Nonprofit Lobbying Strategy: Challenging or Championing the Conventional Wisdom?

Research on nonprofit lobbying conceives of strategy in various ways. This article presents a more comprehensive view encompassing four components: lobbying motivation (lobbying for organizational or self-interest as well as for societal benefit), concentration (lobbying in a narrow versus wide range of policy domains), type (lobbying policymakers directly or indirectly), and target (lobbying different levels of government). Based on the analysis of the population of nonprofit organizations that registered to lobby in the State of North Carolina in 2010 (N = 402), findings demonstrate the complexity and distinctiveness of nonprofit lobbying strategies: Most nonprofits register to lobby for organizational and societal benefit, in multiple policy domains, directly and indirectly, and at several levels of government. The article discusses the findings and their implications and suggests a research agenda on nonprofit lobbying strategy that would incorporate the roots of these strategic choices.     

Strategy formulation in nonprofit social services organizations: A proposed framework social services organizations

This article proposes a framework for determining strategies in nonprofit social services organizations. A review of the literature concerning strategy choice models is combined with an analysis of the unique characteristics of nonprofit social services organizations to develop the proposed framework, which improves on existing models by encompassing a wider array of strategic factors and being applicable to a wide variety of nonprofit organizations. The author provides examples of the model's applications, discusses the usefulness and limitations of the model, and concludes with suggestions for future research.     

Governing the voluntary sector response to AIDS: a comparative study of the UK and Germany

The impact of AIDS on Western polities serves as a useful indicator both of social values and of political and organisational relationships. At the same time, community-based nonprofit organisations have been at the forefront of AIDS policy-making and service development. Taking Britain and Germany as case studies, this paper discusses similarities and differences in the functions accorded to the voluntary sector in the pattern of responses to HIV and AIDS. Typical problems confronted by emergent voluntary sector welfare agencies are noted and particular features of AIDS service organisations described. Separate accounts are then given of the development of a federated network of AIDS service organisations (ASOs) in Germany and of contrasting experience in the UK. While governments have shared a concern to confine the activity of ASOs to serving the needs of those groups directly affected by AIDS, other significant differences in policy development may be attributed to differences in the organisational structure of the health sector.Some of the material used in this paper is due to be published in Freeman (forthcoming). The paper is a product of doctoral research carried out in 1990, which was funded by the UK's Economic and Social Research Council. That research included case studies of policy responses to AIDS in Britain and Germany. I am indebted to all those who, despite the demands made on both their agencies and themselves, took time to discuss aspects of their work with me. The paper was first presented at the ECPR workshop on Non-governmental welfare provision in a long term perspective held at the University of Essex in March 1991. My thanks for their advice and comment are due to participants in the workshop and to three unnamedVoluntas referees.     

Making Practice Learning Part of Our Core Business: A Case Study of Organisational Change

Implementing the new degree in social work in Britain will require practice agencies to deliver an increased number of practice learning opportunities to students undertaking social work training. Indeed the Practice Learning Taskforce (2004 Practice Learning Taskforce. ‘Making change work for us’. London [Google Scholar]) estimates that, in London, a 70% increase from 2002/3 to 2006/7 will be needed. In order to achieve this practice agencies are being urged to transform themselves into learning organisations. Given that social work programmes in many areas are already struggling to find sufficient placements for their students this is likely to be hugely challenging. Research carried out by Lindsay &; Tompsett suggests that, in order to achieve this, social work agencies need to bring planning for practice learning more centrally into the organisation's strategic planning. This paper presents a case study of the author's experience in an English social services department that attempted this. It concludes that practice agencies, in moving towards becoming learning organisations, need to pay attention both to the structural arrangements they develop and the organisational processes involved.     

Elements of Capacity in Youth Development Nonprofits: An Exploratory Study of Urban Sport for Development and Peace Organizations

Organizational capacity is often discussed among nonprofit practitioners and scholars. Yet, empirical research employing a multidimensional capacity framework remains scarce in the nonprofit literature (Andersson et al. in VOLUNTAS Int J Volunt Nonprofit Organ 27(6):2860–2888, 2016). Using a qualitative research approach, we explored capacity in a specific segment of youth development nonprofits—sport for development and peace (SDP). We were guided by three research questions: (1) what are critical capacity elements of SDP nonprofits? (2) how do these capacity elements influence the ability of SDP nonprofits to achieve their desired goals and objectives? and (3) what are the capacity needs of SDP nonprofits in the USA? Findings from in-depth interviews with leaders of 29 organizations contribute to the development of theory on nonprofit capacity by providing a more nuanced understanding of capacity strengths and challenges related to broader nonprofit goal achievement. For example, paid staff, revenue generation, and internal infrastructure emerged as critically more important for capacity in this context. Practical and theoretical implications are further discussed.     

Managerial Control and Strategy in Nonprofit Organizations: Doing the Right Things for the Wrong Reasons?

