The Boarding School is a nonprofit created by and for young people, working to improve the highest levels of institutional decision-making by recruiting, training, and placing young leaders on governing boards of the organizations closest to them. Part of this work involves supporting community-led campaigns working to place young people on elected governing boards.

That we know of, The Boarding School is the first organization to set up an infrastructure for supporting board election campaigns aligned with its mission, and we seek advice on best practices for staying within the boundaries of our possible involvement with them as a 501c3.

So far, The Boarding School has housed two projects of this kind: Harvard Forward and Yale Forward.

Harvard Forward (HarvardForward.org) was created in 2019 as an effort to elect recent alumni to the Harvard Board of Overseers on a climate justice and inclusive governance platform. Once The Boarding School was incorporated, it became the legal entity housing the Harvard Forward project. In August 2020, Harvard Forward won three of the five seats up for election — the first time ever that petition candidates have won a majority of seats in an election, and the first time since 1989 that any petition candidate has been victorious.

Yale Forward (YaleForward.org) is The Boarding School’s second project and Harvard Forward’s sister campaign, aiming to elect Maggie Thomas – a Yale School of the Environment ‘15 alumna and climate policy advisor to U.S. presidential candidates Elizabeth Warren and Jay Inslee – to the Yale Corporation on a climate action, endowment justice, and inclusive governance platform. In September 2020, the Yale Forward campaign qualified Thomas for the 2021 Corporation election ballot with nearly 4,500 alumni petition signatures – well over the 4,394 required, with three weeks to spare before the deadline – making her the first woman to qualify via petition since the signature threshold was increased by nearly 1000% in 2003. As TBS projects, Harvard Forward and Yale Forward share resources and knowledge around university board elections, as well as an ability to fundraise across the country, hire staff, and access legal and HR support as needed.

The Boarding School is currently focused on empowering college and university alumni, students, staff, and faculty to organize around the election of young people to their institution’s elected boards. Universities have a unique, direct impact on young people, and in some cases, their boards hold fiduciary responsibilities to the institution and are elected by alumni.

While higher education is a great starting point for The Boarding Schools’ campaigns, young people are also vastly underrepresented in boardrooms across industries. As we think about expanding beyond private organization boards to boards of public organizations with private electorates, we seek legal guidance on possible future parameters of our work.

The Boarding School needs a lawyer to write a 1-2 page memo outlining the ways in which its formal support for community-led board election campaigns at private or public organizations with private electorates, falls within its role as a 501c3 organized and operated for charitable and educational purposes.

This will require an understanding of both The Boarding School’s campaign work, in addition to 501c3 roles and restrictions. With regards to the first, this volunteer work will entail an initial briefing from The Boarding School’s Executive Director and board members, as well as an expectation of familiarity with The Boarding School’s website. Following this call, the lawyer would research relevant definitions and regulations within IRS code, pulling out the boundaries of 501c3 status and how The Boarding School can stay within them in a draft memo. The Boarding School Executive Director and board members would provide up to two rounds of edits on the memo before including it as part of The Boarding School’s documents and policies on its website, with the lawyer’s name, credentials, and contact information attached.