The rate of expansion and the breadth of COVID‐19 caught the world by surprise. From the perspective of nonprofit and public entities responsible for service provision, this pandemic is also ...unprecedented. The authors offer a RISE framework for navigating the fiscal effects of COVID‐19 and rely on recent surveys to assess the response strategies of local governments and nonprofit organizations. They find that many nonprofits were hit fastest and hardest by the pandemic and that local governments are, essentially, trying to figure out their financial condition moving into the next budget cycle.
This study takes an emerging scholar perspective to reflect critically on the evolution of the nonprofit research field, applying a mixed-methods design. Study 1 evaluated the evolution of nonprofit ...research through comparing the topics, theories, and methods in emerging nonprofit scholars’ dissertations (n = 3,023) to that of emerging scholars’ publications in nonprofit journals (n = 390). Study 2 examined through a survey of emerging nonprofit scholars (n = 141) how forces operating within the academic system influence scholars’ early career research. Results from Study 1 document a decreasing diversity in the body of scholarship from dissertations to journal articles and Study 2 highlights challenges experienced in an early career stage. The findings call for future reflection on the level of diversity, both in terms of research approaches and the composition of our scholarly community. Maintaining diversity will arguably be an important precondition to ensure continuous knowledge advancement in the field.
This study examines the impact of the California Nonprofit Integrity Act of 2004 on CEO compensation costs in affected organizations. Contrary to the stated objective of the Act that executive ...compensation is "just and reasonable," we find that CEO compensation costs for affected nonprofits during the post-regulation periods have increased by about 6.3 percent when compared with a control group of comparable unaffected nonprofits. In addition, the relative increase in CEO compensation appears to come from nonprofits that have experienced greater regulatory cost increases. We do not find evidence that the Act resulted in a change in CEO pay performance sensitivity. The observed CEO pay increase is not systematically different across nonprofits that underpaid versus those that overpaid their CEOs during pre-Act periods. Overall, this paper highlights the unintended consequences of regulatory attempts to enhance governance in the not-for-profit sector.
Financial measures are routinely used as a proxy for nonprofit organizations’ capacity to serve, but the link between financial indicators and program outcomes has been largely unexamined. This study ...examines empirically whether, and to what extent, financial measures predict program success. The analysis draws on a unique data set from the Cultural Data Project (2004-2012) that covers nearly 5,000 nonprofit arts and cultural organizations. The empirical results confirm that financial attributes are indeed linked to program outcomes. Yet, some of the factors that contribute to financial stability and efficiency have no or negative relationships with program outcomes; this finding suggests that some efforts to maintain financial strength may be made at the expense of program performance. This study also draws attention to the inconsistent way revenue diversification is being measured and calls attention to the value in focusing on the primary funding mechanism of a nonprofit organization.
Social media outlets provide nonprofit organizations the opportunity of opening new communication and disclosure channels. Organizations must decide whether to set up these channels. They—and in turn ...their target audiences—must also decide how much to use social media. In this study, we test a novel multi-level signaling theory framework to examine the relationship between social media investments and financial returns. Employing both cross-sectional and cross-temporal samples of 427 of the largest US nonhospital charities, we examine the association between donations and three dimensions of organizations’ social media efforts: (1) whether the organization has a social media presence, (2) how much the organization uses social media, and (3) the level of engagement of the organization’s audience. The findings support our conjecture that financial returns result from establishing a particular communication channel, from using that channel, and from having channel-specific audience engagement. We also consider how our three social media signaling dimensions condition the core donations demand variables, finding that social media substitutes for traditional fundraising expenditures. These results carry implications for the signaling and donation demand literatures and further the understanding of how new media are changing donor engagement.
The ability of nonprofits to weather hard times is a popular theme in the literature, yet most of the research is spent on predicting organizational closure. Unfortunately, this offers little ...guidance to nonprofits attempting to both survive and deliver services during crises. We use the lived experiences of 31 nonprofits—a mix of umbrella groups and direct human service providers—during the Illinois state budget impasse to understand nonprofit organization resilience in times of crisis. We establish the Nonprofit Resiliency Framework using qualitative analysis, mapping tactics in five areas: financial, human resources, outreach, program and services, and management and leadership. This study not only provides further empirical investigation of organizational resilience, but also useful advice for nonprofits on how to weather a complex financial crisis.
Existing research on career motivations tends to focus either on the difference between private and public organizations or on the difference between nonprofit and for-profit firms. Although ...commonalities exist, the literature suggests that there also are many differences in what motivates public and nonprofit employees. Employing data from the National Administrative Studies Project III, this research examines how seven motivational aspects correlate with the choice between public and nonprofit employment. The authors find that managers who value advancement opportunities, a pension and retirement plan, and the ability to serve the public in their jobs are more likely to accept a job in the public sector, whereas managers who value family-friendly policies and increased responsibility are more likely to accept a position in the nonprofit sector. Participation in volunteering is positively associated with nonprofit employment. The authors suggest a possible link between volunteering and the unique nonprofit motivation that is differentiated from public service motivation.
Many environmental nonprofit groups are assumed to provide public goods. While an extensive literature examines why donors join and give to nonprofits, none directly tests whether donations actually ...provide public goods. We seek such a test by using a common form of environmental organization: watershed groups. We find their increased presence resulted in lower dissolved oxygen deficiency and higher proportions of swimmable and fishable water bodies. Increased donations to and expenditures by the groups also improved water quality. Thus, private groups likely played a role in mitigating environmental problems. Overall, our results indicate private provision of a public good by nonprofit organizations.
Nonprofits use social media to pursue a broad range of mission-related outcomes. Given the centrality of user connections and social networks on these sites, attaining these outcomes is contingent on ...first generating a stock of online social capital through investing in online relationships. Yet, little is known empirically about this process. To better understand the return on social media, this study develops empirical measures of four key dimensions of social media–based social capital centering on the nature of nonprofits’ network positions and stakeholder ties. The study then tests a series of hypotheses relating the increase in social capital to different types of stakeholder engagement tactics. Using Twitter data on 198 community foundations, the study finds that content with multiple communication cues and intersectoral stakeholder targeting predict higher levels of social capital; communicative and stakeholder diversity, thus, appear to play a key role in the successful organizational use of social media.
Donating to charitable causes is generally perceived as a moral, prosocial behavior, but this may not always be the case. Although moral identity tends to have a positive effect on prosocial ...behavior, moral identity does not unconditionally enhance charitable giving. Four studies demonstrate that moral identity decreases donations when recipients are responsible for their plight. Mediation analysis reveals that empathy and justice underlie these effects such that moral identity increases donations for recipients with low plight responsibility through increased empathy, but moral identity decreases donations to recipients with high plight responsibility due to perceptions of justice. Importantly, donations to recipients who are responsible for their plight can be enhanced when donors’ immorality is made salient, evoking empathy for recipients, particularly among donors with high moral identity. This research makes theoretical contributions in addition to providing implications for nonprofit organizations whose recipients may be perceived as responsible for their plight.
PDF
