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.
Facing especially wicked problems, social sector organizations are searching for powerful new methods to understand and address them.Design Thinking for the Greater Goodgoes in depth on both thehowof ...using new tools and thewhy. As a way to reframe problems, ideate solutions, and iterate toward better answers, design thinking is already well established in the commercial world. Through ten stories of struggles and successes in fields such as health care, education, agriculture, transportation, social services, and security, the authors show how collaborative creativity can shake up even the most entrenched bureaucracies-and provide a practical roadmap for readers to implement these tools.The design thinkers Jeanne Liedtka, Randy Salzman, and Daisy Azer explore how major agencies like the Department of Health and Human Services and the Transportation and Security Administration in the United States, as well as organizations in Canada, Australia, and the United Kingdom, have instituted principles of design thinking. In each case, these groups have used the tools of design thinking to reduce risk, manage change, use resources more effectively, bridge the communication gap between parties, and manage the competing demands of diverse stakeholders. Along the way, they have improved the quality of their products and enhanced the experiences of those they serve. These strategies are accessible to analytical and creative types alike, and their benefits extend throughout an organization. This book will help today's leaders and thinkers implement these practices in their own pursuit of creative solutions that are both innovative and achievable.
There is evidence of meaningful gender differences in behaviors, resources, and outcomes for traditional and social entrepreneurs. We examine if these differences exist among nonprofit ...entrepreneurs—those who found organizations in a sector where women outnumber men and the activities of many nonprofits are perceived as feminine. Using survey data from 667 nonprofit founders, we investigate human, social, and financial capital differences between men and women. We find no gender differences in human capital before starting a nonprofit. We find gendered differences in founding approaches—women are more likely to take on full-time roles during the start-up phase and utilize volunteers, while men take on more financial debt. Although gender differences between nonprofit founders are not as extensive as those found among traditional and social entrepreneurs, our findings indicate more equitable opportunities for female nonprofit entrepreneurs. These findings highlight the opportunities for interrogating the gendering of nonprofit development.
Scholars across the social sciences have shown how economic, social, and political changes are weakening local governments and contributing to rising nonprofit activity in urban politics. But these ...trends could now add up to a new form of decision-making in some American cities. The convergence of public sector austerity and a burgeoning philanthropic and nonprofit sector have created space for what we call “nonprofit governance.” In some cities, nonprofit leaders can guide urban policy, sometimes with limited input from elected officials or citizens. First, we apply insights from studies in comparative politics to demonstrate how nonprofit leadership can expand, particularly in the context of a weak state. Next, we assess trends in public sector capacity, based on local government employment in Midwestern U.S. cities. We closely examine Detroit and Flint due to dramatic declines in local government capacity and recent public sector crises in both cities, focusing on the role of nonprofits in each. These leading-edge cases allow us to trace the development of nonprofit governance and explore different forms of nonprofit and local government relationships.
Existing studies often use the association between sector sizes to test the supplementary and complementary models of government–nonprofit relations, assuming that one mode of government–nonprofit ...relations dominates a policy subsector. We challenge this assumption and propose that the relationship between nonprofit sector size and the breadth of local government policy actions depends on their level of collaboration. Situated in the context of urban climate governance and drawing information from a national survey of U.S. local government climate actions, we test this modified model and find a statistically significant moderation effect of collaboration. However, contrary to our proposed hypotheses, our findings suggest that a positive association between the number of environmental nonprofits and governmental climate actions exists when the level of government–nonprofit collaboration is low to moderate. We posit that the adversarial lens of government–nonprofit relations and the cost of collaboration are key to understanding these surprising findings.
Collaborative Value Creation Austin, James E.; Seitanidi, Maria May
Nonprofit and voluntary sector quarterly,
12/2012, Letnik:
41, Številka:
6
Journal Article
Recenzirano
In this second of a two-part focused review of the nonprofit business and corporate social responsibility (CSR) literature, the authors present the third and fourth components of the collaborative ...value creation (CVC) framework: the partnering processes that unpack the value creation dynamics and the collaboration outcomes that examine the benefits and costs on multiple levels. The authors suggest that greater value is created at all levels of analysis, micro, meso, and macro, as collaboration moves from sole creation to co-creation of value. The CVC framework assigns equal importance to all forms of value (economic, social, and environmental), types of actors (individuals, organizations, and societies), and time scales (short/long term), providing the analytical paths for assessing value creation holistically. Examining systematically the processes and the outcomes of value co-creation allows for greater specificity, dimensionality, and inclusivity. The article concludes by delineating the contribution of the CVC framework and offering recommendations for future research.
Various brand evaluation approaches assess the value and equity of for-profit brands; accordant approaches for nonprofit brands, however, have been limited, and there is disagreement on what makes up ...a strong brand in the nonprofit sector. In response, this article provides insights into the conceptualization and operationalization of stakeholder-based nonprofit brand equity and derives an initial measurement index. We conceptualize nonprofit brand equity as having three dimensions -- nonprofit brand awareness, nonprofit brand trust, and nonprofit brand commitment -- thereby empirically investigating trust in nonprofit brand equity building for the first time. The methodological procedure for building the index is based on partial least squares path modeling, and we draw on a sample of forty brands (N = 3,617 brand evaluations) identified as some of the best-known nonprofit brands in Germany. Applying the index yields some of the strongest German nonprofit brands; for example, German Red Cross has by far the highest value of brand equity, followed by Aktion Mensch and UNICEF. The nonprofit brand equity index provides the basis for nonprofit managers to compare their brands' performance over time and develop accordant branding strategies; it can be also used by organizations from other countries. web URL: http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/nml.21233/full
Volunteers and paid staff frequently work alongside each other in nonprofit organizations. Nevertheless, the possible impact of volunteering on the wages of the paid staff has hardly ever been ...investigated due to the scarcity of data suited to such research. Based on the matching of two French databases and using several indicators relating to volunteering, this article examines the relationship between volunteering and wages by carrying out investigations that differentiate between employees depending on their position in the socio-occupational hierarchy and the field of activity of their organizations. The results confirm the value of such an approach based on disaggregated data by revealing the diversity of situations. This diversity ranges from some cases where no relationship is observed between volunteering and wages to others where there is a negative relationship and even in a few cases, a positive one.
Recent research suggests that the founding of a new nonprofit is seldom an activity done in solitude; rather, new nonprofits emerge from the efforts and contributions of multiple individuals working ...together as a team. Yet, to date, we know very little about these collective efforts to start new nonprofits, especially during the earliest, nascent, stage of the founding process. This research note draws on survey data from 69 early‐stage nonprofit founders to examine how many individuals are involved during the nascent stage of founding, who these individuals are and how they are related and to illustrate how they contribute to the founding process.
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.
PDF