Nonprofit Advocacy Organizations: Their Characteristics and Activities^*

Abstract

In this article we examine political advocacy by nonprofit organizations. Relatively little is known about the types of organizations that participate in advocacy, their characteristics, the issues for which they advocate, and the resources they devote to it. This is especially the case for nonprofits that operate at the state or local level. Copyright (c) 2007 Southwestern Social Science Association.

Advocacy Inequalities among Nonprofits: Do Mission and Tax Status Make Differences

“…Some authors have defined all organizations in their studies with 501(c)(3) status as charitable or social service groups (e.g., Child and Gronbjerg 2007;Leech 2006). Defining charitable organizations in this manner, however, excludes a large number of groups with charitable missions that employ both 501(c)(3) and 501(c)(4) statuses in an effort to avoid IRS lobbying, and in some cases, electioneering restrictions.…”

“…1 Studies of business lobbying have attempted to determine what percentage of the overall lobbying population is made up of for-profit corporations and business associations (e.g., Baumgartner and Leech 2001;Schattschneider 1960). Charitable lobbying studies, on the other hand, have examined populations of charities and attempted to determine what percentage engage in lobbying at all (e.g., Berry and Arons 2003;Child and Gronbjerg 2007). Studies of charities have almost uniformly concluded that many, if not most, charitable groups avoid formal advocacy.…”

“…Suárez (2009) found that only three of 200 randomly selected charitable groups in the San Francisco Bay area reported lobbying on their 990s and only 17 percent encouraged political participation to their membership. Child and Gronbjerg (2007) noted a general reluctance of charitable groups to engage in formalized advocacy in Indiana. While politicians have often complained about indirectly subsidizing lobbying through providing grants and contracts to social service organizations, Leech (2006) found that receiving government funds does not lead to more lobbying.…”

Legislators’ Need for Civil Society Expertise: Tunisian Civil Society Legislative Advocacy Opportunity

“…However, most of this research has focused on Western democracies and on the role and efforts of CSOs (Appe and Layton 2016;Guo and Zhang 2014;Najam 2000;Smith 1984). Studies of legislative advocacy (Saidel 2002;Schmid, Bar, and Nirel 2008;Mosley 2010;Child and Grønbjerg 2007) have examined CSOs' organizational capacities and legal restrictions, and the impact of those factors on CSOs' legislative advocacy efforts, mainly in developed countries.…”

Lobbying in the Virtual World: Perceptions in the Nonprofit Sector

“…Jenkins (1987, 324) sees advocacy as a "major force for the renewal of American democracy", and as an element counteracting interests of big business. Though most policy analysts and scholars of the nonprofit sector agree that nonprofit advocacy is a significant political component of the American nonprofit sector (Jenkins 1987;McNutt and Boland 1999;Child and Grønbjerg 2007), advocacy is a lopsided battle: one which entails pursuing public interests (Andrews and Edwards 2004) and a struggle to represent collective interests against powerful elite influences (McNutt 2008;Suárez 2009). This lopsidedness regarding the advocacy of often-vulnerable publics forms another impetus to increase awareness of the potential impact of nonprofit lobbying.…”