Earlier this year, the North Carolina Center for Nonprofits sent a candidate questionnaire on nonprofit issues to all North Carolina candidates for Congress and the NC General Assembly. The questionnaire is intended to help nonprofit leaders learn more about the candidates on their ballots in the 2022 election and also to help candidates have a better awareness of the work of nonprofits. The Center has now posted a clickable 100-county map on its website to help you find responses from candidates in your county (note: you may need to disable pop-ups on your web browser to see candidates’ responses).
With early voting for the 2022 general election less than three months away, now is the time to encourage more candidates to complete the questionnaire. Your local candidates for office are more likely to respond to the questionnaire if they hear from you rather than from the Center. Please take a few minutes in the next week to reach out to your local candidates to ask them to complete the questionnaire.
We recommend that you reach out to candidates running for office in the county where your organization is based. Please make sure you reach out to all candidates running to serve the county or geographic area you serve. This both increases the chances we will hear back from everyone and demonstrates that you are not favoring any candidates or political parties. To make it easy for you, we have included links to send emails to candidates who haven’t yet completed the quesitonnaire on the 100-county map of candidate responses. You can send this email to your local candidates:
Dear Candidates, As part of the state’s nonprofit community, I’m interested in learning more about your experiences with nonprofits and your positions on policy issues that have a direct impact on our work. I encourage you to reply to the NC Center for Nonprofits’ 2022 Candidate Questionnaire, which is only three questions long. Thank you if you have already responded.
Your outreach to candidates can also be a great opportunity to start building relationships with whoever will ultimately be elected to represent you. You can do that by investing just a few extra minutes in composing a message that shares a few facts about what your organization does and what challenges it faces. Here is a template and a few (fictional) examples of how a staff or board member might engage the candidates running to serve you with the issues that concern you.