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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Not-for-profit organizations can do a limited amount of lobbying. The tax rules are apparently very complicated. I don’t pretend to know how this works, but apparently we can use about 30% of our time and resources for lobbying.

I’ve worked at two not-for-profits and they’ve handled the limits differently. The first handled this by only letting the lobbyists lobby—the rest of us couldn’t visit Capitol Hill unless accompanied by one of our lobbyists and then we were presenting our balanced research. In my current workplace, some of can lobby, but we have to fight for permission from senior management which carefully guards lobbing rights.

So I’m going to guess that if this pastor spends the bulk of his time tending to his flock instead of campaigning, then all is well. Heck, even the sermon is generally less than 1/3 of a service.[/quote]

"To be tax-exempt under section 501(c)(3) of the Internal Revenue Code, an organization must be organized and operated exclusively for exempt purposes set forth in section 501(c)(3), and none of its earnings may inure to any private shareholder or individual. In addition, it may not be an action organization, i.e., it may not attempt to influence legislation as a substantial part of its activities and it may not participate in any campaign activity for or against political candidates."

"Under the Internal Revenue Code, all section 501(c)(3) organizations are absolutely prohibited from directly or indirectly participating in, or intervening in, any political campaign on behalf of (or in opposition to) any candidate for elective public office. Contributions to political campaign funds or public statements of position (verbal or written) made on behalf of the organization in favor of or in opposition to any candidate for public office clearly violate the prohibition against political campaign activity."

Lobbying and campaigning are not the same thing.  One seeks to influence legislators, the other seeks to influence voters.

https://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-pdf/p1828.pdf[/quote]

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