Nonprofit change-makers? Looking beyond the narrow conceptualization of advocacy

In the last two decades, nonprofit scholars have extensively examined the topic of advocacy. However, two remaining limitations stand out. It seems as if advocacy is nonprofits’ only political activity and empirical research is often limited to a liberal nonprofit context. In this paper, we address both research gaps. We include public sphere effects next to advocacy as a nonprofit political activity. Then, for both political activities, we look at their efforts, use of tactics and possible explanatory variables in a neo-corporatist context. Making use of a large-N survey database of Flemish nonprofits, our findings show that: (a) advocacy is present to a large degree in comparison with public sphere effects, (b) that field of activity and public funding are important explanatory variables and (c) that there is an overlap in the use of indirect/outsider advocacy tactics and public sphere effects tactics