This article presents the second stage of a study that engages with the debate that has occurred within the nonprofit literature about the propensity and relative merits of nonprofit organizations adopting for‐profit approaches to management. Specifically, this qualitative investigation examines the ways in which nonprofit organizations use management control when implementing their chosen strategies. Although this topic has been the subject of considerable attention in the management accounting research, it has rarely been explored within a nonprofit context. This is surprising not only because of the considerable social and economic impact of this sector, but also because of the apparent trend toward sectoral convergence in many structural and processual respects, including strategic behaviors and approaches to control. Based on interviews with CEOs and senior executives in thirty‐two Australian nonprofit organizations, we find that the relationship between strategy and control in nonprofit organizations is similar to that in for‐profit organizations, but quite different reasons underlie nonprofit organizations' exercising of management control.     

The Experiences of Human Service Managers in Contexts of Change and Uncertainty

Against a background of rapid and widespread changes to the delivery of human services and social welfare, this paper reports on a study into the experiences of managers of human services organisations. Within an interpretive methodology, the research utilised focus group and interview methods to examine the relevance and need for business, finance, and management skills from the perspective of managers in the human services. Results indicate that managers of human service organisations need advanced business, management, and finance skills to deal with change and uncertainty in contemporary and competitive service environments.

IMPLICATIONS

• Human service organisations in Australia are subject to change and uncertainty with new models of funding and increased accountability.

• Social workers employed as managers are under pressure to lead sustainable and accountable services, while still holding to social work principles.

• Social workers who manage organisations face a challenge of how to integrate business, management, and finance skills with the values and mission of social work.

     

A Model of Strategic Nonprofit Human Resource Management

This article presents a model of strategic nonprofit human resource management (SNHRM) that draws from resource-based view and resource dependence theory, to explain the determinants of strategic human resources management (SHRM) in nonprofit organizations. Three guiding principles, strategy types and propositions are presented to explain the complex interactions and processes in the SNHRM system. The article lays a foundation for future research and offers managers a framework for SHRM planning and implementation in nonprofit organizations.     

Comments on “Social Origins of Civil Society”

Lester Salamon and Helmut Anheier's Social Origins of Civil Society: Explaining the Nonprofit Sector Cross-Nationally offers a thorough cross-national quantitative analysis of the correlates of nonprofit-sector size, composition, and sources of funding. The first study of its kind, it is remarkable in both its theoretical ambition and empirical scope. Still, this research is plagued by problems that affect almost all research of this type: small numbers, poor measures, vague theories, a preponderance of cross-sectional data, and so on. Suggestions for improving the research include: (1) disaggregating the definition of the nonprofit sector to address criticisms from both the right and the left; (2) adopting a multidimensional approach to assessment of the nonprofit sector, to deal with its great heterogeneity; (3) devoting more attention to possible nonlinear relationships; and (4) casting a wider theoretical net in the effort to build a convincing social origins perspective. In the end, Salamon and Anheier may be forced to devote more effort to qualitative analysis of specific sectors to demonstrate the explanatory power of the social origins perspective.     

Marketing of Voluntary Organizations as Contract Providers of National and Local Government Welfare Services in the UK

Voluntary organisations have become major providers of numerous social welfare services that previously were supplied by the state. In Britain, between 35 and 40% of the average human services charity’s annual income now derives from government (predominantly local government) sources, meaning that the acquisition of fresh contracts to undertake government funded work, in conjunction with the maintenance of good relations with government funders vis-à-vis current assignments, is increasingly important for ensuring a human service charity’s financial survival. An organization that wishes to obtain new contracts and to keep government bodies satisfied with its present activities will need to market itself effectively. This empirical study examined two aspects of charity marketing relevant to this requirement: the extent to which voluntary organizations applied the principles of strategic account management (otherwise known as key account management) to their relations with government funders, and the organizational characteristics (passion and commitment, low wage costs, etc.) that they emphasized to government bodies when making bids. A number of organizational variables (e.g., mission rigidity, strategic intent, short term operational focus) were employed in regression analyses as possible determinants of: (i) the degree to which a charity used strategic account management; and (ii) the genres of the organizational characteristics that it accentuated when tendering for government funded work.

Social Origins of Civil Society: Explaining the Nonprofit Sector Cross-Nationally

Recent research has usefully documented the contribution that nonprofit organizations make to social capital and to the economic and political development it seems to foster. Because of a gross lack of basic comparative data, however, the question of what it is that allows such organizations to develop remains far from settled. This article seeks to remedy this by testing five existing theories of the nonprofit sector against data assembled on eight countries as part of the Johns Hopkins Comparative Nonprofit Sector Project. The five theories are: (a) government failure/market failure theory; (b) supply-side theory; (c) trust theories; (d) welfare state theory; and (e) interdependence theory. The article finds none of these theories adequate to explain the variations among countries in either the size, the composition, or the financing of the nonprofit sector. On this basis it suggests a new theoretical approach to explaining patterns of nonprofit development among countries—the social origins approach—which focuses on broader social, political, and economic relationships. Using this theory, the article identifies four routes of third-sector development (the liberal, the social democratic, the corporatist, and the statist), each associated with a particular constellation of class relationships and pattern of state-society relations. The article then tests this theory against the eight-country data and finds that it helps make sense of anomalies left unexplained by the prevailing theories.     

