Michaela Neumayr

Public Funding and Its Impact on Nonprofit Advocacy

This article aims to contribute to the long-standing discussion about nonprofit organizations’ (NPOs) dependence on public funding and its consequences on their advocacy role in modern societies. Drawing on resource dependence theory and data from a quantitative survey, the study investigates the impact of public funding and its extent on nonprofit engagement in advocacy. Traditionally, scholars have cautioned that NPOs reliant on public sources will hesitate to pursue political objectives and to engage in advocacy work. Yet, empirical findings are strikingly inconsistent. One of the reasons for these ambiguous findings may be the way advocacy is measured. To address this issue, we apply two different approaches to evaluate NPO engagement. Both sets of findings from our multivariate analyses of Austrian NPOs suggest that public funding does not have a negative impact on advocacy.

The role of civil society organisations in different nonprofit regimes: Evidence from Austria and the Czech Republic

Civil society organisations (CSOs) contribute essentially to welfare states and society. In Europe they play a key role in the provision of social services, but also fulfil a large variety of other functions, such as giving voice to unaddressed issues, offering alternative ways of occupational socialisation or facilitating social inclusion (cf. Kramer, 1981; Rose-Ackerman & James, 1986; Kendall, 2003). Current research suggests that the third sectors’ societal roles considerably vary between countries, depending on the welfare state they are embedded in: Starting with a revision of Esping-Andersens welfare regime typology (1990) and also based on the earlier work of Moore (1966), Salamon and his colleagues developed a typology of four different ‘non-profit regimes’ (Salamon & Anheier, 1998; Salamon, Hems, & Chinnock, 2000a). As key dimensions for this classification, they applied the extent of governmental welfare spending and the size of the third sector (cf. Johnson, 1999). According to this typology of nonprofit regimes, in countries with a large third-sector CSOs mainly fulfil the service function. Countries with a relatively small third sector, so the implicit conclusion, would tend to engage in ‘the expression of political, social, or even recreational interests’ (Salamon & Anheier, 1998, p. 229).

The Multi-Functionality of Professional and Business Associations in a Transitional Context: Empirical Evidence from Russia

Abstract In the literature it is generally assumed that activities of voluntary membership based associations operating in stable institutional environments are multi-faceted, contributing simultaneously to societal, economic and political spheres. This article, drawing on the concept of functions of non-profit organizations investigates, whether the multi-functional character of associations holds true in the context of transitional Russia. The paper examines the relative importance of the advocacy, community building and service delivery functions, fulfilled by different types of associations. The original empirical data from exploratory interviews with 15 leading experts on associational activities was triangulated by a confirmatory survey of 215 associations across Russia. The results confirm that the absolute majority of the examined associations are multifunctional. Advocacy is considered to be the most important function for all types of associations. The findings suggest that business associations and intermediary unions are more active in policy advocacy directed toward the government, while liberal professional societies are more engaged in public advocacy addressing society at large. This study highlights importance of domestic associations for countries in transition as an institutional infrastructure of organized civil society, democratic development and market economy.

Giving in Austria: A Corporatist Relationship between the Nonprofit Sector and the State

Nonprofit organizations have a long tradition in Austria. Many of the country’s currently active organizations date back to the nineteenth century. Established in 1867, the law on registered associations laid the foundation for the formation of the nonprofit sector (Simsa, Schober, & Schober, 2005). Since then, nonprofit organizations’ fields of activity have steadily broadened according to the needs and problems of society.