Charities Step Up Advocacy as Congress Nears Fiscal Cliff

That’s certainly not lost on Tim Delaney, chief executive of the National Council of Nonprofits, which represents 36 state coalitions of charities.

The group’s fiscal-cliff advocacy Web site, GiveVoice.org, is titled “Take Action: Protect the Charitable Giving Incentive.”

But it spells out both the threats to spending cuts from what is known in Washington jargon as sequestration (the automatic spending cuts) and to the charitable deduction.

“Most people have assumed that the sequestration cuts will go away, so they have probably put more emphasis on the charitable tax deduction,” Mr. Delaney says. That has changed because no deal has emerged, he adds.

As for advocating for revenue increases, Mr. Delaney believes that’s a step charities should avoid.

“It’s not their mission to say you should be lowering or raising taxes,” Mr. Delaney says. “That may evolve over time as the cuts become more severe and the pain increases.”