This informational page contains context and background leading up to a 2025 petition by SFWA members to clearly define the phrase “political activity” in the SFWA bylaws.
I feel that it’s important for the broader SFF community to know about the petition and the circumstances of its creation, and have made every effort to stick to factual reporting of events as I understand them, and have used only information I have (or had) direct access to rather than hearsay, rumour, or second-hand reporting.
SFWA Member Advocacy on a Statement of Support for Palestinians
The origins of the SFWA bylaws member petition stretch back to 2021, when a SFWA member posted to the SFWA forum asking the Board to release a “statement and plan” in support of Palestinian creative writers in the Gaza Strip, as well as the broader Palestinian community and diaspora.
On the forum, some members spoke out against the idea, claiming that it would support terrorism, while others (including me) spoke up in favour of it. SFWA’s International Committee also began exploring the idea in an email discussion, which lasted until the executive director at the time said the committee did not need to work on a statement as the Board was already discussing the topic.
There is no public evidence of any discussion about a statement at the Board level during 2021, as no minutes exist for these meetings. When I asked for minutes to be created in early 2025, SFWA’s secretary checked with SFWA’s legal counsel and said counsel had advised that there was no legal requirement to provide minutes beyond the official record of Board votes located on the SFWA Forum. Whether or not any discussion took place, these vote records show no votes held on any topics related to a statement of support for Palestinian creators.
Member and volunteer advocacy for creating a statement in support of Palestinian creators continued, and in 2022 the International Committee was formally tasked with writing a statement. Although members of the International Committee agreed to draft one, it is not clear to me whether a draft was ever completed or delivered to the SFWA Board.
In October of 2023, the member who had made the initial request for a plan and statement in support of Palestinian creators reiterated the request in the original forum thread. Other members repeated thr request in SFWA’s official Discord server, including in the channel designated for official questions for the Board.
In response, the Board tasked one of its members with creating a draft statement, which was passed to the SFWA President at the time to consider some time in late 2023 or early 2024. However, available Board minutes for this period show no further discussion of the statement at Board Meetings, and SFWA’s vote records do not show any votes on approving or publishing it.
2024 Nebulas, SFWA Statement in Support of Writers in Crisis, and Member Response
The 2024 Nebula awards ceremony featured a rousing speech from the toastmaster about the importance of standing up to fascism and totalitarianism and the relevance of antifascist speech and action to SFF as a genre. Also at the ceremony, one of the Nebula winners used their acceptance speech to argue that it was essential for writers in the West to not ignore what was happening to Palestinians and to speak out against it “using whatever platforms we have while we have them.” The acceptance speech included several specific actions that writers could take, including places to donate.
SFWA’s president at the time responded to the winner’s speech by asking attendees to “take a moment of reflection to honor the pain, the loss, and the light within this community, this incredible family of fantasy and science fiction writers.”
The first half of 2024 was turbulent for SFWA, with the organization’s president stepping down after member pressure, followed by the interim president also stepping down in short order, as summarized in this File 770 post and this Genre Grapevine post.
By the end of October, 2024, a new president had been elected via a special election, and in November the new president sent a welcome message that highlighted the importance of “collaboration, cooperation, and growth” to “celebrate, advocate, and support our genre community.” The president’s welcome message also referred to the 2024 Nebula toastmaster speech.
On December 19, 2024, the SFWA Board voted to approve and publish a statement in support of “writers in crisis.” This statement can be viewed in full on the SFWA website, and was covered in Locus and other genre news sources.
The statement notes that SFWA has “members and friends who are living and dying in conflicted areas and war zones” and that, while “as a 501(c)3 non-profit, SFWA is restricted from political campaign intervention in particular forms,” the organization’s mission is “to inform, support, promote, defend, and advocate for writers of science fiction, fantasy, and related genres.” As such, the statement continues, “we must not look away as our colleagues and readers—present and future—are killed, injured, or driven from their homes.”
The statement also noted that SFWA has an emergency medical fund available and an annual “giver’s grant fund” which provides donations to other speculative fiction organizations, and said that the Board and organization would “continue to actively support speculative fiction writers under threat and in crisis.”
However, as the statement makes no mention of Palestine or Palestinians, or any other specific group, and SFWA members were unclear whether the statement was intended to be SFWA’s official response to the 2021 request for a “statement and plan” in support of Palestinian creative writers in the Gaza Strip, as well as the broader Palestinian community and diaspora. Minutes from 2024 Board meetings do not clarify this, as they make no mention of the word “Palestinian.”
SFWA members asked several times on the SFWA forum whether the statement was in fact intended to be the statement in support of Palestinian creators, but never received a direct answer. It is possible the question may have been answered on the SFWA Discord, but if so it was never cross-posted to other SFWA spaces.
