Jennifer E. Mosley

Institutionalization, Privatization, and Political Opportunity: What Tactical Choices Reveal About the Policy Advocacy of Human Service Nonprofits

Although awareness of the involvement of human service nonprofits (HSNPs) in policy advocacy has grown, scholars continue to know little about how they actually carry out their advocacy work. This study uses a large, representative survey of HSNPs to answer two primary research questions: First, what kinds of advocacy tactics do HSNPs participate in most frequently? Second, does reliance on government funding and greater institutionalization, both pervasive trends among HSNPs, affect the choices they make when it comes to the tactics they engage in? Findings indicate that HSNPs are involved in a wide range of advocacy tactics, but that together the field-level trends of institutionalization and privatization may be increasing political opportunity for HSNPs, leading to tactical choices similar to those of interest groups. Increased institutionalization and dependence on government funding are associated with using a wider variety of tactics overall and increased use of insider tactics in particular.

Organizational Resources and Environmental Incentives: Understanding the Policy Advocacy Involvement of Human Service Nonprofits

Participation in policy advocacy by human service nonprofits has the potential to both strategically position organizations in their environment and promote client well‐being. Despite these possible benefits, however, many human service nonprofits do not engage in policy advocacy. This article helps explain why, by placing advocacy involvement in a broad theoretical context and providing evidence on the factors that best explain involvement. It presents a new conceptual framework that employs both resource mobilization theory and resource dependency theory to outline why a variety of organizational resources and environmental incentives may influence participation. That framework is assessed using large‐scale survey data. Results suggest that advocacy is most common among organizations that have already achieved some success, as evidenced by having relatively large size, professional leadership, strong collaborative ties, use of e‐mail, and high levels of government funding. Overall, advocacy is found to be a more professionalized endeavor than previously thought.

The Relationship Between Philanthropic Foundation Funding and State-Level Policy in the Era of Welfare Reform:

Philanthropic foundations play important symbolic and leadership roles in public policy debates by conferring legitimacy upon specific social problems and policy solutions, but little is known about how they respond to policy change and the roles they adopt in relationship to government. We investigate the degree to which foundations are responsive to the policy environment and ask whether they adopt roles consistent with meeting social needs, promoting social innovation, or both. We also investigate how these roles vary by foundation type (independent, community, corporate) and size. Longitudinal data on grants made by more than 1,000 U.S. foundations during the welfare reform era of 1993-2001 show that during this time foundation grants were not responsive to population need; grants to safety net and social service programs did not increase. Large foundations and independent foundations focused on social innovation by funding research and workforce development and giving more in states pursuing policy innovation.

Nonprofit Agencies in Public Child Welfare: Their Role and Involvement in Policy Advocacy

Growth in privatization has made human service nonprofit organizations increasingly important providers of public child welfare services. Policy advocacy is a key tool that these organizations can use to communicate their unique on-the-ground experience to lawmakers, potentially improving policy and strengthening services for at-risk children and families. However, little is known about the degree to which they participate in advocacy or the ways in which they are involved. This research uses large-scale survey data to investigate the percentage of nonprofit child welfare agencies participating in advocacy, as well as how they involve staff and volunteers and the types of advocacy tactics they use. Results indicate that nonprofit child welfare agencies are less likely to advocate and less likely to involve volunteers in advocacy than other types of nonprofit human service providers. However, the nonprofit child welfare agencies that are involved have high rates of participation in a variety of sophisticated tactics. As these data demonstrate that child welfare nonprofits are well-positioned to be highly involved in policy advocacy but many still refrain, suggestions are made for how to expand and strengthen their advocacy involvement.

Collaboration, Public-Private Intermediary Organizations, and the Transformation of Advocacy in the Field of Homeless Services

Participation in collaborative advocacy organizations is one of the most common advocacy tactics pursued by nonprofit organizations. However, field-level dynamics and norms around collaboration may be changing with the growth of public-private intermediary organizations. Using a lens that brings together theories of structuration and institutional entrepreneurship, this research investigates (a) how intermediary organizations structure advocacy opportunities and institutionalize new advocacy practices at the field level, and (b) how member organizations interpret those opportunities and practices. Qualitative findings from a regional homeless services policy field demonstrate that intermediary organizations gain members and thus, power, based on their position in the policy field and through their ability to connect members to valuable government contacts. In this field, participation in public-private intermediary organizations has surpassed involvement in traditional advocacy coalitions as providers are motivated to meet organizational legitimacy goals as much as advocacy goals.

