In today's world of restrictive school budgets and increasing property taxes, it is an unfortunate reality that many school districts will be faced with a budget crunch crisis that unenlightened school boards may try to solve by cutting or eliminating funds for music. At the crisis stage, it is often only the effective advocacy of an organized group of parents that can save music programs from disaster. However, for parent advocacy to be the most successful, it is vitally important that the supporters of threatened programs be organized "before" the specters of budget cuts and program eliminations arise. This article lists the steps involved in formally founding a music parents' booster group to take advantage of nonprofit and federal tax-exempt status while explaining the specific "can dos" and "can't dos" of tax-exempt organization advocacy. In addition, the author discusses a few specific action items to help one's newly-minted booster group craft and perfect a proactive advocacy message that can be easily used as a basis for mobilizing parents in an advocacy crisis. (Contains 2 figures and 4 footnotes.)