Standing Up for Nonprofits
Advocacy on Federal, Sector-wide Issues

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

Alan J. Abramson (Author), Benjamin Soskis (Author)

9781009475976, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 13 June 2024

80 pages
22.9 x 15.2 x 0.6 cm, 0.252 kg

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.

1. Introduction
2. Major, federal-level, sector-wide advocacy organizations
3. Sector-wide issues
4. Sector-wide advocacy resources and tactics
5. Effective nonprofit sector advocacy: Grasstops strategy
6. Two conceptions of sector-wide advocacy: special vs. public interest
7. Challenges: cultivating champions and navigating partisanship
8. The fracturing of advocacy infrastructure and the growth of issue-based coalitions
9. Tax cuts and jobs act: a case study
10. Post-TCJA revisions and reassessments
11. Sector-wide advocacy in response to the COVID-19 crisis
12. Sector-wide advocacy and philanthropic reform
13. State and local-level advocacy on sector-wide issues
14. Recommendations for enhancing sector-wide advocacy
15. Conclusion
References.

Subject Areas: Organizational theory & behaviour [KJU]