As a follow up to the ONRC Fund and Action separation, could that be looked at as an end result of restructuring the organization?
Yes. It was definitely an experiment. I think it’s been difficult for our members to grasp what we were doing. There was a period of time where we were looking to become more politically oriented, more along the lines of the Oregon League of Conservation Voters, where we [would] spend a bigger portion of our time promoting candidates. That was at least entertained as a major direction and I think some of our members actually dropped off because they thought “That’s not what I do.” But you can’t say that whoever is elected to office is not important. Take Mark Hatfield, for example, if you [ONRC] used the law effectively, he would simply change the law. Ultimately you have to have politicians, who, if they’re not your champions, are not going to hurt you, or reverse any success you might have.
In setting up the other corporation [ONRC Action] we’ve tried to transfer our membership from the nonprofit tax deductible [ONRC Fund] to the nonprofit, non-tax deductible corporation [ONRC Action]. It’s been a lot bigger effort and it’s taken a lot longer than we thought. I don’t think we’ve lost popular support, but we’ve lost membership in doing it because it was confusing to people. I don’t know how important the $35 donation being tax deductible is, but I don’t think it was clear in some people’s minds what we were trying to accomplish. Right now we’re involved in a strategic planning process and this summer we’ll look at defining what our future role is. I don’t feel like that’s a big question mark–I think it is clear in terms of the salmon and the forest. I don’t think ONRC will become as political an organization that Andy Kerr and Sally Cross thought it might.
I’m glad that we have the 501 (C) (4) corporation. We were audited and found that we were within the lobbying limit of our (C) (3) , but were tired of worrying about it. The threshold is 20 percent of your funding [base] for lobbying. Oftentimes we have different nonprofit groups say that they can’t endorse a bill because they’ll lose their (C) (3) status. I say, “They came after us and didn’t get us.” Easily 80 percent of our time is spent trying to influence the administrative process with the different agencies. Again, we wanted to become more politically active so the ( C ) ( 4 ) enabled us to do it. We may have moved too fast in looking at it purely from a financial standpoint.