Out of Cycle Giver’s Grant Fund Proposal
Further discussion ensued on the SFWA forum following the publication of the “Writers in Crisis” statement, with one member saying that making a statement in support of Palestinian creators would be “meddling in international politics.” Other members (myself included) noted that SFWA had made such statements before, including statements in support of Black Lives Matter in 2020, creators in the Asian Diaspora in 2021, and Ukraine in 2022 (although for important context on the Ukraine statement, see this post from File 770). Discussion about the statement also took place in the SFWA Discord.
On the SFWA forum, after briefly discussing the Ukraine statement and SFWA’s promise to use the $5,000 it had sent to a small publisher to fund an anthology of Ukrainian fiction and then rescinded, I suggested that the Board might use that money, if it was still unused, to make a donation to IBBY. IBBY is a library and literacy nonprofit based in Europe that builds libraries and provides children with reading therapy and literacy education in areas of the world impacted by war and crisis—including in Ukraine and the Gaza Strip. I also tagged a board member to ask if the funds had yet been used.
The Board member replied that IBBY was not an appropriate use of SFWA funds as it did not explicitly support SFF and that it was important for SFWA to make sure it followed IRS guidelines for 501(c)3 non-profit organizations. Further, this board member said that out-of-cycle grants needed to be recommend by the Giver’s Grant committee for the Board to take action on them. (Further discussion, including about a donation SFWA made to Locus in March of 2024 without being recommended by the Giver’s Grant committee, made it unclear if this was correct, and the Board member acknowledged they did not know for sure.)
I had been approved to serve on the Giver’s Grant Outreach Committee in late 2024, but had never been directed to engage in any outreach for the most recent round of grants (nor, in fact, had I ever been contacted at all by anyone from SFWA about what I should do as a member of the committee). To the best of my knowledge, I was the sole member of that committee.
In January of 2025 I submitted a proposal to the Board on behalf of the committee to make out-of-cycle donations of $2,000 each to three nonprofit organizations that either explicitly supported Palestinian diaspora SFF creators (the Watermelon Grant), implicitly supported SFF in Palestine through the creation of libraries and literacy programs (IBBY’s Children in Crisis Fund), or implicitly supported Palestinian diaspora fans and creators as BIPOC creators of SFF (Carl Brandon Society). That proposal can be viewed in full here.
In February of 2025, I received the following response from the SFWA Board:
The board did discuss the proposals you had made and the idea led to the Writers in Crisis grant program that was moved and adopted. But the particular grants you proposed were not applied for by the organizations in question. When the program is announced, we will encourage you to invite those organizations to apply for funding so that they may be considered along with other requests.
To the best of my knowledge, the “Writers in Crisis” grant program is still in development, but I don’t believe any public announcement involving it has been made at this time. However, the program description on SFWA’s forum recording Board votes, and the SFWA Board minutes, again make no mention of Palestinians or any other specific group.
Open Letter in Support of Palestinian Writers
Also in January of 2025, another SFWA member wrote an Open Letter to SFWA on Supporting Palestinian Writers. This letter stated its appreciation of SFWA’s leadership and volunteers, but noted that the “Writers in Crisis” statement did not address the member reqest for “a statement specific to Palestinian writers” and asked the SFWA Board to issue such a statement.
The open letter can be viewed in full online here.
In a ten-day period from January 1st to 10th, the letter gathered 152 signatures from current and former SFWA members. The letter was then delivered to the Board by email, as well as on the SFWA forum. Although the Board acknowledged receipt of the letter on the forum, the organization made no public acknowledgment of the open letter’s existence. The minutes for the January Board meeting do not explicitly record any discussion of the letter; nor has the Board provided membership with any updates about it.
SFWA Forum Moderation
During early 2025, discussion about the creation of a statement in support of Palestinian creators continued on the forum.
Some of this discussion involved SFWA staff, one of whom noted that there were “allowances and restrictions of what a 501(c)(3) is or isn’t allowed to do,” and said that IRS regulations and California nonprofit law created “a complex maze of rules and regulations” that required SFWA to consult “with legal counsel about what it can or cannot do if there’s any potential question about the activity.”
Members also engaged in forum discussion. One member repeated the 2021 claim that a statement in support of Palestinians—or any financial donation to Palestinian creators—would be equivalent to supporting terrorism, because “Hamas … has a finger in every pie” in Gaza, referring to a debunked conspiracy theory that Hamas had received direct UN aid. Another member was opposed to a statement of explicit support for Palestinian creators on the grounds that it would put SFWA members in the UK at risk of political retaliation. (For context, the UK government had recently used anti-terrorism laws to arrest a journalist and an academic involved in pro-Palestinian protests.)
