Complex non-profit collaboration: A Case Study of The Advocacy Initiative

In 2008 in Ireland there was a real sense that social justice advocacy, by non-profit organisations, was under threat from the state. The experience of many advocates and their organisations was that the state was actively working to silence advocacy. However there were no or few spaces where the non-profit sector (in Ireland often referred to as the community and voluntary sector) could reflect and dialogue about social justice advocacy: the threats it faced, its purpose, methodologies, effectiveness, assumptions, and legitimacy. Where spaces did exist there were low levels of trust and not always room for dissent from dominant narratives (Murphy 2014). The Advocacy Initiative was established to provide the opportunity for the sector to come to grips with these challenges and consider more deeply its advocacy function.