This study investigates characteristics of individual crowdfunding practices and drivers of fundraising success, where entrepreneurs can tailor their crowdfunding initiatives better than on ...standardized platforms. Our data indicate that most of the funds provided are entitled to receive either financial compensations (equity and profit-share arrangement) or nonfinancial benefits (final product and token of appreciation), while donations are less common. Moreover, crowdfunding initiatives that are structured as nonprofit organizations tend to be significantly more successful than other organizational forms in achieving their fundraising targets, even after controlling for various project characteristics. This finding is in line with theoretical arguments developed by the contract failure literature which postulates that nonprofit organizations may find it easier to attract money for initiatives that are of interest for the general community due to their reduced focus on profits.
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BFBNIB, IZUM, KILJ, NUK, PILJ, SAZU, UL, UM, UPUK
The voluntary sector acts as the last line of defense for some of the most marginalized people in societies around the world, yet its capacities are significantly reduced by chronic resource ...shortages and dynamic political obstacles. Existing research has scarcely examined what it is like for voluntary sector practitioners working amidst these conditions. In this paper, we explore how penal voluntary sector practitioners across England and Scotland marshaled their personal and professional resources to “keep going” amidst significant challenges. Our analysis combines symbolic interactionism with the concept of story‐lines. We illuminate the narratives that practitioners mobilized to understand and motivate their efforts amidst the significant barriers, chronic limitations, and difficult emotions brought forth by their work. We position practitioners' story‐lines as a form of emotion work that mitigated their experiences of anger, frustration, overwhelm, sadness, and disappointment, enabling them to move forward and continue to support criminalized individuals. Our analysis details three story‐lines—resignation, strategy, and refuge—and examines their consequences for practitioners and their capacities to intervene in wicked social problems.
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BFBNIB, FZAB, GIS, IJS, KILJ, NLZOH, NUK, OILJ, SBCE, SBMB, UL, UM, UPUK
The non-profit sector internationally is having to make significant changes to survive. This paper shows how a non-profit can successfully transition from a traditional culture focused on social ...objectives, to a new hybrid culture incorporating both social and economic objectives. The paper has important lessons for major stakeholders of non-profits with respect to understanding the effects of cultural transition on their organizational performance, as well as the critical role that managers play in making cultural transitions.
ABSTRACT
Environmental pressures mean that non-profit organizations are having to transition to an internal culture that blends values supporting both social and economic objectives. The authors examined the effect of cultural transition on performance for a large sample of non-profit organizations. Performance was found to decrease before increasing during cultural transition, i.e. there is a U-shaped relationship between organizational culture and performance. The paper's findings have implications for non-profit management and academic research.
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BFBNIB, NUK, PILJ, SAZU, UL, UM, UPUK
Understanding firms' interfaces with the community has become a familiar strategic concern for both firms and non-profit organizations. However, it is still not clear when different community ...engagement strategies are appropriate or how such strategies might benefit the firm and community. In this review, we examine when, how and why firms benefit from community engagement strategies through a systematic review of over 200 academic and practitioner knowledge sources on the antecedents and consequences of community engagement strategy. We analytically describe evidence on the rise of the community engagement strategy literature over time, its geographical spread and methodological evolution. A foundational concept underlying many studies is the ' continuum of community engagement'. We build on this continuum to develop a typology of three engagement strategies: transactional, transitional and transformational engagement. By identifying the antecedents and outcomes of the three strategies, we find that the payoffs from engagement are largely longer-term enhanced firm legitimacy, rather than immediate cost-benefit improvements. We use our systematic review to draw implications for future research and managerial practice.
This study examines how and when nonprofit board performance is impacted by board diversity. Specifically, we investigate board diversity policies and practices as well as board inclusion behaviors ...as mediating mechanisms for the influence of age, gender, and racial/ethnic diversity of the board on effective board governance practices. The empirical analysis, using a sample of 1,456 nonprofit board chief executive officers, finds that board governance practices are directly influenced by the gender and racial diversity of the board and that board inclusion behaviors together with diversity policies and practices mediate the influence of the board's gender and racial diversity on internal and external governance practices. Additionally, we found an interaction effect that indicates when boards have greater gender diversity, the negative impact of racial diversity on governance practices is mitigated. The findings suggest that board governance can be improved with more diverse membership, but only if the board behaves inclusively and there are policies and practices in place to allow the diverse members to have an impact.
Using agency and stewardship theories, this study examines how public administrators manage contracting relationships with nonprofit organizations. Interviews were conducted with public and nonprofit ...managers involved in social services contract relationships at the state and county level in New York State. The use of trust, reputation, and monitoring as well as other factors influence the manner in which contract relationships are managed. The findings suggest that the manner in which nonprofits are managed evolves over time from a principal-agent to a principal-steward relationship but with less variance than the theories would suggest. This results in part from the contextual conditions that include the type of service, lack of market competitiveness, and management capacity constraints. The intergovernmental environment in which social services are implemented and delivered presents complex challenges for public managers responsible for managing contract relationships. The findings from this study document those challenges and the corresponding management practices used with nonprofit contractors.
