the more powerful communication anyway.

The legal line is important. It is just not the only line.

The federal rule for 501(c)(3) organizations is clearer than much nonprofit folklore suggests: charities may not participate or intervene in campaigns for or against candidates. The IRS also expressly recognizes that charities may continue advocating on public-policy issues—even during campaigns—so long as issue advocacy is not being used as campaign intervention.So the first question should certainly be, “What does the law permit?” It should not be the last question.

Something can be legally permissible and still be strategically foolish. Something can also be controversial and strategically essential. BoardSource has explicitly treated advocacy as part of responsible board leadership for more than a decade. Its current guidance places advocacy alongside the board’s responsibilities for strategy, resources, public standing and organizational stewardship.

That makes sense. If a public-policy decision threatens 30 percent of your revenue, the board’s job is not to avoid discussing it because someone might perceive the subject as political. The board’s job is to understand the exposure.

In Kansas City, this becomes especially obvious

Kansas City is actually a useful laboratory for this. An organization serving the metropolitan area may work simultaneously with Kansas and Missouri, multiple counties, several municipalities, federal agencies, school districts, businesses, foundations and elected officials who have very different political constituencies.

That reality rewards institutional maturity.

The executive who thinks relationship-building means cultivating only officials whose politics resemble the organization’s staff is building a fragile network. An election changes officeholders. An appropriation comes through one committee. A municipal issue goes through another. The organization’s clients remain.

So one of the most useful questions I ask about government and community relationships is not, “Who agrees with us?” It is: “Who needs to understand our work?”

Those are not the same list. And the second list is generally much more valuable.

I learned this working inside a public system

When I managed a program at Johnson County Health & Environment, the work crossed public health, education, social services, families, community organizations, grant funding and private partners. Policy did not arrive as an academic debate. It arrived downstream.

A funding decision eventually became a program decision. A program decision became a staffing decision. An eligibility rule could become a very practical problem for a young parent trying to finish school, get to an appointment, arrange childcare or remain economically stable. My job was not improved by adding my personal political opinion to that chain. It was improved by understanding the chain. That experience shaped how I think about nonprofit advocacy now. The closer an organization is to actual implementation, the more valuable its voice can become—because it can tell policymakers things ideology cannot. Here is what happens when this rule reaches a real family. Here is the unintended consequence. Here is what this costs. Here is what would work better.

That is enormously useful information. It is also advocacy.

Donor conversations require a different kind of intelligence

Political comments from donors present a subtler problem. Suppose a longtime donor says over lunch, “I assume your organization is going to speak out against this.” The weakest development responses are at opposite ends of the spectrum. One is reflexive agreement. The other is an awkward retreat into, “We don’t discuss politics.” A good development officer gets curious. What is the donor actually telling you? Perhaps the donor wants to know whether the organization shares a value. Perhaps she is worried about the people the organization serves. Perhaps she is testing whether leadership understands an emerging threat. Perhaps she is inviting the organization into a political argument.

Those are four very different conversations. You don’t discover which one you are having by performing agreement. You discover it by listening. Something as simple as, “What part of this concerns you most in relation to our work?” can move a conversation from partisan shorthand to philanthropic motivation. Now the donor may say, “I’m worried those families are going to lose access to care.” That is useful. You are back on mission.

AFP’s current ethical framework emphasizes public trust, truthfulness, donor interests, stewardship and placing philanthropic mission above personal gain. Its 2026 election-year fundraising guidance similarly cautions against allowing the political communications environment to pull development programs away from disciplined donor relationships.

The effective fundraiser doesn’t need to become less human. The effective fundraiser needs to know which conversation she is actually having.

Institutional voice is a scarce resource

This may be the most overlooked issue. Organizations sometimes behave as though issuing a statement costs nothing. It does cost something. Every institutional statement helps define what the organization considers important enough to speak about publicly. That creates precedent. If the organization comments on Event A, employees and donors may reasonably ask why it said nothing about Event B. After enough statements, communications staff can find themselves operating an unofficial current-events desk with no coherent standard for what merits institutional comment. This doesn’t mean organizations should never speak. It means the threshold should be deliberate.

