Strategy and ideology in nonprofit advocacy organizations

2014-08-05Nonprofit organizations often engage in advocacy on behalf of specific groups or the public at large. Yet, the leaders of these organizations are not well understood although they play a crucial role in the policymaking processes at the local, state and national levels. While the literature does embrace the idea of political or policy entrepreneurs as crucial to group formation and maintenance (Chong 1991; Moe 1988; Kingdon 2003; Wilson 1995; Young 2011), it does not focus on the role of group leaders in guiding the strategic choices of the organization (Campbell 2005). This leaves a large gap in understanding the role that these leaders—many of them volunteers—have in guiding their organizations, often having a great impact on the American political process. This study seeks to address these gaps by offering a study of these organizations and their leaders. ❧ Drawing from the interest group and nonprofit literatures, I develop a common agency framework (Bernheim and Whinston 1986) to describe the incentives and constraints that nonprofit leaders have in making the day‐to‐day decisions of the organization. Common agency, developed by Bernheim and Winston (1986), is a “multilateral relationship in which several principals simultaneously try to influence the actions of an agent” (Dixit, Grossman, and Helpman 1997), and can be considered a common occurrence in policymaking processes. This framework provides a powerful, and intuitive, tool with which to evaluate the role of executives in guiding an organization’s strategy, both directly and indirectly. ❧ Using a mixed methods approach to understanding executives in their organization, this study presents results from both semi‐structured interviews with nonprofit executives, and a statewide survey of the same. Finding support for the implications expected in a common agency framework, I argue that nonprofit executives have significant discretion in the decision‐making of their organization. Additionally, I demonstrate empirically that the revealed ideology of executives has a statistically significant relationship with the advocacy tactics and internal features present in nonprofit advocacy organizations. Ultimately, nonprofit advocacy executives should be considered central actors in the American political process, and their work has great effect on the nature and outcome of policymaking and political implementation processes