Several other members spoke up strongly in support of SFWA making a statement of support for Palestinians, several noting that they were Jewish and/or Israeli, and were deeply uncomfortable with staying silent for exactly that reason.
One member, in responding to the discussion of political involvement, said that SFWA’s “Writers in Crisis” statement seemed to make explicitly partisan political arguments, and suggested that unless SFWA’s legal counsel had advised the organization not to say the word “Palestinian” there was no reason not to do so. Another member provided examples of other non-profit organizations that had made explicit statements supporting Palestinians without any legal issues or challenges.
At this point, the member who had claimed that supporting Palestinians was the same as supporting Hamas rejoined the discussion, saying they felt troubled by the need to “self-censor” their posts on the SFWA forum. Several other members told them their earlier post was problematic, and they reiterated the debunked “scandal” about Hamas getting UN aid and saying that it had been “reported by the media” and thus was true. When corrected, and provided a link noting that the scandal was no in fact true, the member said “I was lazy and didn’t do searches on the source material” but reiterated their argument that financial support from SFWA for Palestinians would make its way into the hands of terrorists, and that this would put them personally “under the spotlight” as a SFWA member.
After this, another member asked why SFWA’s moderation team was not getting involved in the thread and said that “unchallenged racism” was one reason some BIPOC authors had left the organization. I provided a much longer post, pointing to multiple sources, and asking how donations to a library charity based in Europe, an American charity which provided support for Palestinians outside the Gaza Strip, and an American charity which provides funds for authors and fans of color to attend SFF conventions could be construed as supporting terrorism, but the member who had made this argument did not respond.
After these and other responses to the member who had repeated the debunked claims about Hamas, a member of the moderation team locked the thread “to maintain a productive and professional dialogue.” The message announcing the locking said that the discussion was “becoming circular, and worse, accusatory,” and that there were “some subtle and not-so-subtle accusations here about individual members and SFWA that cross the line of courteous, professional disagreement.”
This post said that the Board would “continue to consider various comments and suggestions while contemplating the incredibly complex issues involved in political activities as a 501(c)(3) educational, public benefit non-profit,” and encouraged members to email the SFWA Board with comments and concerns, and to “begin a new thread exploring topics in a professional and respectful forum (sic)” if they wished to engage in further discussion.
Member Petition to Amend the SFWA Bylaws
I was frustrated at the thread being locked, and concerned by the repeated suggestions from SFWA Board members and staff that explicitly supporting Palestinian creators—whether with a statement or through donations to other nonprofit organizations—constituted “political activity” that SFWA could not engage in as a 501(c)(3) nonprofit.
Although I am certainly not a lawyer, I am a librarian. With a little bit of research, I found an IRS resource clearly defining the types of political activity nonprofits cannot engage in:
Under the Internal Revenue Code, all section 501(c)(3) organizations are absolutely prohibited from directly or indirectly participating in, or intervening in, any political campaign on behalf of (or in opposition to) any candidate for elective public office. Contributions to political campaign funds or public statements of position (verbal or written) made on behalf of the organization in favor of or in opposition to any candidate for public office clearly violate the prohibition against political campaign activity. Violating this prohibition may result in denial or revocation of tax-exempt status and the imposition of certain excise taxes.
Nothing in this seems to touch on statements supporting specific demographic groups in general. The guidelines repeatedly refer to “political campaign activity,” with additional language describing how nonprofits may even engage in voter education, voter registration drives, and other activity related to political campaigns so long as they are “conducted in a non-partisan manner” and do not “favor one candidate over another.”
As a response to the locking of the forum thread, and out of personal concern that SFWA may in the future classify other attempts to support speculative creators in specific demographic groups as “political activity” forbidden to 501(c)(3) nonprofits, I started a member petition to amend the SFWA Bylaws so that “political activity” was clearly defined to permit support of underserved and marginalized groups of creators.
The SFWA Bylaws provide for member-driven amendments in Article X, which states that “any amendment to the Bylaws may be offered to the Full Members by” the Board or, as described below, by a member petition
Petition to the President pursuant to the Corporation’s OPPM, bearing the signatures, including verified electronic signatures, of at least ten percent (10%) of the Full Members, in which case the President shall be obligated to present such petition to the Full Membership within ninety (90) days of receipt of the petition and as a separate action from any election of directors, unless such election is scheduled to be held more than ninety (90) days after receipt of the petition.
