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Shifting sources of financial support and higher burdens of service are two explicit structural challenges that the sector faces (Lyons 2001). These two factors are part of the institutional context: that is, the legal, political, social and economic environment in which organisations operate. Organisations are limited by the milieu in which they work, and embedded in and constrained by these broader circumstances or institutional context (DiMaggio and Powell 1991).
However, there is a third area of context that may have an impact on nonprofit organisations and their staff—the media. There has been substantial research into the media and its effects on those who consume the information as well as the influence of the media to shape public debate (Biagi 1996; Bryant & Zillman 1993). Others have focused specifically on the analysis of media as discourse (van Dijk 1988). Although the media is far from being the only measure of public perception, it is one useful gauge. It has also played a powerful part in formulating the debate (Hiebert 1999; Chesebro & Bartelsen 1996; Gurevitch 1995). In terms of portrayal of nonprofits in relationships with business, the media both reflects and helps to construct how these third sector organisations are viewed and view themselves.
There is one area of discourse in the media that is of increasing importance in the changing funding schemes. As government withdraws from being the primary funder of many nonprofit organisations, one of the ways in which nonprofit organisations address resource shortfalls is through relationships with business. This chapter describes and analyses the results of a media analysis in the area of relationships between nonprofit organisations and for-profit firms. As one aspect of localised institutional context, the media provides a foil against which to understand and theorise about the individual and organisational dimensions of the research. It represents a segment of the environment in which nonprofit staff and organisations operate and enhances the understanding of those levels of analysis. Others have also used the media as part of the discourse around a particular social phenomenon (Hardy & Phillips 1999). Thus, the primary focus of the media analysis is to deepen understanding of the public sphere in which these organisations operate.
During fieldwork, there was a second objective for the media analysis. It was to provide critical information to address one of the research questions:
3. Does the media aspect of the institutional context of relationships in which nonprofits operate affect the social agency of individuals and the capacity of nonprofits?
The outcome of the media analysis was not to answer this question. Rather, it resulted in creating a fuller, more detailed picture of the context in which relationships between nonprofits and for-profits operate. This is not a tangential aspect of the complete project. In fact, the media analysis played a critical role in identifying elements of the discourse that may have affected the nonprofit organisations. Nonetheless, for reasons explored below, there is little definitive evidence of the direct, measurable effects of the media on those organisations. For those reasons, the modified question answered by the media study is as follows:
How does the media portray relationships between nonprofits and business? What implications, if any, does this portrayal have for nonprofit organisations and their staff?
Many communication researchers have noted the difficulty of successfully measuring the effects of the media (Anderson & Meyer 1988; Biagi 1996; Winston 1986). As has already been noted, the primary thrust of the research is to describe and understand the experiences of staff in nonprofit organisations engaged in relationships with for-profits. Therefore, instead of focusing on the effects of the media, this chapter is more concerned with the role of the media as part of the environment in which inter-sectoral relationships develop. This component of the research focuses on establishing the environment in which nonprofits and their staff operate in terms of media portraits of their organisational experience. The analysis was not designed to answer definitively this research question. Rather, it was developed and included to ensure that the research addressed the issue of media context at the level of actual content instead of relying solely on second-hand reporting from informants on their perceptions of the media. Where appropriate, the media analysis points to some possible effects on organisational capacity and social agency.
In summary, this chapter represents a differentiated analysis in its own right. The media analysis is one way in which to describe context as it relates directly to the experiences of individuals and organisations. As documented in the case studies and demonstrated by interviews, nonprofit staff are aware of elements of context such as legal constraints, funding limitations and political agendas. The focus of this chapter is particularly on the sometimes unacknowledged undercurrents of public attention on the subject of these relationships, and the way in which nonprofit staff and organisations are characterised in these accounts.
The focus of the research is predominantly on business and nonprofit links. However, for the media analysis the scope was broadened to encompass adjacent areas of concern. To build a coherent narrative of that relationship it was necessary to conduct the media analysis on a wider platform. To this end, the following areas were included: philanthropy/donations, characteristics of welfare organisations/nonprofits and client populations, privatisation and competition for contracts. In addition, because of the interest in the changing federal tax system during this period, pieces about tax legislation as it pertained to both nonprofit organisations and business philanthropy were also examined.
The sample was drawn from media to which nonprofit staff in organisations in metropolitan Sydney had most immediate and opportune access. The timeframe for the analysis was three years, from 1998-2000.
Because it was impractical to manually search all publications for a three-year period, the scope was limited. In order to identify the sample from the newspapers and television programs, standard public access databases with search engine capability were used. Although not all search protocols for database match exactly, the same set of key words was inputted to catalogue appropriate material. From conversations with colleagues and professionals in the nonprofit arena, a list of words was generated t