Volume 13, Issue 1

As politics becomes increasingly polarized, the value of collective political action becomes more visible and overt. Nonprofit organizations act collectively in pursuit of their policy goals in nearly all aspects of public policy. Understanding how nonprofits borne of social movements engage politically expands our insight into advocacy coalition behavior following seemingly effective social movements. The coalition’s leveraging of political resources provides us this insight. This study assesses the policy activities produced or maintained within a U.S. national domestic violence advocacy coalition over its lifetime to determine how and when resources were leveraged. A directed content analysis is conducted on historical data to capture the evolution of coalition activities over a 41-year period. The coalition’s emphasis on policy change waned over time as it achieved its policy goals. The coalition then leaned on its largest resources, mobilizable troops, and information to increasingly emphasize policy implementation and evaluation. These findings indicate that when in the policy process coalitions leverage their political resources may be more important than how coalitions leverage resources. Framing nonprofit political activity across the stages of the policy process can open doors to better use of scarce political resources.

The purpose of this article is to investigate the degree to which the OECD Guidelines for Multinational Enterprises – meant for businesses – apply to Non-Profit Organisations’ (NPOs) operations and accountability. Based on a legal analysis of complaints handled by the National Contact Points (NCPs) in Norway, Switzerland, and the United Kingdom against NPOs, this paper shows that OECD Guidelines apply to certain types of NPOs, even if these organisations are by nature non-profit. It presents three conditions under which the OECD Guidelines can apply to NPOs: first, the NPO needs to operate in at least two countries; second, it must operate within a signatory state of the OECD Guidelines; and third, the OECD Guidelines violation must have occurred in relation to the business-activity of the NPO.

Singapore, with a five million population, has a vibrant charitable sector with over 2000 registered charities attracting approximately USD$2.18 billion in annual donations. How did Singapore’s charitable sector achieve its current level when it has been, in the past, segregated along mainly religious, race and clan-based communities? This paper explores this question by piecing together the current ecosystem, regulatory and tax infrastructure which facilitates the charitable sector in Singapore. Central to the development of the charitable sector has been the Singapore government’s role of being a gatekeeper, regulator and enabler of charities. In analysing the government’s role in the charitable sector, this paper locates Singapore’s charitable sector within the literature on government and nonprofit organization relations which has been described at times being cooperative, complementary, confrontational, and co-optive. These astute observations ring true with respect to the Singapore government’s relationship with the charitable sector. For organizations which pursue purposes consistent with state’s vision of public good, the state’s relationship with these charities has been largely cooperative and complementary. However, even within charities considered by the state to further public good, there is a strong element of co-optation where the state wields significant direct and indirect power over the charitable sector by way of provision of funding and board composition. In contrast, nonprofit organizations which engage in aims inconsistent with the state’s perceived public interest are, by law, unable to register itself as charities and enjoy corresponding fiscal benefits. Such nonprofit organizations also typically do not receive state funding. This demonstrates the confrontational nature of the state’s relationship with these nonprofit organizations. Through a close analysis of the laws, codes, media reports and academic literature on the charitable sector, the central thesis of this paper is that the charitable sector in Singapore is essentially a state facilitated endeavor.