Nonprofits and Advocacy: Engaging Community and Government in an Era of Retrenchment

Introduction: Nonprofit Advocacy: Definitions and Concepts

introduction Nonprofit Advocacy Definitions and Concepts robert j. pekkanen and steven rathgeb smith Although nonprofit advocacy has received plenty of attention in recent years, we have relatively little understanding of how nonprofits advocate for themselves and their strategic considerations. These central research questions animate this volume, and each chapter illuminates part of the answer. This introduction outlines the key theoretical issues involved in the analysis of advocacy and provides a more detailed definition of advocacy. We explore three main themes that allow for deeper understanding of advocacy in theory and practice: (1) limitations on advocacy, (2) the significance of venue, and (3) the conditions under which advocacy can be successful. We also introduce a remarkable set of international surveys—the Japan Interest Group Surveys, or JIGS.1 Advocacy Behavior’s Stubborn Resistance to Definition Advocacy behavior generally resists scholarly analysis for three critical reasons . First, advocacy is difficult to measure, partly because advocacy covers a broad range of actions—from organizing a massive demonstration to encouraging board members to write letters to the editor of the local paper. As we explain, these activities constitute advocacy despite their diversity. Moreover, even if we consider a single action, intensity of effort could matter . Dashing off a quick letter is one thing, but spending hours or days crafting a thoughtful and substantive epistle is a substantially different endeavor; intensity of effort can be difficult to quantify and assay for observers. How hard is the actor trying? Quantifying results is one thing, but as volumes of management studies reveal, measuring effort is not quite as straightforward. Adding to the complexity, not all advocacy efforts occur in the same venue; 2 Nonprofits and Advocacy besides a range of actions, we must also investigate a range of venues to fully understand advocacy. It is not just about lobbying politicians. For example, nonprofits may also channel their advocacy through the courts, as advocates for environmental causes or deinstitutionalization of the mentally ill have demonstrated. Thinking more generally, we see that advocacy actions can be directed at politicians, bureaucrats, the courts, or the general public, and might be undertaken on the federal, state, local, or even international level. We regard the analysis of “advocacy venue” as a major contribution of this book, and return to it below.2 Second, causality is difficult to determine when assessing success. Even if we had a complete record of all advocacy behavior by nonprofits, we would still face some challenges in knowing how and when it met with success. One especially nettlesome problem in particular is measuring policy change in a consistent metric across issue areas. Did environmental policy change more in the 1990s than employment policy, or the reverse? Even if we can reliably mark change, though, causality can be murky; we often have trouble assessing exactly why policies were adopted, modified, or abandoned. Advocates and their targets may both have incentives to distort the effectiveness of lobbying. Advocates might exaggerate their success, either to heighten their own importance or because they mistakenly believe they were actually instrumental in changing minds or policies. Politicians may tell voters they were persuaded after hearing from a nonprofit, but do so only out of a desire to conceal motives less likely to gain accolades. Persuasion is notoriously difficult to measure accurately in politics, although advances have been made in the field of international relations (Kawato, 2010). Third, advocacy is fungible. As wide as is the range of actions available to a nonprofit that decides to advocate, the nonprofit is similarly presented with a set of choices about whether to advocate directly or to find a surrogate. The nonprofit might establish a parallel organization, perhaps a 501(c)(4) dedicated to lobbying. Or the nonprofit might be a local chapter of a larger organization , in which case it might delegate lobbying to another chapter in the state, or perhaps the national headquarters. Then again, the nonprofit might enlist the aid of a dedicated group (see Boris and Maronick, chap. 3, this volume). These options are similar to the choices faced by corporations that choose to lobby directly or to delegate the work to a trade association or chamber of commerce. And even these dimensions leave out choices such as whether to lobby alone or in coalition with like-minded organizations. Despite these challenges, attention to nonprofits advocacy is growing, Nonprofit Advocacy 3 including a number of recent valuable contributions that have come from...