Still hold aloft the banner of social change? Nonprofit advocacy in the wave of commercialization

Abstract

Nonprofit organizations worldwide are increasingly seeking commercial means of financing. Would commercialization compromise the civic functions of nonprofit organizations, especially their policy advocacy efforts for social change? In this article, we address this profound concern by examining policy advocacy by commercialized nonprofits in Singapore. Applying a fuzzy-set qualitative comparative analysis approach in theory building, this study identifies multiple causal configurations of organizational and environmental conditions under which nonprofit organizations can still maintain a high level of advocacy activities in the wave of commercialization. The configurational theory that this study develops sheds new light on our understanding of the causal complexity underlying nonprofit advocacy and informs decision-making on how to uphold nonprofit civic functions in the commercializing context.

Points for practitioners

This study shows that the level of nonprofit participation in policy advocacy is caused by the conjunctural effect of multiple conditions. Therefore, to maintain a high level of civic-oriented functions in the worldwide wave of commercialization, nonprofit organizations should combine and align multiple environmental factors and organizational attributes into configurations to create the needed synergistic effects for active engagement in advocacy. In particular, incorporating high levels of collaboration between nonprofits, representation, board leadership, and service commitment into these causal configurations is the key mechanism that would enable commercialized nonprofits to still hold aloft the banner of social change through advocacy efforts.