Not-for-profit advocacy: Challenging policy images and pursuing policy change

The not-for-profit sector has long played an important role in the policy process through encouraging political engagement, policy research and advocacy, and service delivery. This paper examines two not-for-profit organizations, National Children's Alliance and National Alliance on Mental Illness, both of which are grassroots organizations formed to radically change public and professional perceptions of their respective issues and reform the way services are offered to those in need. Borrowing from the literature on policy image and agenda setting, we identify the strategies used by these two highly successful not-for-profit groups in their efforts to change the system through redefining problems, reframing issues, and securing legislation with the help of policy entrepreneurs and politicians sympathetic to their causes.