Missing in Action: Strategic Human Resource Management in German Nonprofits

Human resource (HR) management is important for human service nonprofits because they rely on the quality of their employees for the provision of their services. Using a typology of nonprofit HR architecture developed by Ridder and McCandless (Nonprofit Volunt Sect Q 29(1):124–141, 2010), we attempt to unpack the black box between performance and HR practices. To this end, we conducted semi-structured interviews with HR managers and young employees to investigate their perceptions of HR practices in their nonprofit organizations. Based on the findings, we extend the research on HR management in nonprofit organizations and caution that success or failure of implementing HR practices may be directly influenced by the external environment.     

Comment on stephen M. Wunker, ‘The promise of non-profits in Poland and Hungary: an analysis of third sector renaissance’

Both the pre-war tradition and the real socialist system have influenced the form of the non-profit sector emerging in Poland. In as much as the pre-war traditions are continued by the church charities, lay institutions are established on the basis of state structures in the form of specific non-profit organisations subsidised to a large extent by the state (the so-called non-profit social institutions). Perhaps in this way partnership relations will develop between the government and nonprofit organisations which will continue to expand. The stage through which Poland is currently passing means that a coherent system of non-profit organisations has not yet developed and, what is more, it is seldom called a voluntary or third sector. The only formalised institutions are foundations and associations. It is evidently necessary to fill the gap in social service provision caused by government and market failures, and we may cherish a hope that such a system of non-profit organisations providing services to those in most need will soon be created in Poland.     

The Status of Online Public Relations Research: An Analysis of Published Articles in 1992–2009

This study was designed to identify trends, patterns, and academic rigor in research studies focusing on Internet-related public relations through a review of articles published between 1992 and 2009. ^{1 1}Please see the appendix for a bibliography of the 115 articles studied. This study examined the authorship, theoretical frameworks, methodological approaches, and research topics addressed in these published articles. Key findings suggested an increasing trend in the number of published articles, a lack of applied theoretical frameworks, a dominance of quantitative research, and an emphasis on use of the Internet in public relations.     

Nonprofit Advocacy Tactics: Thinking Inside The Box?

As part of a social change agenda, nonprofit organisations engage in activities that contribute to debate and influence the development of public policy. This article presents the initial findings from a study investigating whether nonprofit organisations do participate in advocacy activities and if they do, how are they advocating and engaging in public debate without risking their current and future sources of funding. The key findings from the research have identified that the extent of advocacy by the nonprofit organisations studied has not diminished. A model, built on the findings from the literature on how nonprofit organisations approach advocacy, is applied to explain the advocacy activities by the case study organisations. These nonprofit organisations are identifying what they see to be the appropriate advocacy strategies to fit their organisational objectives, policies, funding sources and resources.     

The Organization of Nonprofit Activities

This paper investigates the repertoire of organizational forms in Western societies in order to assess the nonprofit sector's distinctiveness. A repertoire of six different ideal type constructs is presented adding to and reformulating existing theories, which have primarily focused on the market and the firm. This new extended theoretical platform builds both on theories discussing market, organization, and governmental failures and on approaches where homo economicus is replaced by homo complexicus and transactions by interactions. This effort aims at making the nonprofit (or voluntary) sector in society both more visible and theoretically substantiated. At the end of this paper, the theoretical framework is applied by analyzing empirical nonprofit organizations.     

The Role of Nonprofit Advocacy Organizations in Australian Democracy and Policy Governance

Australia, like many Western liberal democracies, has experienced an unprecedented shift toward market driven policy governance in the past decade, influenced heavily by the demands of globalization but also the dominance of conservative ideas of liberal democracy and market oriented neoliberalism. In this context nonprofit advocacy organizations (NPAOs) have not only been subject to criticism and a reduction in governmental support, but have had their legitimacy challenged and questioned. This paper responds to an audible, visible, and highly contestable critique of NPAOs by exploring their contemporary place and role in Australian democracy. This discussion relies on a review of some key ideas and theories of liberal democracy and an overview of the current Australian context in which NPAOs operate, particularly in regard to their participation in policy governance. A key observation about how integral NPAOs are to ensure an active and open democracy, challenges the current directions of Australian governance and suggests a need for reflection on what actually constitutes a fully functioning democracy that fits the demands of the twenty-first century.

Decentering America's Nonprofit Sector: Reflections on Salamon's Crises Analysis

Salamon argues that the nonprofit sector is the core or center of civil society. He correctly diagnoses the nonprofit sector's problems but his proposal to hold the center through sectoral renewal and a partnership model of state–nonprofit relations is problematic. This is the case in part because the effects of economic globalization are reducing nation-state autonomy. In addition, fragmentation of social identity in a postmodern era challenges sectoral legitimacy, while devolution and localization of social welfare responsibilities reduce nonprofit effectiveness. On the basis of U.S. evidence, I argue that, rather than trying to hold the center, we should decenter the nonprofit sector—away from dominant institutions, powerful groups, and privileged places—and join the margins in an effort to weave a new, more humane and inclusive social contract.