Institutionalization as Political Opportunity: What Tactical Choices Reveal about the Policy Advocacy of Human Service Nonprofits

Background and Purpose: This research explores how greater institutionalization and dependence on government funding impacts the advocacy behavior of human service nonprofits, specifically their use of insider or indirect advocacy tactics. Although their role as advocates is often secondary to their involvement in service provision, many human service nonprofits participate in ongoing advocacy directed at state and local policymakers. This advocacy is important for maintaining and promoting high quality social services, as well as for calling attention to problems that impact underrepresented populations (Berry, 2003; Hayes & Mickelson, 2000). It is very likely, however, that growing institutionalization and resource dependency constraints may be fundamentally changing the way that advocacy is conceptualized and practiced by human service managers (Smith & Lipsky, 1993). Does increased reliance on government funding and greater levels of professionalization and formalization, all pervasive trends among human service nonprofits, lead managers to make different choices when it comes to the tactics they engage in?

Methods: Data from a recent, large (N=667), representative survey of humans service nonprofits sheds light on these issues (Mosley, Katz, Hasenfeld, & Anheier, 2003). Participating executive directors were asked about a variety of organizational practices, including advocacy, financing, staffing, and formal structure. Organizations that participated in advocacy (57% of respondents) were asked additional details about their use of insider (requiring direct access to decision makers) and indirect (targeted to the general public) tactics. Data was analyzed using Poisson regression in order to predict what organizational factors contributed most to an organization choosing to be highly involved in either insider or indirect tactics and also to explore differences in preferences for insider or indirect tactics by nonprofits with different size tactical repertoires.

Results: Results indicate that human service nonprofits participate in a wide variety of both insider and indirect tactics, but insider tactics were engaged in by more organizations than indirect tactics. Five organizational factors (size, professionalization of leadership, greater collaboration, and greater involvement of staff and volunteers) significantly predicted increased use of both kinds of tactics. Having more government funding was uniquely predictive of participating in more insider tactics, however, while being less formalized was uniquely predictive of participating in more indirect tactics. Organizations with larger tactical repertoires tend to focus on insider tactics while organizations with smaller tactical repertoires tend to focus on indirect tactics.

Implications: Overall, this pattern of involvement indicates that the advocacy of human service nonprofits may be a more professionalized, elite behavior than previously thought, similar to the work of established interest groups. We see that greater institutionalization, far from limiting the advocacy of human service nonprofits, is actually promoting it, and is particularly facilitating greater use of insider tactics. This suggests that professionalization, formalization, and government financing are creating opportunities for social workers to have greater influence over public policy, rather than diminishing their voices. Future research needs to investigate the motivation behind this advocacy, however, in regards to the extent organizational maintenance goals may take over social change goals when organizations are highly dependent on government funders.