What is it about?
Local nonprofit organizations that provide social, health, or other human services can play an important role in policy advocacy, despite their principal focus on delivering services to clients. Given that their resources and attention are overwhelmingly directed at serving clients in their local communities, it is unclear how they can achieve any significant impact in policy arenas. This case study suggests that, when service-providing nonprofits engage in policy advocacy, they draw on their day-to-day case advocacy and client-level concerns and frustrations to develop policy advocacy objectives. As a result, their policy advocacy work tends to be strongest at policy implementation or administrative levels, where they work through “insider” channels to promote apparently small and detailed but at the same time consequential changes to service bureaucracies that can significantly alter clients’ access to needed services and benefits. Service-providing nonprofits are uniquely attuned to these smaller-scale concerns, which may be opaque to legislators, higher level government agency officials, and advocacy groups that seek legislative change by using “outsider” tactics (e.g., public protests, boycotts). A coalition structure, leadership by an experienced advocacy organization, and dedicated foundation funding can elevate individual case advocacy concerns into a higher level and more sustained policy advocacy agenda.
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Why is it important?
Failing to understand local service-providing nonprofits’ role in social policy creates a substantial policy blind spot. These organizations receive large amounts of government funding, in many sectors surpassing government in the volume of services provided. Survey research defining policy advocacy broadly has found policy advocacy participation rates by service-providing nonprofits that approach 50% in some metropolitan areas. Because government agencies have largely withdrawn from direct provision of social and health services, service-providing nonprofits have unique knowledge about the vulnerable and underserved populations they serve. The daily preoccupations of service-providing nonprofits can add a missing dimension to policy advocacy agendas, complementing a top-down approach with attention to smaller details that can nevertheless make a substantial difference in clients’ ability to acquire essential services.
Perspectives
Nonprofit organizations that are focused on providing social and health services to clients are often seen as separate from the policy-making process. But they play an important role in policy that is not well understood. These organizations typically are not at the cutting edge or the radical end of the policy advocacy spectrum, but they often have influence because of their close relationships with government funders and policy makers. They also bring a rich and grounded view to the table because they see first-hand how individuals in need are affected by higher-level policy and the mechanisms that are put in place to implement those policies. For example, many of the organizations in the case study were involved in enrolling individuals in health insurance made available through the Affordable Care Act. In their work with limited English-speaking Asian immigrant clients, they found that confidentiality laws barred their bilingual "navigators" from helping their clients complete the online enrollment application. Getting clearance required arranging a four-way call with the client, a New York State representative, the bilingual navigator, and a second independent interpreter to verify that the client truly consented to being helped. The service-providing nonprofits I studied, working together in a coalition, were able to get the needed attention from policy makers to resolve this problematic situation, thereby removing a barrier to enrolling individuals in health insurance. These sorts of problems are likely invisible to policy advocates who target higher levels of policy-making, but service-providing nonprofits see them clearly.
John Chin
Hunter College, City University of New York
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: Service-Providing Nonprofits Working in Coalition to Advocate for Policy Change, Nonprofit and Voluntary Sector Quarterly, July 2017, SAGE Publications,
DOI: 10.1177/0899764017721060.
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