Politics,Policy,and the Motivations for Advocacy in Nonprofit Reproductive Health and Family Planning Providers

Abstract

Despite the important symbolic and substantive benefits of political activity by nonprofit organizations, recent evidence suggests that a relatively limited number of charities actively advocate. The existing literature on nonprofit advocacy adequately explains why so few charities are actively political; however, it fails to illuminate the reasons why some individual charities choose to advocate despite documented constraints. This article offers an alternative to existing explanations for nonprofit advocacy that focuses on the causes for, and the constraints on, this behavior. It suggests that nonprofit organizations are more likely to be politically active when public policies restrict their ability to deliver core services, and when the probability of success is highest because of the presence of political allies. Analyses of advocacy behavior in more than 450 501(c)(3) organizations suggest that these factors persist as motivators of political activity even after controlling for the dominant constraints suggested in the literature.