Nonprofit Agencies in Public Child Welfare: Their Role and Involvement in Policy Advocacy

Abstract

Growth in privatization has made human service nonprofit organizations increasingly important providers of public child welfare services. Policy advocacy is a key tool that these organizations can use to communicate their unique on-the-ground experience to lawmakers, potentially improving policy and strengthening services for at-risk children and families. However, little is known about the degree to which they participate in advocacy or the ways in which they are involved. This research uses large-scale survey data to investigate the percentage of nonprofit child welfare agencies participating in advocacy, as well as how they involve staff and volunteers and the types of advocacy tactics they use. Results indicate that nonprofit child welfare agencies are less likely to advocate and less likely to involve volunteers in advocacy than other types of nonprofit human service providers. However, the nonprofit child welfare agencies that are involved have high rates of participation in a variety of sophisticated tactics. As these data demonstrate that child welfare nonprofits are well-positioned to be highly involved in policy advocacy but many still refrain, suggestions are made for how to expand and strengthen their advocacy involvement.