IRS treasure hunt

Some of my tax-exempt attorney colleagues were "tasked" by fellow attorney John Pomeranz to uncover a long-lost IRS letter regarding permissible activity by charitable organizations around political conventions. It seems that a 1980 letter to Independent Sector has been cited by a variety of publications, but is not available in any of the traditional databases. For instance, Alliance for Justice's The Rules of the Game cites the letter, stating that a charity can work to get its positions in a party platform by:

• delivering the testimony to both parties’ platform committees,
• including a disclaimer in both oral and written testimony that the testimony is being offered for educational purposes only, and
• reporting the testimony and any responses in its regularly scheduled newsletter to members.

The letter is no longer lost... thanks to the stellar files of Holly Schadler, we are lucky enough to (finally) have access to this letter again. And just to serve as a redundant conduit of access to it, I'm posting the letter here (PDF). It's not the most important IRS ruling on charitable activities around elections... just the hardest to find. Well, at least it used to be.