This study provides a comprehensive review and synthesis of the Chinese literature on nonprofit-government relations. A total of 1,222 nonprofit research articles have been examined. It assesses the key insights and contributions of nonprofit-government relations studies across macro-, meso-, and micro-level. It identifies three important limitations of extant research: the lack of autonomy (i.e., it is state-guided), indigeneity (i.e., it is largely an exercise of applying Western theories), and sophistication (i.e., it has limited theoretical depth and methodological rigor). The middle-range approach to theory building is suggested as a most appropriate future direction to advance research in this area.

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Drawing on data from Zhejiang Province, this study explores China’s collaborative response to COVID-19 in which business associations played a critical role. Consistent with existing literature on cross-sector collaboration and nonprofit contributions in extreme events, the preliminary findings of this study carry significant implications for future research to advance new knowledge. Specifically, two important next steps of future research that hold considerable promise—examining the overwhelming impact of the institutional environment on collaboration and accounting for the complex mechanisms in which multiple components of collaboration create outcomes through a configurational approach—emerged from this study. In addition, the practical implications of these findings are highlighted.

Nonprofit representation as a multidimensional notion is inherently interrelated with nonprofit advocacy. This multidimensional nature of representation, however, was largely overlooked in prior empirical literature that predominantly focused on the independent effect of individual representational dimensions on advocacy. This article addresses this limitation by identifying the “representational mixes”—combinations of multiple representational dimensions—that bring about specific outcomes of nonprofit advocacy. Drawing on data from nonprofit organizations in three provinces of China and applying a corresponding configurational approach of fuzzy set qualitative comparative analysis, the findings confirm three propositions, namely the conjunctural, equifinal, and asymmetric causation underneath the complex relationship between nonprofit representation and nonprofit advocacy. This study thus contributes a fresh configurational perspective to understanding nonprofit representation in relation to nonprofit advocacy.

Nonprofit organizations worldwide are increasingly seeking commercial means of financing. Would commercialization compromise the civic functions of nonprofit organizations, especially their policy advocacy efforts for social change? In this article, we address this profound concern by examining policy advocacy by commercialized nonprofits in Singapore. Applying a fuzzy-set qualitative comparative analysis approach in theory building, this study identifies multiple causal configurations of organizational and environmental conditions under which nonprofit organizations can still maintain a high level of advocacy activities in the wave of commercialization. The configurational theory that this study develops sheds new light on our understanding of the causal complexity underlying nonprofit advocacy and informs decision-making on how to uphold nonprofit civic functions in the commercializing context.