In recent years, a variety of efforts have been made in political science to enable, encourage, or require scholars to be more open and explicit about the bases of their empirical claims and, in turn, make those claims more readily evaluable by others. While qualitative scholars have long taken an interest in making their research open, reflexive, and systematic, the recent push for overarching transparency norms and requirements has provoked serious concern within qualitative research communities and raised fundamental questions about the meaning, value, costs, and intellectual relevance of transparency for qualitative inquiry. In this Perspectives Reflection, we crystallize the central findings of a three-year deliberative process—the Qualitative Transparency Deliberations (QTD)—involving hundreds of political scientists in a broad discussion of these issues. Following an overview of the process and the key insights that emerged, we present summaries of the QTD Working Groups’ final reports. Drawing on a series of public, online conversations that unfolded at www.qualtd.net, the reports unpack transparency’s promise, practicalities, risks, and limitations in relation to different qualitative methodologies, forms of evidence, and research contexts. Taken as a whole, these reports—the full versions of which can be found in the Supplementary Materials—offer practical guidance to scholars designing and implementing qualitative research, and to editors, reviewers, and funders seeking to develop criteria of evaluation that are appropriate—as understood by relevant research communities—to the forms of inquiry being assessed. We dedicate this Reflection to the memory of our coauthor and QTD working group leader Kendra Koivu.1

In debates about promoting civic and political engagement in America, political scientists are often skeptical about the role of nonprofit organizations offering health and social services in the US because they are constrained by the tax code and grant agreements. However, I argue that by focusing on what I term social movement-borne nonprofits, we can see how these organizations may engage (marginalized) communities and participate in political activities. To illustrate, I consider the California Prostitutes Education Project (CAL-PEP) and the St. James Infirmary (SJI), two San Francisco Bay-area nonprofits created by prostitute-rights activists that offer HIV/AIDS and other health services to sex workers. Drawing on multi-method qualitative research on CAL-PEP and the SJI, I argue that social movement-borne nonprofits engage in political activities through a process of radical institutionalization, whereby they incorporate and advance activist goals within their organizational practices. I theorize the properties of radical institutionalization as “oppositional implementation,” “community engagement,” and “claims-making activities.” My hope is that scholars will test for and further define these properties in order to broaden understandings of nonprofits' evolving role in civic and political life, and in processes of social change.