Nonpartisan candidate questionnaire

I've spoken about some of the best practices on nonpartisan candidate questionnaires by 501(c)(3)s in Nonprofit Law Podcast #16. For a little real-life example on how to craft a cover letter to candidates laying out the ground rules, check out the letter to presidential candidates by Midwest Democracy Network. Specifically:

First, we intend to communicate your answers fully, accurately, and without
edits, including spelling and grammar errors. All candidate responses will be released at one time—on October 31.

This is a good way of demonstrating that there is no filter of bias by the organization... what the candidates write down (including typos) end up the report.

Second, the Network will not publicly critique, comment on, or editorialize about your or any other candidate’s answers; the job of evaluating, comparing, contrasting and judging responses to the questionnaire will be left entirely to individual voters, readers, journalists and opposing candidates.

This is critically important... some 501(c)(3)s will continue advocacy simultaneously with their publication of these nonpartisan voter guides, and that can become problematic from a tax law perspective (remember, no partisan electioneering allowed for 501(c)(3)s).

Third, if you fail to submit a completed questionnaire by October 15 or leave certain questions unanswered, those omissions will be noted in a neutral and non-judgmental way in the Network’s published and web-based reports and press materials.

This paragraph gives notice that the results will be published even if some candidates don't respond. This was important because only 2 of the primary candidates responded.

And finally, we ask that you respect the word limits specified in the questionnaire’s “comment” sections as determined by the word count feature of your computer software.

Some candidates will write a treatise if you don't lay down some rules. This is a good idea.

Check out the questionnaire and responses over at Midwest Democracy Network.