Over the years, the Symposium on Public Policy for Nonprofits, co-sponsored by the Association for Research on Nonprofit Organizations and Voluntary Action (ARNOVA), Independent Sector, and Nonprofit Policy Forum, has become a distinctive space where researchers, nonprofit and philanthropic leaders, policymakers, and other sector stakeholders come together to ask timely, difficult, and consequential questions about the policies shaping nonprofit life.
As two of the three editors of the open-access journal Nonprofit Policy Forum (NPF), we have had the privilege of seeing this event from multiple vantage points — as scholars, editors, organizers, listeners, and participants in a broad conversation about the future of the nonprofit and philanthropic sector.
Looking back at past symposia, we are struck by how closely the annual themes have tracked the most urgent questions facing the sector.
- 2020: the intersection of politics, policy, and nonprofits
- 2021: civic engagement, elections, and democratic participation
- 2022: nonprofits not only as mission-driven organizations but also as employers
- 2023: election-year public policy recommendations for the nonprofit sector and philanthropy
- 2024: nonprofit civic infrastructure as a foundation for a thriving nation
- 2025: assessing and communicating nonprofit impact
Together, these themes tell a broader story. The nonprofit sector is not simply responding to isolated crises. It is operating in an environment shaped by overlapping pressures: changes in government funding, evolving tax and regulatory policy, workforce instability, technological disruption, demographic change, uncertain or declining public trust, and polarized politics. These pressures affect nonprofits differently depending on their size, subsector, geography, funding mix, leadership, and communities served. But across the sector, they raise a common question: How can nonprofits remain effective, accountable, trusted, and mission-centered while adapting to profound uncertainty?
That question sits at the heart of the upcoming 2027 symposium, “Beyond Survival: Resilience in the Charitable Sector.” The call for proposals asks how individual nonprofits and the charitable sector as a whole are weathering current challenges, including financial sustainability, workforce stability, governance capacity, technological adaptation, policy engagement, and service delivery. This framing is timely and important. Resilience should not mean asking nonprofits simply to endure more with less. Nor should it romanticize scarcity, overwork, or permanent crisis management. Rather, resilience should invite serious inquiry into the conditions that allow nonprofits to adapt without abandoning mission, to innovate without losing accountability, and to serve communities without exhausting the nonprofit workforce.
One of the most meaningful aspects of the symposium is that it does not treat research, practice, and policy as separate domains. Instead, it assumes that each is enriched by the other.
- Practitioners bring the lived realities of organizations, communities, clients, funders, and policy environments.
- Researchers bring evidence, theoretical frameworks, historical views, and analytical tools.
- Policymakers and advocates bring knowledge and questions about feasibility, implementation, public value, and political context.
The best symposium conversations happen when these perspectives interact with and challenge one another. It creates space for empirical research, but also for policy analysis, practitioner reflection, and sector data. It invites national perspectives while also making room for state, local, comparative, and international insights. It recognizes that nonprofit policy is not only about regulation or tax law, but also about democracy, equity, infrastructure, labor, voice, trust, and the public good.
As NPF editors, we have seen how symposium papers often begin as timely responses to current events and then develop into more lasting contributions. A presentation may start with an urgent question from the field: How should nonprofits communicate impact? How can they engage in civic life while navigating legal constraints? How are workforce challenges reshaping service delivery? How do public policies strengthen or weaken nonprofit capacity? Through discussion, revision, and publication, these questions become part of a larger body of knowledge that can inform future scholarship, practice, and policy.
NPF has helped to serve an important archival function for the policy symposium. A one-day event can generate powerful ideas, but without publication, many of those ideas risk disappearing once the session ends. NPF has helped extend the life of the symposium by providing a publication venue where selected papers, commentaries, case studies, and policy analyses can be revised, refined, peer reviewed, and shared with a wider audience. In this way, each symposium is not only a short moment of exchange but lives on to spur ongoing conversations.
In its 15th year, the Symposium on Public Policy for Nonprofits reminds us why sustained collaboration between researchers and practitioners matters. The challenges facing nonprofits are too complex for any one discipline, organization, or sector perspective to solve alone. We need rigorous evidence, practical wisdom, policy imagination, and honest dialogue. The symposium brings these elements together.
That is why, as we reflect on our tenure with NPF and the symposia we have had the privilege to help guide, we see the event as one of the most important bridges in our field: a bridge between scholarship and practice, between immediate challenges and long-term learning, and between the nonprofit sector we have and the more resilient and equitable sector many of us are working to build.
We invite all those with a stake in the health of the nonprofit sector and philanthropy to engage in the upcoming Symposium on Public Policy for Nonprofits. The 15th symposium, scheduled virtually on February 19, 2027, will bring together nonprofit researchers, practitioners, policymakers, and others to explore public policy affecting nonprofits and philanthropy. We invite you to review the call for proposals and respond by June 26, 2026, to add your voice to the conversation.
