Voices 4 Delaware Education, both versions, are just part of a growing trend. ***update***

***UPDATE*** here! Looks like Greg Harris is now (9/8/12) the registered agent of Voices 4 DE Education, Action Fund.  I guess Mr. Keenan and DeNovo corporation decided they didn’t want to be associated with V4DE Education and their slimy tactics.

Entity Details

THIS IS NOT A STATEMENT OF GOOD STANDING
File Number:	4989410	Incorporation Date / Formation Date:	05/27/2011 (mm/dd/yyyy)
Entity Name:	VOICES 4 DELAWARE EDUCATION ACTION FUND, INC.
Entity Kind:	CORPORATION	Entity Type:	NON-PROFIT OR RELIGIOUS
Residency:	DOMESTIC	State:	DE
REGISTERED AGENT INFORMATION
Name:	GREGORY P. HARRIS
Address:	100 W. 10TH STREET SUITE 308
City:	WILMINGTON	County:	NEW CASTLE
State:	DE	Postal Code:	19801
Phone:	X

original post from 5/22/12:

8 days and counting since the petition demanding transparency has been sent to Mr. William Keenan, registered agent of Voices 4 Delaware Education Action Fund. No response.

Read article below in full here: http://www.edweek.org/ew/articles/2012/05/23/32adv-local.h31.html?tkn=XUZFualW%2B5PMq2hwFPL0G1iDYVvt%2F77q3sRt&cmp=clp-edweek

Setting an Agenda

Another nationwide education advocacy group, StudentsFirst, is concentrating on state policy for now, according to its founder and chief executive officer, Michelle A. Rhee, a former District of Columbia schools chancellor. Ms. Rhee said her 2-year-old organization, which hopes to raise $1 billion in five years, may turn to local elections “when we start to home in on states where we’ve passed the majority of our policy agenda and are starting to work with local jurisdictions on implementation.”

Stand for Children officials say their work in local elections encourages voters to become more informed and impassioned about education issues. Like DFER, Stand for Children operates separate 501(c)3 and 501(c)4 entities under the federal tax code and assigns them different organizational or political duties, which vary depending on what is permitted by law.

Some teachers’ unions, however, take a different view of the participation of groups like Stand for Children in local elections.

Defining the Players

501(c)3

• Engage primarily in educational work, such as publishing nonpartisan analyses and reports or training local volunteers on the process of grassroots advocacy
• Restricted lobbying
• Prohibited from partisan political activity
• Donations are typically tax-deductible, and the organizations do not have to publicly disclose donors’ names.

501(c)4

• Unlimited grassroots and direct lobbying, in addition to educational work
• Limited amount of partisan political activity that may include “independent expenditures”—advertising supportive of or in opposition to candidates that is not coordinated with candidates’ campaigns
• Donations are not tax-deductible, and the organizations typically do not have to disclose donors’ names.

PAC

• Political action committees donate directly to candidates or to political parties, subject to federal and state contribution limits
• Donors’ names must be disclosed.

IEC

• Popularly referred to as “super PACs” at the federal level, these committees can spend unlimited sums on independent expenditures
• Donors’ names are disclosed.

SOURCES: Alliance for Justice; Education Week

“What it does is sort of take away the typical community voice that you have in those school board races, because it becomes pretty much like a state race,” said Henry Roman, the president of the Denver Classroom Teachers Association, which opposed some of Stand for Children’s preferred contenders in a 2011 school board race.

Philip Rumore, the president of the 3,600-member Buffalo Teachers Federation, which endorsed the candidate who finished second to Mr. McCarthy, Patricia Devis, said his union’s power in local races traditionally derives not from financial contributions but from providing organizational support for candidates. His union, for instance, will sometimes ask each of its members to call voters on a list on assigned dates to remind them to vote.

But he admitted to being stunned by the amount of money provided by Education Reform Now Advocacy.

“I don’t like to say this, but there’s no way we can compete with that kind of operation,” Mr. Rumore said. In May elections, when voter turnout is traditionally low, major spending on mailers and phone calls is especially effective, the union official said: “It’s money that rolls.”

But representatives of education advocacy groups say nothing fundamental has changed in the landscape of local campaigns, except that more players are paying attention to important, and often overlooked, elections.

Previously, “maybe there weren’t (c)3s and (c)4s, maybe the mechanics are slightly different, maybe the names have changed and the rules of engagement have changed,” said Sue Levin, the executive director of the Oregon chapter of Stand for Children. “But the idea that a school board is a politicized body—and that its members and decisions are of intense interest to the community—is as old as public education in America.”

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