No abstract

The nonprofit sector is confronting a potential leadership deficit and mounting pressures to become more efficient and businesslike. To begin to assess how these tensions inf luence pathways to leadership, this study investigates the professional backgrounds and nonprofit experience of leaders in the sector. Analysis demonstrates that some leaders have management credentials and management experience, but many advance in the nonprofit sector through substantive experience alone. Even though some nonprofit executives have spent most of their careers in the public sector or the business sector, the study also demonstrates that a nonprofit ethic matters a great deal for leadership. These findings suggest that substantive experience and dedication to the nonprofit sector constitute primary pathways to leadership in the sector, raising many questions about the role of management expertise and the evolution of leadership in the sector.

Which types of nonprofit organizations make claims to the state by lobbying and what explains their involvement in the activity? Although many studies focus on organization-level characteristics, the authors argue that nonprofit lobbying is driven by two different dynamics that operate at the field level: cross-sector competition and social change mission. Analyzing data on nonprofit organizations in California from 1998 to 2003, the authors show that nonprofits in mission-driven fields are more likely to lobby than nonprofits in other fields, but cross-sector competition does not seem to influence lobbying at the field level. The authors also find that many organization-level characteristics matter and nonprofits with lobbying experience tend to make the activity a regular component of their organizational repertoire. These findings have a variety of implications for work on civic engagement and the authors conclude with a discussion of the implications.Civic engagement research in the United States has found mounting evidence of declines or measurable changes in the nature of individual involvement