Bridging Disciplinary Boundaries (January 11 - 14, 2007)

Policy advocacy is a macro-level intervention nonprofit human service agencies (HSNPs) can use to strengthen vulnerable communities and better serve their often underrepresented clients. It also can improve public policy by providing a vital feedback loop regarding how policy is working “on the ground,” and improve the health of the organization itself, by influencing the funding and regulatory environment. From a theoretical perspective, policy advocacy can be seen as an adaptive and proactive tactic that organizations can use to exert influence over their environment and manage their relationship with decision-makers. Advocacy can help build the legitimacy of other aspects of the organization, because it can influence preferences for what kinds of services are provided, how often, and to whom.

Despite these important reasons for their participation, however, many HSNPs don't become involved in policy advocacy. We need to know what incentives and constraints exist that may be influencing their political engagement, in order to discover what can be done to increase advocacy amount and effectiveness. In this paper, I present and test a theoretical model anchored in institutional theory and resource dependency theory to explain what factors predict advocacy involvement by HSNPs.

Findings are based on data from a large, regional, survey of HSNPs, conducted by the author. The universe was created by first combining state and IRS nonprofit registries and then adding organizations found in the databases of three local referral services. Organizations were then stratified by size and location to ensure representativeness in the sample. Hour-long telephone interviews were held with 707 executive directors, for a final response rate of 53%.

The dependent variable, participation in policy advocacy, was operationalized as a dichotomous variable and logistic regression was used in order to test for basic differences between those that participate and those that do not. Independent variables were nine organizational characteristics and included four institutionalization variables (degree of formalization, professionalization of leadership, professionalization of staff, and degree of collaboration), two resource dependence variables (percentage of budget comprised of government funding and degree of financial stress), two structural variables (size and age), and a client-based variable (whether or not the organization had an explicit mission to serve the poor).

Professionalization of leadership, degree of collaboration, government funding, and size were all significant (p <.05) predictors of advocacy involvement. Formalization, professionalization of staff, declining revenue, age, and poverty focus were not. These findings suggest that government funding may be more important in increasing ties and legitimacy than in controlling the activities of the organization and that accepting government dollars is not diminishing the voices of HSNPs. Higher professionalization of leadership may increase access to others in positions of power and collaborating may increase access to knowledge and opportunities to join advocacy coalitions. These factors all reduce barriers to entry in regards to becoming involved in advocacy. Thus, it appears that institutional ties and linkages, as well as resources, may be more important in predicting advocacy than organizational structures, such as diversification of funding, and degree of formalization.