Advocating with a commercial mindset: The impact of commercial income on nonprofit advocacy engagement

Nonprofits' growing reliance on commercial income has aroused wide concern that commercialization discourages nonprofit engagement in policy advocacy to promote positive social changes. Despite this concern, empirical studies relationship are lacking and existing evidence is mixed. This research note proposes the between curvilinear, following an inverted U-shaped pattern. Specifically, as a nonprofit's proportion of increases, its will initially increase, but after tipping point, further increases reduce engagement. An analysis survey data from 336 service-delivery nonprofits mainland China supports curvilinear relationship. The finding adds new knowledge non-Western, authoritarian context literature implications for addressing mission-market tension.