A letter from my congressman
austingwalters.com
austingwalters.com
So the first thing to remember is that "non-profit" or 501(c) does not equal charity, although a normal charity will be a non-profit, and if they jump through the proper hoops and the IRS doesn't politicize the process they'll be a 501(c)(3). Note that the IRS has very much not stopped its stonewalling, and we can expect anti-spying non-profits to get the same treatment that "TEA Party" et. al. groups have gotten ... something to think about if you don't take to heard the advice written in blood about "First they came for the...."
So:
501(c)(3) organizations like the NRA proper or the EFF can do a variety of things including lawsuits, but when it comes to politics I think they can only "educate their members". Of course, if you use a web site as part of the latter....
501(c)(4) organizations like the NRA's Institute for Legislative Action (ILA) can do explicitly political things. Exactly how that breaks down is complicated, but they can do stuff like directly lobby legislators as long as that's not most of what they do. One very powerful thing they do is rate and endorse politicians and send out voter's guides before elections, little "just the facts, Mam" postcards that show how the relevant politicians voted on issues their members care about.
But there's a critical caveat here: this only works for the NRA/gun owners (NRA members inform their non-member friends of what they learn) because there are so very many of us, we have a very strong grass roots that's by no means tied to the NRA proper (as some politicians have learned to their dismay), and we vote.
Look at the Total Recall of 2 Colorado state legislators including the Senate President due to their prominent roles in passing invidious gun control legislation. This was done from the ground up, one of the 2 efforts was started by 2-3 plumbers who'd never done this sort of thing before. The NRA only spent ~ $350K in the two efforts, the good guys were, last time I checked, outspent 8:1 by Bloomberg and the usual suspects, the MSM was on the anti-gun side, and the election laws had been ... curiously changed to make voting fraud very easy and it was brazen. Yet given all that, two career politicians will very soon be spending more time with their families.
Which gets to our particular problem, which is that we don't have that sort of grassroots, not will we if the NRA/gunowners are any guide before the national security state commits enough notorious atrocities, see here for more on this theme: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6185918
Now to the more political organizations: the NRA of course has a PAC, the Political Victory Fund, but ever blessed post-Watergate campaign finance "reform" ensures the money they can give is purely symbolic. I.e. it sends a signal to gun voters, but little else.
Then there are the newer 527 Super Pac organizations. I haven't studied them closely, but as I understand it they can do just about everything but "coordinate" their efforts with a political campaign. But getting back to my above point about voting, unless you have a strong base of potential voters they can spend zillions of dollars without having anything to show for it. For the latest notorious example of this, see how in 2012 the Republican Party national level establishment nominated a Northeast liberal politician for president, establishment organizations like Karl Rove's American Crossroads spend 100s of millions, hismore than $100 million, and had nothing to show for it.
A political party that despises its base is just not going to do well.
We should take that lesson to heart and not "despise" any who agree with our cause unless they're utterly toxic to it (I mean NAMBLA, Stormfront, and ALA levels of toxic).
Only? That sounds like a fairly large sum of money to an organization like the EFF who presumably has political enemies like Hollywood with deep pockets and no big allies -- the NRA at least has gun manufacturers, for example. Dismaying to say the least that that's the starting cost to enact political change.
ALA? The American Library Association? =P
As for "only ~ $350K", that's a significant hunk of change for the NRA (this was a very important contest), but it's nearly pocket change for Bloomberg, who has a net worth of $27 billion and regularly drops low 100s of millions in donations per year while his net worth keeps going up (per my memory): http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Bloomberg#Philanthropy
"the NRA at least has gun manufacturers, for example"
A common and telling misconception (regime supporting propaganda is a very important factor in both of these fights), those represent a very small fraction of the NRA's income and influence; the National Shooting Sports Foundation (NSSF) is their trade organization and lobby, the NRA is of gun owners.
This is very important because there are a whole lot more of the latter, and it's the 5 million members of the NRA that give it the money to spend on things like the commercials they ran in the Colorado recalls, and the votes and influence on non-member voters. Very important because per Wikipedia the ACLU has 1/10 the number of members and a budget of $100 million vs. $230 for the NRA.
Now, a lot of the NRA's budget goes to its traditional roles (training and marksmanship), but on the other hand the ACLU's remit is much broader, roughly all of the Bill of Rights except the 2nd Amendment. There are some local chapters that are sympathetic and supportive of gun owners but that's it, and I'd bet their budgets aren't including the the $100 million total, ditto all the local gun organizations, like the ones that sprung up out of nothing that took down these two arrogant Colorado legislators. It makes a very big difference when your enemies convict themselves with their own words and actions, and this anti-spying effort isn't quite as blessed with those.
So the ACLU has a lot of influence, is a big player in the courts, along with other orgs, then again the Second Amendment Foundation (SAF) is the biggest Right to Keep and Bear Arms (RKBA) player in the courts, and with most of the cases being lost by the gun grabbers its partly self-funding through awards of expenses and attorney fees (there are some cute pictures you can find on the net of e.g. the head of the SAF holding a 6 figure check robo-signed by the mayor of Chicago). But for this effort ... heck, we have infinite trouble even getting standing to sue!
Anyway, getting down to what'll make a difference here, where we want NRA level political muscle, if the ACLU is the biggest player here, they can't threaten or influence legislators a fraction as much as the NRA and gunowners can. There are simply of magnitude more of members and voters for whom the RKBA is very important, and per my linked comment I don't see that changing prior to a bunch of spying atrocities. Which the national security state seems to be pretty good at avoiding, e.g. the DEA's excesses in working directly with phone companies target drug dealers, whom are overwhelmingly viewed as scum of the earth (and as long as it's illegal, requiring self-help to settle disputes, that's not far from the truth).
Pardon my ignorance, but is this startup well-known? It seems like a pretty good concept.