I'm trying to reference a member of an object of type 'ExternalSourceProvider' that's been instantiated through reflection like this: Type type = GetProviderType(vendor); ConstructorInfo constructorInfo = type.GetConstructor(new Type[] { typeof(NameValueCollection) }); ExternalSourceProvider vendorSourceProvider = (ExternalSourceProvider)constructorInfo.Invoke(new Object[] { requestData }); I now want to set the value for a static member of the newly instantiated object something like this: (ExternalSourceProvider)vendorSourceProvider.App = this.App; I get the error: Member ExternalSourceProvider.MobileApp cannot be accessed with an instance reference, qualify it with a type name instead. What does 'qualifying it with a type name' mean, and why is this required? What I'm accessing is a static method of a base class and I need some help to understand what to do (and ideally, I'd like to understand why the required pattern is being enforced, so any idea of what I should search up would be awesome. I'm currently reading http://www.damirscorner.com/blog/posts/20140310-DynamicBindingOfStaticAndInstanceMethods.html).