State nonprofit associations and agenda setting: An exploratory study of lobbying strategies

With the fast-paced growth of the nonprofit sector, nonprofit organizations have established influential positions in the formulation of public policies at the national, state, and local levels. As a result, scholars have become increasingly interested in nonprofit organizations' use of advocacy to influence agenda setting and the policy process. This study explores nonprofit advocacy by examining lobbying strategies of state nonprofit associations in state-level policy arenas. The study determines the types, methods, and perceived effectiveness of lobbying strategies employed by these organizations in addition to examining relationships between the associations' organizational structures, IRS h-elective status, and nature of use of lobbying strategies.;This study employs a mixed-methods approach including a survey and follow-up interviews of directors and policy staffs working in forty state nonprofit associations that are members of the National Council of Nonprofits and a case study of the Colorado Nonprofit Association. The study incorporates conceptual elements of punctuated equilibrium theory including issue definition, issue attention, and prevailing power as a guide to explore how state nonprofit associations influence policy agendas.;Findings indicate that state nonprofit associations employ grassroots lobbying strategies more frequently than direct lobbying strategies, but they perceive direct lobbing strategies as being more effective. The most frequently used lobbying strategies of state nonprofit associations include emailing members of the association, joining coalitions of nonprofit organizations, and encouraging the Board of Directors to contact policymakers. The most effective lobbying strategies, as perceived by staff members of the state nonprofit associations, include having personal meeting with legislators, inviting legislators to speak at events sponsored by the associations, and testifying at legislative hearings. The findings also suggest that organizational characteristics such as size of annual expense budget, number of staff, and number of nonprofit members do have an impact on the nature of lobbying strategies used by state nonprofit associations when nature of lobbying strategies is interpreted as frequency of use. The h-elective has very little impact on the types of strategies employed by the associations, but it does guide the amount of funding spent by the associations on lobbying activities. Finally, results suggest that state nonprofit associations primarily employ lobbying strategies to change each of the explanatory factors of issue definition, issue attention, and prevailing power to influence policy subsystems incrementally over a period of approximately one year. However, the external environment of a policy issue may lead a state nonprofit association to lobby to change one explanatory factor over another, and rarely, specific circumstances may require the association to lobby during a concentrated period of time of less than six months.