I think that any donation by the ARRL to a political campaign would be a serious mistake, even if we found a way to legally do so. As polarized as our two party system has become, any direct financial support offered to a member of one party would offend our membership who are members of the opposite political party. Furthermore, we can never have the kinds of financial resources that the big corporations have, so whatever donation we could make would pale in comparison (unless one of us knows a millionaire who is going to leave his/her entire estate to the ARRL). -- Andy Oppel, N6AJO Pacific Division Vice Director At 03:43 PM 8/23/2003 -0400, you wrote:
Frank,
Buried, maybe too deeply, in my earlier questions was the question of how much can we anticipate being able to donate to politicos if we form a 501(h) or whatever it would be PAC? If we don't expect we will be able to raise enough money to have an actual impact on a person (I don't mean buy them off) would it be worth organizing and managing the PAC?
On the other hand, if we have enough latitude within 501(c)(3) to increase our personal or other contact with the same politicos to impact in this way, maybe the money would be better spent under the current tax category.
I don't know the answers to these questions. Certainly if we could raise the money to become at least big pistols if not big guns in the influence game, I think (at this moment) I would favor becoming the big pistol. Lacking such funds, I'm wondering if we aren't better off working under our current category and increase our advocacy activity as much as we can/may . . . and involve the membership more in contacting their Congressmen/women and Senators. This latter would hit the politicos directly in their constituency pocket.
???
Jim
Jim Weaver, K8JE, Director, Great Lakes Division k8je@arrl.org - Tel. 513-459-0142
ARRL -- The reason Amateur Radio is!
GREAT LAKES DIVISION CONVENTION, September 6, 2003: See http://greatlakes.arrl.org
Andy Oppel andy@andyoppel.com