| Abstract: | Social movement scholars have begun to note the widespread use of nonprofit incorporation by social movement organizations (SMOs) in the United States. They argue that nonprofit incorporation is a voluntary act that ultimately leads to moderation in goals and tactics. I examine this argument with ethnographic data on fifteen homeless SMOs that operated in eight U.S. cities. I identify six pathways to adoption or nonadoption of nonprofit form and find that moderation, when it occurs, is not a function of nonprofit incorporation per se but of the particular pathway by which an SMO came to adopt nonprofit form. I discuss the implications of these findings for SMOs in general and for understanding the broader debates about organizational autonomy and external control of SMOs. |
