Research shows that over 70% of nonprofit organizations (NPOs) in Flanders engage with business modelling or corporate management tools (Suykens, 2020). Whereas some warn that the influx of business practices hinders NPOs’ day-to-day functioning, and more importantly, their ability to fulfill their societal roles, others point to financial (e.g., financial stability) and managerial benefits (e.g., more informed decision making). These in turn are argued to strengthen NPOs’ ability to fulfill their prosocial mission. However, seeming perilous for some while promising for others, few studies explain the conditions under which business practices ‘work’ in a nonprofit setting. This project proposal addresses this issue by formulating and testing hypotheses concerning how different contextual conditions impact the relationship between business practice use and nonprofit performance. In specific, a multilevel approach is adopted – including organizational conditions (e.g., task, size), sectoral conditions (e.g., sector regulations), and institutional conditions (e.g., public-nonprofit contracting) – to systematically examine this issue across NPOs active in three different welfare states. The results contribute to nonprofit management (a) research, by building and testing mid-range theory on nonprofit business practice use centered on contextualizing existing grand theory, and (b) practice, by elucidating the conditions under which business practices are likely useful.