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Shopping or Specialization? Venue Targeting among Nonprofits Engaged in Advocacy
Author(s) -
Buffardi Anne L.,
Pekkanen Robert J.,
Smith Steven Rathgeb
Publication year - 2015
Publication title -
policy studies journal
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.773
H-Index - 69
eISSN - 1541-0072
pISSN - 0190-292X
DOI - 10.1111/psj.12090
Subject(s) - mandate , legislature , bureaucracy , public administration , government (linguistics) , revenue , public relations , political science , principal (computer security) , scope (computer science) , interest group , business , politics , accounting , law , philosophy , linguistics , computer science , operating system , programming language
Studies of venue shopping have typically analyzed the case of an individual advocacy group or issue campaign rather than comparing venue strategies across multiple groups. Moreover, this literature focuses on interest groups and advocacy coalitions whose principal mandate is to influence public policy. Using original data, we test theories of venue selection among nonprofit organizations that report engaging in policy processes but the majority of which do not self‐identify as an advocacy group. Our analyses explore the “where” of nonprofit advocacy across three different venue types: branch (executive, legislative), domain (bureaucracy, elected officials), and level of government (local, state, federal). Like interest groups, we find that nonprofits shop among both executive and legislative branches and among elected and bureaucratic domains; however, they tend to specialize in one level of government. Geographic scope and revenue source predicted venue targeting, but most other organizational characteristics including age, capacity, and structure did not.