When a pair of former Democratic Hill aides put out a Donald Trump resistance manual dubbed the Indivisible Guide in December, they deliberately set out to emulate the hyper-local tactics so successfully deployed by the Tea Party.
Not lost on the authors of the guide, which went instantly viral and garnered $1 million in contributions to fund a group dubbed the Indivisible Project, was that Tea Party organizers had run afoul of the Internal Revenue Service for allegedly diving into politics while seeking tax exemption. Pressured by Republicans following a critical inspector general report, the IRS later apologized for improperly targeting Tea Party groups, but the flap exposed the perils for nonprofits that enter the political fray.
Undaunted, the Indivisible Project sought and won IRS approval in January to organize itself as a 501(c)(4) social welfare group, and has just spun off a 501(c)(3) charitable arm dubbed the Indivisible Fund to train citizen advocates. Indivisible, which has spawned 6,000 local spinoffs, explicitly opposes Trump's agenda, acknowledges Sarah Dohl, the group's chief communications officer. But the group's main focus, she says, is citizen engagement and public policy—not politics.
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