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BFBNIB, IZUM, KILJ, NMLJ, NUK, ODKLJ, PILJ, PNG, SAZU, UL, UM, UPUK
Cross-sectoral partnerships are increasingly seen as a solution to the most pressing social problems facing contemporary societies. Sectoral rationales for partnership suggest that public, private, ...and nonprofit organizations each possess distinctive advantages that can enhance the effectiveness, efficiency, and equity of public agencies’ efforts to address social issues. We present an exploratory quantitative examination of this argument, using primary and secondary data from 46 UK local government service departments. The results indicate that public-public partnership is positively associated with effectiveness, efficiency, and equity, but that public-private partnership is negatively associated with effectiveness and equity. Public-nonprofit partnership is unrelated to performance. Our study therefore suggests that cross-sectoral partnership does deliver, but that the prospects of public service improvement may depend on the sectoral choice that organizations make.
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BFBNIB, IZUM, KILJ, NMLJ, NUK, ODKLJ, PILJ, PNG, SAZU, UL, UM, UPUK
In the early 1980s the tenant leaders of the New Orleans St. Thomas public housing development and their activist allies were militant, uncompromising defenders of the city’s public housing ...communities. Yet ten years later these same leaders became actively involved in a planning effort to privatize and downsize their community—an effort that would drastically reduce the number of affordable apartments. What happened? John Arena—a longtime community and labor activist in New Orleans—explores this drastic change in Driven from New Orleans , exposing the social disaster visited on the city’s black urban poor long before the natural disaster of Katrina magnified their plight. Arena argues that the key to understanding New Orleans’s public housing transformation from public to private is the co-optation of grassroots activists into a government and foundation-funded nonprofit complex. He shows how the nonprofit model created new political allegiances and financial benefits for activists, moving them into a strategy of insider negotiations that put the profit-making agenda of real estate interests above the material needs of black public housing residents. In their turn, white developers and the city’s black political elite embraced this newfound political “realism” because it legitimized the regressive policies of removing poor people and massively downsizing public housing, all in the guise of creating a new racially integrated, “mixed-income” community. In tracing how this shift occurred, Driven from New Orleans reveals the true nature, and the true cost, of reforms promoted by an alliance of a neoliberal government, nonprofits, community activists, and powerful real estate interests.
The third sector is experiencing a radical shift due to social, political and economic changes in Europe. Due to these shifts and their implications, the question of leadership has become significant ...and needs to be explored. This article contributes to the literature on the challenges of leadership in the sector. It does so by drawing on the personal narratives provided by leaders across the sector. The views expressed by the narratives provide a deeper insight into leadership in the third sector, than has previously existed. The narratives are valuable for a number of reasons including: they help to extend the knowledge and perspectives of leadership in a way that acknowledges the uniqueness of the sector; they contribute to a better understanding of the challenges faced by leaders in the sector; and they serve as an illustration of the benefit of approaching leadership through the eyes of those practising leadership. The article concludes by identifying the impact for leadership across the sector and the implications.
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GEOZS, IJS, IMTLJ, KILJ, KISLJ, NUK, OILJ, PNG, SAZU, SBCE, SBJE, UL, UM, UPCLJ, UPUK, ZRSKP
Engagement plays a key role for most organizations. Establishing close relationships with consumers and other stakeholders - thus promoting their loyalty and participation in the value creation ...process – has become an element of competitive advantage. Extant literature has focused consumer-brands relationships in commercial contexts; yet, when it comes to non-commercial or non-profit contexts - where communities of decidedly engaged individuals voluntarily invest their time and energy to a cause – research is still in its infancy. This study sets out to understand how non-profit organizations (NPO) can generate a sense of engagement among volunteers and which volunteers’ behaviours - associated with that psychological state – entice value co-creation with NPO. Group interviews were carried out with volunteers to gain insights on drivers and outcomes of Volunteer Engagement (VE). Value congruence between volunteers and NPO, a sense of community, as well as perceptions of competence and autonomy, were identified as drivers of VE. The study further validated the impact of VE not only on somewhat predictable outcomes, such as NPO loyalty and advocacy, but also on the co-creation of value with NPO through the recruitment of new volunteers and the development of new ideas for service innovation.
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CEKLJ, EMUNI, FIS, FZAB, GEOZS, GIS, IJS, IMTLJ, KILJ, KISLJ, MFDPS, NLZOH, NUK, OILJ, PNG, SAZU, SBCE, SBJE, SBMB, SBNM, UKNU, UL, UM, UPUK, VKSCE, ZAGLJ
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