The meaning of nonprofit advocacy: An ordonomic perspective

• Modern economics of the nonprofit sector emphasizes its service delivery role but has little to say about nonprofit advocacy.
• This paper examines nonprofit advocacy from the perspective of the ordonomic research program examining the interdependence between institutions and ideas.
• The meaning of nonprofit advocacy is shown to be in effecting the ongoing realignment between institutions and ideas.

Orthodox economic theories of the nonprofit sector are focused on its service delivery role but have little to say about nonprofit advocacy. This study explains nonprofit advocacy by building upon the ordonomic approach, a recently developed strand of institutional economics that explores the interdependencies between institutions and ideas. From the ordonomic perspective, the evolution of a modern society occurs through an ongoing realignment between institutions and ideas. The meaning of nonprofit advocacy is shown to be in contributing to this realignment. This leads to a new understanding of the service delivery role of the nonprofit sector. This role is shown to have a compensatory character in that it is intended to maintain a reasonable quality of human life before the time-consuming ideational and institutional adjustments actually take place.