Two restrictions, and they are not the same restriction
The same paragraph carries a second limit with a different shape. No substantial part of the organization's activities may consist of carrying on propaganda, or otherwise attempting to influence legislation, except as otherwise provided in the subsection governing an alternative election.1
Read the two together and the difference is visible in the wording. The legislative limit is a matter of degree: no substantial part. The campaign prohibition is absolute: does not participate in, or intervene in.
A document about a bill and a document about a candidate are therefore governed by two different tests, and the second one has no threshold to stay under.
What that means for the person writing
An editor is not deciding any of that, and the distinction still shapes what a draft can safely be checked against. The two tests produce two different reports.
Where an organization has determined that a document is legislative advocacy, the questions are about accuracy and consistency. Where an organization has determined that a document must avoid campaign intervention, one further property matters: whether a reader could take the document to favor or oppose a candidate, whatever the drafter intended.
That second property is a reading question, and reading questions are exactly what an editor can report on. A sentence that names a bill and a sponsor in the same breath during an election period reads differently from one that names the bill alone. So does a comparison table with one empty column.
The four checks that produce evidence rather than opinion
The first is an inventory of every named person, every office, and every date in the document, gathered so they can be read together. A pattern that is invisible sentence by sentence is often obvious in a list.
The second is a consistency check across the family of documents, of the kind a Form 990 program description also needs. A newsletter, a website page, a social post, and an annual report describing one position in four registers give four positions, and only one was approved.
The third is a check on unattributed claims. A statement of fact with no source in a document about legislation is a weaker document and a harder one to defend.
The fourth is placement. Material that appears beside other material acquires meaning from it, and a layout decision can make a neutral paragraph read as an endorsement.
Editors Canada places the underlying discipline inside copy editing. The standards cover resolving variations in terminology, logic, and mechanics, and checking for missing information such as citations.3
The same organization is also writing for public inspection
None of this happens in private. A completed Form 990 is generally available for public inspection. The Internal Revenue Service notes in its own instructions that some members of the public rely on it as their primary or sole source of information about an organization.4
The practical effect is that the descriptions an organization writes for its return, its website, and its newsletter are read together by anyone motivated to do so. Consistency across them is not tidiness. It is the property that makes each of them defensible.
Where an editor stops, and it stops early here
An editor does not decide whether a document constitutes campaign intervention, or whether an activity is a substantial part of an organization's work. Nor does an editor decide whether an exemption is at risk, or what the tax code permits in a particular case. Those are determinations for the organization and its counsel, and they arrive with the copy.
What an editor supplies is a report on the words: what is inconsistent across documents, what is unsourced, what names whom, and what can be read two ways. Everything on that list is something counsel can rule on quickly, and none of it requires them to read four newsletters first.
Everything a client sends is treated in confidence, including drafts, board material, and correspondence with counsel. We work on nonprofit and social sector material and website copy at the level of wording, consistency, and clarity.
The cheapest version of this work is a single record of approved wording, applied everywhere. The expensive version is assembling one after a question has already been asked.