In the Community: The Business of Grassroots Organizing

Ahead of its official launch in fall 2014, the new Small Business and Nonprofit Legal Clinic (the “Clinic”), directed by Professor Eric Franklin, is already assisting community groups, including its first client, Nevadans for the Common Good (“NCG”), a grassroots political organization. Started in 2012, NCG is a broad and diverse group of nonprofits, schools, and religious organizations, focusing on some of Nevada’s most pressing issues, including child sex trafficking, the vulnerable elderly, immigrant integration, education, foreclosures, and neighborhood blight. NCG claimed its first victory in 2013, with the passage of Assembly Bill 67, recognizing the crime of sex trafficking.

NCG’s mission to “strengthen family and community in solidarity with others across lines of race, class and religion” makes it the perfect first client for the Clinic, which provides free transactional legal services to small businesses and nonprofit organizations, with the dual goals of preparing Boyd graduates for transactional legal practice and strengthening and empowering under-represented communities. Professor Eric Franklin is working with several students to help NCG apply for tax-exempt status with the Internal Revenue Service.