By: Christian Williams,
Social Enterprise Coordinator
Dear President Obama,
In your victory
speech on Wednesday morning, you made a poignant statement about American
unity. “… While each of us will pursue our own individual dreams, we are an
American family, and we rise or fall together as one nation and as one
people.”
Nonprofits are unique in their ability as an organization to
unite a politically divided public. Nonprofits influence an American culture of
giving, geared to helping our nation’s citizens and companies work toward the
greater good - regardless of political affiliation. We’ve already seen evidence
of this in our recovery efforts for Hurricane Sandy victims.
Now that you’ve been re-elected, what will you do for nonprofit
organizations? Can you:
Influence companies
to grow their corporate giving? Companies traditionally represent a huge
chunk of the donations made to charities. How can you encourage companies to
grow their giving programs? Can you offer tax breaks or other incentives to
promote the use of employee philanthropy and volunteer programs?
Stand by nonprofit
employers? Continue your support of nonprofit organizations that hire new
employees by supporting them through measures like your monumental health care
reform, allowing payroll tax credits to offset the cost of providing healthcare
to their employees?
Continue being an
example? President Obama, you are
known for being one of the most giving presidents in American history. You and
Michelle contributed $172,
130 to charity in 2011, a whopping 22 percent of your adjusted income. You
have even linked
up with the likes of Republican talk show host Bill O’Reilly to raise money
for a nonprofit organization, showing a willingness to reach across the aisle to
work toward doing good.
Please continue being an example to the rest of us and
encourage your fellow Americans to be as giving as you have been.
Do these things and we’ll be looking forward to another four
years under your leadership.
Sincerely,
Christian Williams
The ThinkTank, Helping Nonprofits Grow
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