Cross-sectoral collaboration in the pursuit of social change: Addressing sex trafficking in West Bengal

This field note explores how a hybrid social change organization based in India engaged in cross-sectoral collaboration with police and community-based sectors to address sex trafficking and advance both social change and service provision goals. Staff members successfully mobilized and engaged partners via insider tactics, ultimately improving the response of mainstream institutions to sex trafficking, while also strengthening individual services and community prevention efforts. An analysis of these partnerships offers transferable lessons on effective collaboration and the promise of an insider approach when mobilizing multiple sectors. Cross-sectoral collaboration may hold special promise for addressing complex social problems, like sex trafficking.

Human Service Agencies and the Question of Impact: Lessons for Theory, Policy, and Practice

Human service agencies are facing an environment in which demands for impact, effectiveness and performance are rising faster than our knowledge about how to best to achieve those goals. Managers face serious dilemmas: embrace evidence-based practice or co-production of services? Expand services to achieve economies of scale or focus expertise in specialized areas? Embrace market principles or an ethic of care? Organizations are increasingly pressured to do it all with little guidance about what these changes might mean for the long-term well-being of their organizations, the consumers of their services, and the communities in which they are embedded. Thus, the goal of this special issue is to bring together articles that shed empirical light on how organizations are internally coping with external pressures to show impact. We are particularly interested in papers that use a strong theoretical framework to empirically explore one of three themes related to impact: 1) the interplay between performance goals and civil society functions, 2) the implications of social innovation approaches, and 3) the consequences of evidence baseddecision making. Papers that use either quantitative or qualitative approaches, as well as those that point to negative, mixed or positive outcomes are all welcome. A major concern for scholars has been the effect of performance demands on organizational mission, willingness to undertake advocacy, and the commitment to community building. Yet, we lack systematic studies that investigate that concern. Organizations may be adopting strategies to ensure that multiplex goals are being met, or finding new ways to balance client-centered goals with funder-mandated goals. In this symposium we are interested in papers that address questions such as: What innovative strategies are organizations putting in place to protect mission? Does an emphasis on performance change advocacy engagement? Are changes occurring in the way human service organizations are governed? Because a connecting theme of many social innovations is an emphasis on performance, we are also interested in papers that explore the implications for human service agencies of the widespread interest in social innovation. This includes market incentives and “pay for success” models such as social impact bonds and performance-based contracting. In this symposium, we are interested in papers that address questions such as: how have traditional human service nonprofits responded to the social innovation revolution? What outcomes have human service organizations experienced when they have adopted social innovation approaches? How can so-called traditional human services agencies successfully adapt to the expectations for social innovation? Demands to show impact are also related to the push among policymakers, scholars and practitioners for evidence-based decision-making. Increasingly, the policy community expects human services to be evaluated according to classic principles of social science research including experimental designs with control groups, rigorous data gathering, and robust outcome evaluations. Yet, the implications for human services remain unclear. Does evidence-based practice preference large providers at the expense of smaller, community agencies? What is the role of the board of directors and staff in evidence-based decision-making? Does the push for evidence-based decisionmaking make it more difficult for agencies to take a client-centered approach?

Do Residents of Low-Income Communities Trust Organizations to Speak on Their Behalf? Differences by Organizational Type

Low-income people of color in urban communities have been found to suffer from high levels of political inequality and poor political representation. To make policy more responsive and accountable, neighborhood organizations are often solicited to serve as informal community representatives in local decision-making processes. Given this reliance on nonelected representatives, we ask, Do community residents believe neighborhood organizations are legitimate representatives of their interests? Using survey data from residents of the South Side of Chicago, this article demonstrates that residents’ trust in organizations as representatives varies significantly by organizational type. Specifically, community organizations, religious congregations, and schools are rated as more trustworthy to speak on behalf of the community than local elected officials. These findings hold relatively constant across a variety of individual- and community-level differences, implying that this preference is widespread and may extend to other vulnerable urban communities in the United States.

Yes, Macro Practice Matters: Embracing the Complexity of Real-World Social Work

In his essay, “Why Macro Practice Matters,” Michael Reisch gives a compelling invitation to social work scholars to consider the contributions of macro practitioners to our profession and to societ...

Nonprofit Growth and Decline During Economic Uncertainty

ABSTRACT During times of economic uncertainty, why are some human service organizations able to grow while others fail? In this paper, we present qualitative data on differences in the institutional logics adopted and managerial strategies used by child and youth–serving organizations during the 2008–2012 recession. We compare organizations that grew with those that experienced decline, looking particularly at those organizations with increased versus decreased dependency on government funds. We find differences in service population allowed some organizations to remain successful within a government-partnership logic; others faced decline if they did not entrepreneurially adopt a market logic.