I would generally want leadership to consider three things: mission proximity, organizational knowledge, and organizational consequence. Mission proximity asks whether the issue is directly connected to the work or whether the organization is stretching to make it relevant. Organizational knowledge asks whether the organization has something useful to contribute or is merely adding its logo to an opinion already being expressed thousands of times. Organizational consequence asks whether constituents, partners or policymakers actually need to know where the organization stands. Those questions often produce a much stronger statement because they force the organization to say something only it—or organizations like it—can credibly say.

Staff politics presents another distinction: values are not the same thing as unanimity

Mission-driven organizations often attract people who share substantial values. That can create an illusion of political homogeneity. Then someone discovers that a colleague who cares deeply about the same mission reached a different political conclusion.

That should not be an organizational crisis. The NASW Code of Ethics provides an interesting model because it contains both propositions at once. Social workers are expected to understand the effect of politics on practice and engage in social and political action concerning human needs and social justice. The Code also includes political belief among the characteristics protected in its nondiscrimination standard. There is more wisdom in that tension than in pretending the tension does not exist. People can share professional obligations without sharing an electoral identity. The management problem arises when employees cannot tell whether disagreeing with a supervisor’s personal political view will affect how that supervisor evaluates them. That uncertainty—not disagreement itself—is corrosive. Good leadership makes the boundary legible.

Boards should turn political heat into organizational intelligence

When a controversial policy comes before a board, I would resist having the board begin with everyone’s opinion of the policy. Start somewhere more productive. What changes for us? What changes for the people we serve? What assumptions in our strategic plan no longer hold? Which revenue sources are exposed? Which relationships become more important? What expertise do we possess that policymakers may not? What decisions do we need to make now, and which can wait?

The political conversation has just become strategic planning. That is a better use of a board. It also reflects BoardSource’s broader view of governance: boards are responsible not merely for legal compliance but for strategy, resources, risk, public standing and the sustainability of the mission.

Consider a plausible Kansas City example

Imagine a regional nonprofit serving young families in both Kansas and Missouri.

A proposed state policy would materially change access to one of the services its families rely on. Staff members are upset. Several want the organization to denounce the elected officials supporting the proposal. A major donor emails the CEO asking why the nonprofit has been silent. A board member worries that speaking publicly could jeopardize a government relationship. Another board member thinks silence violates the organization’s values. This is exactly the kind of moment where “stay out of politics” and “take a stand” are equally inadequate. I would separate the problem.

First, determine the programmatic facts. How many families would actually be affected? How? How confident are we?Second, determine the policy position. Does the proposed change materially interfere with the organization’s mission? If so, what outcome does the organization want instead? Third, determine the advocacy strategy. A press release is only one option—and often not the most consequential one. There may be meetings with agency staff, testimony, a coalition letter, a legislative briefing, constituent stories, data supplied to policymakers or direct communication with funders. Fourth, determine the communications strategy.

Now the organization can say something much more useful than “We oppose Politician X.”

It can say: “This proposal would affect approximately 240 families we serve. Based on our experience administering this program, we expect these three consequences. We are asking policymakers to make these two changes.” That message can be delivered to a Republican legislator, a Democratic legislator, a donor, a journalist and a client without changing the underlying facts. And that is a useful test. Not because everyone will agree with the organization. They won’t. But because the organization knows why it is speaking.

The larger issue is trust

The timing of this matters. Bridgespan argued this year that American civil society is being reshaped by changing political coalitions, diminished institutional trust, and disruption in the traditional relationships among government, philanthropy and nonprofits.

Independent Sector’s research adds an interesting complication: nonprofits still possess more public trust than the other major institutions it measures, but the public has historically been more skeptical about nonprofits’ ability to engage in advocacy without slipping into partisanship. That means nonprofit leaders have something worth protecting.

Not neutrality in the sense of having no convictions. Credibility.

The ability to say: We know this issue. We know these people. We know what happens on the ground. We can show you the evidence. We will tell you what we think should change. And we are still willing to sit at the table with people who disagree with us.

That is a very different posture from either institutional silence or reflexive political expression. And in the environment nonprofits are operating in now, I suspect it will become increasingly valuable.

Kristin Peck, MSW Founder & Principal, Peck Advisory GroupStrategy • Fundraising • Partnerships • Organizational Capacity