Nonprofit Advocacy Organizations: Assessing the Definitions, Classifications, and Data

Abstract

This article reviews how research on nonprofit organizations has traditionally defined advocacy and its function in the public policy process as rights-based expression and association and suggests the usefulness of an expanded definition. Nonprofits participate in a variety of public decisions at different points in the policy cycle. The authors argue that building social capital, facilitating civic participation, and providing public voice are activities central to an analysis of the interaction of nonprofits and public policy in democratic civil society. The article also analyzes the IRS data sets and National Taxonomy of Exempt Entities (NTEE) classification system available to researchers from the National Center for Charitable Statistics (NCCS) to assess their strengths and weaknesses for measuring advocacy activities. By evaluating the problems in accurately describing, analyzing, and collecting data on nonprofit organizations that facilitate a public role in decision making, this article develops some alternative definitions and models of advocacy.

Electronic Advocacy by Nonprofit Organizations in Social Welfare Policy

“…They also enjoy legitimacy and a strong set of existing social networks. The nonprofit advocacy community includes organizations that are not nearly as fortunate (Boris & Mosher-Williams, 1998). On balance, some nonprofit advocacy organizations are vastly more powerful and command much larger budgets, like some of the organizations that Rees (1999) studied.…”

Religious Affiliation, Religious Attendance, and Participation in Social Change Organizations

“…Much of this emerging research has mainly focused on organizational-level analysis (e.g., Berry & Arons, 2005;Boris & Mosher-Williams, 1998;Child & Gronbjerg, 2007;Guo & Saxton, 2010;LeRoux & Goerdel, 2009;Saidel, 2002;Suárez & Hwang, 2008), while individual-level analysis of staff and volunteers who are the "life-blood" of nonprofit advocacy activities has been largely ignored (for an exception, see Kunreuther, 2003). In view of an increasing reliance of nonprofit advocacy organizations on professional staff, Jenkins (2006: 308) reminds us that "[p]rofessionalized advocacy is a weak substitute for broader civic engagement."…”

Who Leads Nonprofit Advocacy through Social Media? Some Evidence from the Australian Marine Conservation Society's Twitter Networks

“…In other words, they are frequently engaged in advocating activities in order to promote awareness of their concerns, even though they do not indicate advocacy as one of their purposes. In addition, advocacy activities of nonprofit organizations may not be fully recognized through the major classification systems which are used to describe and to distinguish nonprofit organizations, because those systems concern only the primary purposes of the organizations rather than their activities (Boris & Mosher-Williams, 1998). Advocating is, however, inevitable for most nonprofit organizations, with regard to their roles in facilitating civic participation in democratic civil society.…”