Content area
Full Text
Voluntas: International Journal of Voluntary and Nonprofit Organizations
Vol. 15, No. 2, June 2004 ( C[circlecopyrt] 2004)Jeffrey M. Berry and David F. Arons, A Voice for Nonprofits, The Brookings
Institution, Washington, DC, 2003, 210 pp., appendix, notes, index, $26.95.Nonprofits touch us in a myriad of waysyou may have attended a nonprofit
university, received care at a nonprofit hospital, donated to the United Way or
the Salvation Army, or have a child in the Boy or Girl Scouts. Their initiatives
have protected the environment, toughened smoking and drunk driving laws, and
educated the citizenry on a host of issues. Yet, authors, Jeffrey M. Berry and
David F. Arons show that most nonprofit organizations in the United States do not
fully leverage their lobbying powers to optimally maximize the federal funding
available to them.A Voice for Nonprofits primarily examines the inability of the third (nonprofit)
sector to adequately market itself to the first (government) sector of society. This
conclusion is based on a survey of over 1,700 randomly selected executives of taxdeductible nonprofits. The authors diagnose the problem to be twofoldfirst, most
nonprofits are ignorant about their rights to lobby the government, and second,
they have a fear about losing their charity status if they lobby.A 1976 law, called the H election, provides nonprofits with the ability to
lobby without fear of an IRS audit, yet, according to the authors, only 2% of the
close to a million nonprofits have chosen to exercise this option. Critics might
argue that there are a handful of larger nonprofits (e.g., AARP) that make up for
lack of initiative in lobbying efforts from the smaller organizations. Moreover,
one can also raise the issue of the lack of accountability of nonprofits if citizens
at large are adversely affected by the policies of groups who may not necessarily
represent their interests.The authors also point out that it is perfectly legal for a nonprofit to make a
profit although there are restrictions on what they can do with them (p. 5) and that
the term is elastic, covering a wide range (26 different types) of organizations in
the United States. Chapters in the book provide excellent overviews of the role of
nonprofits as interest groups, the regulation of lobbying, and the characteristics
of politically...