State of Advocacy: Legislative Update

State of Advocacy: Legislative Update

From Rules of the Game: The Bolder Advocacy Podcast by Bolder Advocacy

June 24, 2026 · 17 min · Episode 160

About this episode

The episode discusses the shifting landscape of nonprofit advocacy in the 2026 state legislative season.

On today's episode, we are breaking down the 2026 state legislative season and how the landscape affecting nonprofit advocacy is shifting across the country. We are recording this in mid-June, and while most states have wrapped up for the year, not all have, so you are going to want to look at your state to get a sense of what's enacted, what's moving, and what's dead. What we're seeing this year is not just incremental change, but a rapid expansion of state-level regulation over campaign finance, ballot measures, voter access, and increasingly, what we are calling foreign influence laws or national security-style frameworks applied to civil society. Attorneys for this episode Maggie Ellinger-Locke Susan Finkle Sourlis Natalie Ossenfort Shownotes Overview · This year, 46 states plus DC held legislative sessions. · We tracked roughly 1,000 bills that could impact nonprofit advocacy. · Of those bills that have now become law, almost half relate to state campaign finance and / or ballot measure processes. · Perhaps the biggest story of the 2026 legislative session is the expansion of laws that borrow concepts from national security and apply them to nonprofit advocacy. New Campaign…

People in this episode

Guests: Maggie Ellinger-Locke, Susan Finkle Sourlis, Natalie Ossenfort

Topics covered

Keywords

Mentioned in this episode

Organizations: Bolder Advocacy

Places: Louisiana, West Virginia, Kansas

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