Making change
Description
The goal of my thesis is to examine the factors that make a nonprofit organization more or less successful at influencing public policy. My project uses six nonprofit organizations as case studies, each one representing a different cross section of level of government advocacy and controversiality of their mission: local, state/regional, or national government and apolitical or politicized topic area. This work investigates how entities which are not legally allowed to take part in politics can, in fact, influence politics. Chapters 1 and 2 give context on the nonprofit sector and the theoretical framework that guides the project. Chapter 3 defines what it means to be successful at influencing policy. Success here is defined by the nonprofit organization's ability to achieve political priority. Chapter 3 also outlines the case selection process for this thesis. Chapter 4 analyzes the outcome of the interviews and data collection from the perspective of government level, and Chapter 5 does so from the perspective of politicization of issue area. Chapter 6 analyzes the data through both lenses for a compounded analysis. Finally, Chapter 7 brings together the results of the data analysis and draws conclusions from the work. The apolitical, national nonprofit organization is the most individually successful case study in the project. Meanwhile, the results exemplify that apolitical, state/regional nonprofit organizations are the most reliably influential on policy making. Ultimately, this thesis marries the efforts of domestic nonprofit organizations with the United States' political arena. This sets the groundwork for further investigation into global post-pandemic, politicized, advocacy.