Article X also notes that “any proposed amendment, prior to presentation to the Full Membership, shall be reviewed by the Corporation’s legal counsel to ensure such amendment does not otherwise jeopardize the Corporation’s legal and/or tax status,” and that only amendments “approved by the Corporation’s legal counsel as not otherwise causing such jeopardy” would be delivered to the membership for a full vote.
The amendment I proposed was intended to more clearly define the phrase “political activity” as it appears in Article II of the SFWA Bylaws:
1. Political Activity: No substantial part of the activities of this Corporation shall consist of carrying on propaganda, or otherwise attempting to influence legislation, and this Corporation shall not participate in or intervene in (including the publishing or distributing of statements in connection with) any political campaign on behalf of any candidate for public office in any manner not compliant with the organization’s 501(c)(3) status. For the purposes of these Bylaws, “substantial” means “so significant that it disqualifies the corporation for treatment consistent with Article I, Section 2 of these Bylaws.”
My proposed amendment would have added the following language:
a. Excepting activities which participate or intervene in specific political campaigns, promote specific political parties, or engage in propaganda, nothing in this limitation shall prevent SFWA from engaging in activities that provide or state support for creators from historically underserved backgrounds (e.g. releasing a statement in support of Palestinian SFF creators; supporting transgender SFF creators with additional grant funding; promoting Jewish voices in speculative fiction). Neither the Organization, its employees, nor its officers and board members, may suppress or refuse to engage in such activities on the basis that these activities are political when requested by the membership and voted on by the Board in accordance with the OPPM.
SFWA’s President offered to deliver the text of the bylaws amendment to legal counsel for vetting prior to its being circulated, which I declined as I did not think the petition would collect enough signatures to be delivered to the Board. The SFWA President and Interim Executive Director also agreed to send an email to members using the official SFWA email list to announce the petition’s existence and provide members with a link to sign it if they wished to do so.
After distribution to SFWA’s email list, the petition was signed by 189 full SFWA members (several more than the 182 required to hit 10% of all full members), and I delivered it to the SFWA President on February 21st of 2024. The president acknowledged receipt and told me that the petition, and the bylaws amendment, would be shared with the Interim Executive Director and the SFWA Board.
Board Response to the SFWA Bylaws Amendment Petition
On March 28, 2024 I received a response from the SFWA Board saying that legal counsel had advised them not to put the amendment to a member vote.
The reasons for this, according to legal counsel, were that the SFWA Bylaws already did not prevent “LAWFUL” (sic) actions, and that the proposed amendment was “not compliant to prevent some forms of political campaign interventions,” and that it “would be an abdication of the board’s fiduciary duties” as it would allow members to “dictate” the organization’s operations.
The Board said that:
Given the advice of counsel above, the board will not present the amendment to the membership for a full vote, as it is neither legally compliant nor prudent.
It is unclear exactly what the amendment is not “compliant” with, as legal counsel did not cite a specific law, policy, or guideline.
It is also unclear how a clause which explicitly excludes “activities which participate or intervene in specific political campaigns, promote specific political parties, or engage in propaganda” could permit “some forms of political campaign interventions,” especially given the IRS guidelines above. Legal counsel did not provide any examples of campaign interventions that the amendment would permit.
Further, the amendment explicitly required that any proposed activities be “voted on by the Board in accordance with the OPPM,” and did not forbid the Board from refusing to engage in proposed activities. The am
In my opinion, these requirements would have kept The Board’s fiduciary responsibilities firmly in place.
The Board closed their response email to me with the following note:
The Board affirms that protections for marginalized creators should be enshrined in the organization’s governing documents and processes. As we approach our strategic planning and Bylaws review (with a member vote expected next spring), we will include those protections in our continuing mission-driven work of supporting writers of science fiction, fantasy, and related genres.
I asked that the Board post the response to the SFWA forum and was told they had already done so.
I also asked whether, in the spirit of transparency and accountability, the organization would make any public statement about the open letter, the petition to amend the SFWA bylaws, or legal counsel’s advice and the SFWA Board’s response. A member of the Board responded to say that “as this was a member petition, signed by full members, the Board feels that having communicated the results to the members represents the appropriate level of accountability and transparency.”
Finally, I asked if I could share a summary of the email here on my blog. I received no response to this question.
Next Steps?
My SFWA membership expired in late February of 2025, shortly after I delivered the petition.
As such, I am not aware of any additional discussion about the bylaws petition, any statements in support of Palestinian creators, the Writers in Crisis grant fund mentioned by the Board in February of 2025, or any actions the Board has taken to begin updating the SFWA Bylaws.
If you are a current SFWA member and would like to know about next steps, or if you are not a SFWA member but are concerned about the organization’s use of the phrase “political activity,” I would suggest reaching out to the SFWA Board at boardmail@sfwa.org