Advocating with a commercial mindset: The impact of commercial income on nonprofit advocacy engagement
Date
2022
Authors
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
Nonprofit Management and Leadership
Abstract
Nonprofits' growing reliance on commercial income
has aroused wide concern that commercialization discourages nonprofit engagement in policy advocacy to
promote positive social changes. Despite this concern,
empirical studies on this relationship are lacking and
existing evidence is mixed. This research note proposes
that the relationship between commercial income and
advocacy engagement is curvilinear, following an
inverted U-shaped pattern. Specifically, as a nonprofit's
proportion of commercial income increases, its advocacy engagement will initially increase, but after a tipping point, further increases in the nonprofit's
commercial income will reduce its advocacy engagement. An analysis of survey data from 336 service delivery nonprofits in mainland China supports the
curvilinear relationship. The finding adds new knowledge from a non-Western, authoritarian context to the
literature and has implications for nonprofits in
addressing the mission-market tension.
Description
item.page.type
Article
item.page.format
Keywords
advocacy engagement, commercial income, nonprofit, policy advocacy, research
Citation
Dong, Q., Lu, J., & Lee, C. (2022). Advocating with a commercial mindset: The impact of commercial income on nonprofit advocacy engagement. Nonprofit Management and Leadership.