Standing Up for Nonprofits

Drawing on interviews, this Element analyzes the challenges facing nonprofit leaders in their advocacy on sector-wide policy issues.

This Element examines the recent history of nonprofit sector-wide advocacy at the federal level, including especially work done by national nonprofit infrastructure organizations and national charities, to advocate on issues that affect all or a broad range of nonprofit organizations. This title is also available as Open Access on Cambridge Core.This Element examines the recent history of nonprofit sector-wide advocacy at the federal level, focusing on work done by national nonprofit infrastructure organizations and national charities, to advocate on issues, such as tax incentives for charitable giving, that affect a broad range of nonprofits. The Element draws on interviews with thirty-nine national and state nonprofit leaders and federal policymakers as well as published papers and journalistic accounts. It finds that many policymakers are only weakly supportive of the nonprofit sector. In the end, this Element points to an uneasy, shifting balance in nonprofit sector advocacy between informal, decentralized, issue-based coalitions focused on short-term, if vital, legislative victories, on one hand, and the public good mandate embraced by some sector-wide advocates, which attends to longer time horizons and a broad conception of the defense of civil society, on the other. This title is also available as Open Access on Cambridge Core.