Introduction to the Symposium “Nonprofit Advocacy and Engagement in Public Policy Making”

We are pleased to have the opportunity to edit this special symposium on “Nonprofit Advocacy and Engagement in Public Policy Making” in Nonprofit Human Service Organizations (NPHSOs). A call for papers was issued 2 years ago, and the response of scholars and researchers was beyond expectations. We could not include all of the articles submitted for publication in this symposium, but we are certain that they will be published in other international forums. After careful review of the submissions, five articles were selected, which represent current and solid research in the field from various theoretical and empirical perspectives.

The findings of studies conducted in different countries reflect the limited scope of advocacy activity in NPHSOs (Berry & Arons, 2003; Boris & Krehely, 2003). Most NPHSOs view service provision as their core activity, as reflected in their mission and goals, and in their contractual relations with the government. Consequently, they do not allocate adequate resources to promote advocacy activities and programs. The limited advocacy activity has also been attributed to their dependence on external resources, which causes them to conform to the funding agents’ policies, although there is also research evidence pointing in other directions (Chaves, Stephens, & Galaskiewicz, 2004; Mosley, 2011).

The collection of the articles in this symposium provides a comprehensive description of the current situation of advocacy activity in NPHSOs and analyses of the driving and restraining forces that affect this activity.

The articles also deal with other issues related to the strategies and tactics that these organizations use in the attempt to initiate advocacy activities, uphold human rights, and promote equal opportunities and democratic values. In keeping with this ideology, advocacy activities in NPHSOs aim to protect disenfranchised, marginalized, and excluded populations that are ignored by the government and other institutional agencies. After years of investigation, we have reached the conclusion that if NPHSOs do not increase their investment of financial resources and human capital in these efforts, they will detract from their civic and social mission and impair the well-being of their clients. Therefore, we believe that the directors of these organizations should acquire a broad background as well as specialized professional knowledge and new skills that will enable them to perform civic functions that include advocacy, protection, preservation, and promotion of human rights.

Another major issue relates to measurement and evaluation of the effectiveness of advocacy activity and its impact on the organizations’ task environments. The outcomes and effectiveness of advocacy and related activities are not immediately observable. This kind of activity requires tolerance, patience, and restraint on one hand, and perseverance on the other. However, directors do not have enough tolerance for ambiguity, and they want to achieve visibility of their performance within a short time because that is what their funding sources and stakeholders expect of them. Moreover, directors are often discouraged by the prolonged, complex processes of legislation involved in advocacy activity. Besides these problems, there are also objective and methodological difficulties the literature refers to it (Hoefer, 2005; Hoefer & Ferguson, 2007; McNutt, 2010). Unfortunately, Andrews and Edwards (2004) are still correct in the assertion they made a decade ago that “the area most lacking in the contemporary scholarship is the influence of advocacy organizations on politics” (p. 500). Hence, there is a need for further theoretical examination of this area.

This brings us to our personal observation that there have been hardly any new theoretical developments in recent years, and more efforts need to be made in this direction. There is a need to seek innovative theoretical explanations that can provide new perspectives on existing knowledge. One of the crucial and challenging tasks for scholars in the coming years will be to develop new models and theoretical approaches that focus on the unique organizational characteristics of these organizations, and the diverse contexts in which advocacy activities take place.

Each of the five articles published in this symposium proposes new theoretical and empirical perspectives on advocacy. This knowledge aims to enrich and advance theory and research, and gain a better understanding of the changing roles of advocacy activities in NPHSOs.

The first article, “Advocacy Activities of Nonprofit Human Service Organizations: A Critical Review” by Michal Almog-Bar and Hillel Schmid, presents an extensive and updated literature review of research on nonprofit policy advocacy that has been published over the last decade, focusing on advocacy by NPHSOs and its unique characteristics, added value, and contributions. Special attention is given to the need for further development of new theories that explain the role of policy advocacy in different countries and contexts.

In their article “When Funders Do Direct Advocacy: An Exploration of the United Kingdom’s Corston Independent Funders’ Coalition,” Tobias Jung, Julia Kaufmann, and Jenny Harrow examine the role of the Corston Independent Funders’ Coalition (CIFC), a group of grant-making trusts and foundations that came together to take a direct and active advocacy role. The CIFC aimed to influence government policy on the treatment of women in the United Kingdom’s criminal justice system. The authors explore the context that gave rise to the CIFC, examine the setting-up and operation of the network, and reflect on its achievements. The case raises questions about whether and how established foundations might be able to take on a more direct policy advocacy role.

In “Tweeting Social Change: How Social Media Are Changing Nonprofit Advocacy,” Chao Guo and Gregory, D. Saxton explore how nonprofit organizations utilize social media to engage in advocacy work. Their study investigated the social media use of 188 501(c)(3) advocacy organizations. Specifically, it examined the types of social media technologies employed and specifically, the organizations’ use of Twitter. The results of the study highlight the unique features and dynamics of social media–based advocacy and identify new organizational practices and forms of communication heretofore unseen in the literature.

In the next article, “Institutional Logics, Moral Frames, and Advocacy: Explaining the Purpose of Advocacy Among Nonprofit Human-Service Organizations,” Eve E. Garrow and Yeheskel Hasenfeld use an institutional logics perspective, which emphasizes the moral frames that organizations adopt. This perspective provides a basis for examining the different organizational factors that explain the emphasis on two different types of advocacy in human-service organizations: advocacy for social benefits versus advocacy for organizational benefits. They found that a practice frame that attributes the clients’ problems to the environment rather than to the individual was positively associated with advocacy for social benefits. Similarly, it was found that organizations that express a moral commitment to clients located in high-poverty areas are more likely to advocate for social benefits.

Finally, in “How Can Bourdieu’s Theory of Capital Benefit the Understanding of Advocacy NGOs: Theoretical Framework and Empirical Illustration,” Itay Greenspan presents a Bourdieu-inspired organizational analysis of advocacy nongovernmental organizations (NGOs). The article examines the forms of capital at the disposal of advocacy NGOs that deal with the conflict between the State of Israel and the Negev Bedouins, and argues that Bourdieu’s theory could provide nonprofit scholars with a better understanding of the prospects and limits of nonprofit advocacy within policy fields.