Volume 9, Issue 2 -

On the one hand, nonprofits are expected to protect values, promote ideals, and effect change, and on the other hand, they are normatively and legally discouraged from engaging in advocacy and lobbying. These countervailing forces produce a tension that nonprofit managers must navigate. Although previous research suggests that normative boundaries and legal implications constrain lobbying efforts, it is possible that these factors merely influence how some charities report their lobbying activities to authorities. Indeed, incentives to misreport lobbying engagement exist at the federal level where regulatory oversight is lax. This article compares state data obtained for a sample of charities to contemporaneous federal data regarding the lobbying engagement, payments, and expenses of these organizations and their registered lobbyists. Findings demonstrate that roughly half of the charities sampled engage in more lobbying than they report to federal authorities, lending support to the premise that managerial discretion influences nonprofit reporting.

The latest census of Italian nonprofit organizations – compared with the previous one – showed a significant development of the nonprofit sector between 2001 and 2011. The number of organizations increased more than 28 % while the growth of employees (about 61 %) was even more impressive. These results notwithstanding, the mere comparison of aggregate census data does not give a true understanding of the dynamic of the sector. The entry and exit of organizations, as well as their migration between different sectors of activity, or geographical areas, can be analyzed properly only using firm-level panel data, but these data are rarely available so that only a few authors had a chance to use them. In this paper, we try to fill this gap using firm-level panel data for the first time in Italy. Our analysis tempers the optimism arising from aggregate data. We show that: a) part of the growth is determined by the emergence of already active organizations that were not detected a decade ago; b) because of low barriers, the entry of new nonprofit organizations is very relevant, but their net contribution to the growth of employment is quite small; c) opposite to what happened in other countries, the exit of nonprofit organizations is very significant, and d) organizations that were already active a decade ago gave the most important contribution to the growth of employment. We also investigate geographical trends, showing that the slower growth of the nonprofit sector in Southern Italy depends on the very high exit rate of the area, while the entry rate is more or less in line with the rest of the country.

The Affordable Care Act improved substance abuse service coverage and increased demand for these services. Presumably, these changes also influenced the number of substance abuse nonprofits in states. State decisions for Medicaid expansion have the potential to influence nonprofits' decisions to establish new facilities, increasing the demand for these services. In addition, Certificate of Need (CON), that is, state regulation of new health services and facilities, can affect nonprofits' responses to increased demand for substance abuse services. This study provides evidence that the number of nonprofit substance abuse facilities is negatively associated with state decisions to expand Medicaid and state regulation of new health services and facilities. However, in states with both Medicaid expansion and CON, the number of nonprofit substance abuse facilities tended to increase. In addition, evidence suggests that both nonprofit and for-profit substance abuse facilities are negatively influenced by Medicaid expansion and CON, but positively influenced by the interaction of Medicaid expansion and CON, government spending, racial diversity, median income, and uninsured rates.

Individuals creating new nonprofit organizations are often viewed as being driven by intrinsic and altruistic motives pulling them into becoming a nonprofit entrepreneur. However, individuals can also be pushed towards self-employment in the nonprofit sector because of negative external forces, a phenomenon labeled necessity nonprofit entrepreneurship. This article explores necessity nonprofit entrepreneurs to illustrate how they differ from those not explicitly driven by necessity in starting up a new nonprofit, and what policy implications and questions necessity nonprofit entrepreneurship raises for nonprofit stakeholders.

This article examines the strategies and processes pursued by one foundation aimed at accelerating systems change reform efforts in four states. The findings suggest four strategies the Foundation employed in reform efforts: partnering with state policy actors to accelerate systems change efforts, providing technical assistance to support implementation, leveraging the reputation of the Foundation toward systems change goals, and facilitating the dissemination of innovation to states and localities. This study contributes to the literature by documenting the combination of strategies the Foundation applied in their effort to advance systems change, and by exploring the perspective of system professionals on what Foundation activities were viewed as more or less successful. Because systems change entails both policy and operational change, this study suggests foundation strategies need to harness both traditional approaches, such as targeting policy change, as well as approaches less traditionally used that may require new skill sets for foundations, including field building activities that enable system professionals to implement the change effectively.