{"podcast":{"title":"Rules of the Game: The Bolder Advocacy Podcast","slug":"rules-of-the-game-the-bolder-advocacy-podcast-744868","podcast_index_feed_id":744868,"rss_url":"https://rulesofthegame.libsyn.com/rss","website_url":"https://afj.org/podcast","image_url":"https://static.libsyn.com/p/assets/3/1/a/e/31ae8c4533ab742d/RoTG.png","author":"Alliance for Justice","episode_count":100,"summary":"Nonprofits are important advocates on issues critical to every community, but sometimes the rules and regulations of advocacy can be barriers to entry. In Rules of the Game, Bolder Advocacy attorneys at Alliance for Justice use real examples to demystify these laws to help 501(c)(3) and 501(c)(4) nonprofits be bolder advocates, whether holding elected officials accountable, educating candidates, engaging voters, or lobbying for policy change. Entertaining legal education, not legal advice!","last_synced_at":"2026-07-08T22:20:06.614648+00:00","page_url":"https://stenobird.com/podcast/rules-of-the-game-the-bolder-advocacy-podcast-744868"},"episode":{"title":"State of Advocacy: Legislative Update","slug":"state-of-advocacy-legislative-update","published_at":"2026-06-24T11:00:00+00:00","page_url":"https://stenobird.com/podcast/rules-of-the-game-the-bolder-advocacy-podcast-744868/state-of-advocacy-legislative-update","show_page_url":"https://stenobird.com/podcast/rules-of-the-game-the-bolder-advocacy-podcast-744868","url":"https://rulesofthegame.libsyn.com/state-of-advocacy-legislative-update","audio_url":"https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/rulesofthegame/ROTG160-leg-update.mp3?dest-id=2280527","summary":"On today's episode, we are breaking down the 2026 state legislative season and how the landscape affecting nonprofit advocacy is shifting across the country. We are recording this in mid-June, and while most states have wrapped up for the year, not all have, so you are going to want to look at your state to get a sense of what's enacted, what's moving, and what's dead. What we're seeing this year is not just incremental change, but a rapid expansion of state-level regulation over campaign finance, ballot measures, voter access, and increasingly, what we are calling foreign influence laws or national security-style frameworks applied to civil society. Attorneys for this episode Maggie Ellinger-Locke Susan Finkle Sourlis Natalie Ossenfort Shownotes Overview · This year, 46 states plus DC held legislative sessions. · We tracked roughly 1,000 bills that could impact nonprofit advocacy. · Of those bills that have now become law, almost half relate to state campaign finance and / or ballot measure processes. · Perhaps the biggest story of the 2026 legislative session is the expansion of laws that borrow concepts from national security and apply them to nonprofit advocacy. New Campaign Finance Laws · Louisiana increased the threshold triggering disclosure for certain campaign contributions. · West Virginia now not only prevents the public disclosure of certain contributor information, but also created a new criminal penalty for violations of the disclosure prohibition. · Kansas eliminated the requirement for political committees to disclose the names of vendors when reporting disbursements New Ballot Measure Procedures · Ballot measure legislation accounted for 20% of the bills we monitored, about 350 pieces of legislation. Here, we saw 22 laws enacted across 13 states plus D…","meta_description":"On today's episode, we are breaking down the 2026 state legislative season and how the landscape affecting nonprofit advocacy is shifting across the count…","key_points":[],"chapters":[],"topics":[],"duration_seconds":1022,"processing_state":"not_requested","actions":[{"name":"request_transcript","method":"POST","url":"https://stenobird.com/v1/public/podcasts/rules-of-the-game-the-bolder-advocacy-podcast-744868/episodes/state-of-advocacy-legislative-update/transcription-requests","description":"Idempotently request low-priority transcript generation for this episode."},{"name":"read_markdown","method":"GET","url":"https://stenobird.com/podcast/rules-of-the-game-the-bolder-advocacy-podcast-744868/state-of-advocacy-legislative-update.md","description":"Read the agent-friendly Markdown representation of this episode resource."}]}}