Abstract
Under a third-party government regime, NPOs are largely funded to implement social policies and have open lines of communication with policy makers. When performing their advocacy role, questions may, however, arise about whether NPOs actually strive for policy change to structurally improve the lives of their clients or rather aim to secure these organizational benefits. Based upon a case study of 6 youth care organizations in Belgium, this article aims to highlight how such NPOs deliberately try to capture, process and translate a wide array of service delivering experiences within their organization. As such, their advocacy practice is constantly nourished by the micro-level of direct interaction with clients and the meso-level of internal debate amongst the NPOs’ staff. Using the peak of the iceberg as a metaphor, we argue it is important to focus on these more ‘invisible’ parts in which the advocacy claims of service delivering NPOs must be anchored.
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De Corte, J., Arys, L. & Roose, R. Making the Iceberg Visible Again: Service Delivering Experiences as a Lever for NPOs’ Advocacy Under a Third-Party Government Regime. Voluntas 33, 561–570 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11266-021-00370-6
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11266-021-00370-6