USA: Marching to the White House

Only one of the aspiring presidents in the American election campaign is braver, more visionary and innovative than Barack Obama. There is only one that has really tried to bend the rules of the race to the White House, these primary elections that have been dominated by promises of change – the black senator?s ?generation change?, Hillary Clinton?s ?smart change?, the ?real change? proclaimed by Edwards and John McCain?s ?inner change?.

We are talking about the American third sector: a universe that consists of 14 million employees, 10% of the nation?s workforce, and assets of up to 2 thousand billion dollars. This time round it has refused to just sit and watch. So much for section 501 (c)(3) of the Internal Revenue Code, that states that charities will be exempt from taxes as long as they don?t get into politics. American civil society has thrown all caution to the wind and decided to jump straight into the election campaign.

From riches to politics
The first to violate the law was Bill Gates, last autumn. He appealed to all primary participants from his blog to renew the President?s Malaria Initiative that was launched in 2005 by George Bush. The initiative aimed to cut mortality rates caused by malaria by half in 15 African countries with an investment of 1.2 billion dollars.

But that?s not all: the Gates Foundation has announced that they intend to spend 60 million dollars on making sure that the improvement of school education becomes a priority for the 2008 election campaigns. Is this just what you get for being the richest man in the world? Not quite. Encouraged by the super-philanthropist, even small non profit organisations have decided to step into the electoral campaigns by launching a movement ? the non profit primary project ? that has a simple yet ambitious plan. To bring civil society into the spotlight by pushing candidates from both the democrat and republican parties to clearly explain what role the third sector will have in their White House.

Word of the day: bird-dogging
?We want to sit at the future president?s table and get them to listen to us?, declared Robert Egger to Time magazine. Egger is one of the founders of the primary project and makes a living as the director of a canteen for the poor in Washington. The best way to hunt down the candidates? Egger suggests that a truly ?mental? revolution is in store for the starred and striped non profit world: ?To present ourselves as the only force capable of solving social problems instead of as the recipients of charity?. A strategy that is half way between lobbying and TV talk-shows: bird-dogging.

Yes, the strategy is to hunt out, breath down the necks of and even, if necessary, threaten the electoral campaigners. Yes, threaten, like what happened to Hillary Clinton in September, when she signed a document that commited the next president to set aside 50 billion dollars to fight HIV by 2013. Her consent was not casually given: a pressure group called Act Up had, in fact, threatened to undermine her electoral campaign with protest actions had she not signed the document.

Bird-dogging was tried out officially for the first time in New Hampshire, with surprising results. Cynthia Mills, director of Manchester?s Tree Care Industry Association, managed to meet 11 candidates during public debates and she successfully managed to get Obama to commit to civil service: ?I will reform it according to the values of social enterprise?. Mills was also able to get Clinton to promise for ?New incentives and deductions for donations? as well as ?a greater transparency and support for non profit organisations that apply for public contracts?.

The declarations of the two front democrat runners, like those of their republican opponents, were immediately published on the project?s website – www.nonprofitcongress.org/?q=primary ? where you can also download the rules for perfect bird-dogging. That is to say: arrive well before the candidate, show that you know their programme well, be prepared to talk to the media, and never, ever, waste your opportunity by posing a ?softball question?, one in other words that is too general or condescending. All this is dressed in open-source ideology: to hunt-out the candidates you don?t have to be a professional journalist. All you need is to work for a non profit organisation that is not scared of abandoning its own, safe, political neutrality.

A Social service minister for the USA
Loosing their charity status, and the fiscal benefits that go with it, is not the only risk that Robert Egger and the other New Hampshire non profit leaders are running. Declaring their support for a candidate, or even just putting them in difficulty during a public debate, can mean getting on the wrong side of ones donors. Why has civil society, for the first time in the history of the presidential elections, decided to risk so much?

It is a question of money, and of agendas, says the prestigious Cronicle of Philanthropy, that on the 31st of December published a list of forecasts and social challenges for the year to come on its website. In the next few months, there will be two important appointments for the third sector: the 25th anniversary of the report ?A nation at risk? that determined the strategy for schools and education in the 90?s and the approval in Congress of a law on community and national service that the next president will have to sign by the 11th of Sptember 2009. That?s not all: it is predicted that 2008 will be a year of crisis as far as sales and the economy are concerned and fundraisers are likely to become fiercely competitive.

To not be left without funds, charities cannot risk loosing out on the new donors and activists that punctually come out into the open during the race for the White House. And this time it is Obama?s young supporters to draw the most interest: young graduates who hope for a good career and who are supporting the black senator?s campaign with small but frequent donations via the internet.

A ?target? that the non profit world has been after for some time and that Obama may use to study new incentives for social enterprise and volunteering. A whole other story if Hillary should win: civil society, to whom the senator has promised an Academy for volunteering, should be prepared for philanthropic incentives designed to appease the babyboomers who are now going into retirement.

But the objectives of the made in USA non profit don?t end here. The nonprofit primary project, that is rooted in New Hampshire, aims at extending its action to the whole of the national territory. The objective? To bring a minister for social services to Washington and a lobby structure as capable and efficient as the Chamber of commerce. Will it work?

Too early on to say. What?s certain is that all the candidates have pumped up their Internet websites with their social work experiences. And that the USA has launched a trend that is bound to shake all the non profit organisations in the world: anti-Bushism is neither democratic nor republican. It is a different way of imagining and dealing with the world, one where the third sector is prepared to abandon political neutrality to march on down to the White House.