ABSTRACT Asian leaders remain underrepresented in US nonprofit leadership and continue to face challenges in securing resources and building capacity. Drawing on discrimination theories and symbolic representation, the research employs online experiments to test how the race of a nonprofit executive director influences public perception and involvement. Using East Asian male names and two types (cause‐oriented and service‐oriented) of nonprofits, we find that respondents' evaluations and involvement intentions vary by executive director's race and nonprofit type. In particular, the East Asian director condition received higher evaluations of trustworthiness and effectiveness, while behavioral intentions remained largely unchanged, except for a marginally lower willingness to volunteer in the service‐oriented nonprofit. These results suggest that positive evaluations do not necessarily translate into corresponding behavioral intentions. The findings highlight the distinct challenges faced by East Asian‐led nonprofits and offer both theoretical and practical implications, along with directions for future research.
ABSTRACT While the trend of nonprofits adopting business‐like practices has been widely discussed, limited attention has been paid to how the broader public responds to this shift. One way to capture public reactions is by examining engagement with business‐like narratives in media. However, public engagement with business‐like narratives in media contexts beyond organization‐controlled social media remains underexplored. This study addresses these gaps by analyzing TED Talks to examine public engagement with nonprofit issues on a curated, global media platform. The regression results show that nonprofit‐related talks featuring business‐like narratives receive lower like rates and comment rates, but do not differ significantly in views compared with those without such narratives. These findings suggest that public audiences show lower levels of active engagement with content featuring business‐like narratives, which contrasts with stakeholders' relatively positive responses to nonprofits' business‐like practices noted in previous studies. This study advances the literature by measuring business‐like practices from a narrative perspective and examining public engagement with nonprofit issues on a broad media platform that reaches audiences beyond direct stakeholders. These findings also offer practical implications: nonprofit practitioners should be cautious about employing business‐like narratives in their communication, especially when addressing broad and diverse audiences.
Despite the value of inter-organizational collaboration in mission achievement, clarity on the internal "process" dimension of collaborative activity remains elusive and understudied compared to other partnership dynamics. This study offers the first comprehensive review of the multidisciplinary literature on nonprofit collaboration processes, examining 253 empirical studies. We introduce a three-dimensional framework to guide our review, focusing on how scholars have conceptualized the collaboration process and chosen their strategies of inquiry. Our analysis identifies patterns across ontological, epistemological, and methodological approaches to studying this dynamic concept. We present six recommendations for future nonprofit and voluntary sector studies, highlighting how the dual meaning of the collaboration process and the variation in theoretical frameworks influence research strategies, how the temporal aspects of the collaboration process are often overlooked, and how variability in methodological quality, representation gaps in data, and the scarcity of engaged scholarship can limit our understanding of the internal dynamics of partnership formation and management.
Community-centric fundraising is an emerging fundraising approach that aims to decenter donors, broaden the base of fundraising support, and incorporate social justice values into the development process. This research is designed to understand the ethical tensions that organizations face when considering donor- or community-centric approaches to fundraising, the challenges and benefits of these approaches, and the processes by which organizations are transitioning from donor-centered fundraising (DCF) to community-centric fundraising (CCF) approaches. Interviews with 11 Seattle-area fundraisers reveal the important role that the fundraiser plays in catalyzing change within their organization, working with external stakeholders, and building trust with the community to involve them in the development process. Interviews also revealed the importance of centering values of race, equity, and social justice throughout the entire organization as a baseline for implementing the other CCF principles. An antecedent-process-outcome model of transitioning from DCF to CCF is proposed.
Nonprofit social service providers are essential in delivering vital services, often with public funding. This study adopts a contingency perspective to explore the relationship between organizational governance and financial stability in publicly funded nonprofit organizations. We use a combination of comparative multilevel analysis (CMA) and fuzzy set qualitative comparative analysis (fsQCA) on a sample of 56 nonprofit social service providers in Vienna, drawing on multiple data sources, namely financial records, website data, an organizational survey, and expert assessments from public funding officials. Our exploratory analysis suggests that a variety of governance mechanisms - metrics routines, board independence, transparency, and formal representation of stakeholders - promote financial stability. In line with key tenets of contingency theory, the appropriate combination of these mechanisms varies according to organizational size. We therefore formulate two propositions regarding which relatively simple governance mechanisms are sufficient for small organizations, and which more complex ones are sufficient for larger ones.
This study examines women's leadership career pathways in nonprofit sport organizations. Drawing on a narrative approach and reflexive thematic analysis of 22 semi-structured interviews with Finnish women leaders, we identify four career types-Progressive Growth Career, Mission Enthusiast, Externally Catalyzed Career, and Chance-Driven Growth Career-and define their key patterns and distinctive features. The study extends the literature by offering a gender-sensitive analysis of women's leadership careers in nonprofit organizations. In contrast to earlier research, our findings show that women follow diverse career pathways and exercise agency across them. In doing so, the study refines nonprofit leadership typologies, highlights dual routes to legitimacy, and offers practical insights for recruitment, nomination, and development practices aimed at expanding women's leadership in sports nonprofits.
Hybrid organizations routinely confront tensions between competing institutional logics, yet we know little about why frontline employees facing similar tensions respond differently over time. Drawing on an inductive case study of Grameen Bank China, this study examines how frontline employees' adherence to social and commercial logics evolves and shapes their responses to institutional complexity. The analysis identifies four response trajectories: tight coupling, decoupling, recoupling, and failed recoupling, and theorizes the mechanisms generating them. Frontline employees typically begin with dual familiarity with competing logics, but this state proves unstable under sustained social-commercial tensions. Tight coupling emerges through experiential anchoring, whereby successful full-cycle enactment and witnessed outcomes stabilize identification with the social logic. In its absence, adherence erodes, often before visible decoupling occurs. This study further identifies grounded aura as a peer-based mechanism supporting recoupling, and a substitution effect through which commercial identification forecloses it. This study advances institutional complexity research by developing a dynamic process model of individual-level hybridity.
Nonprofits engage with many different types of potential supporters. Differentiated messaging tailored to distinct audience segments can help activate individuals' generosity in support of nonprofits' missions. Based on a large national survey operationalizing the Aspirational Communication Model, we employ latent profile analysis to derive an audience segmentation consisting of five groups: Values-Driven Skeptics, Change-Minded Hopefuls, Flexible Moderates, Frustrated Activists, and Status Seekers. We examine segment covariates and correlate segment membership with generosity behaviors to generate implications for nonprofit marketing and communications.
Nonprofits are commonly advised to minimize overhead, maintain fiscal leanness, diversify revenue streams, and avoid debt. The problem is that adhering to these financial management practices may not always result in positive outcomes; instead, it may lead to unforeseen consequences. Using a unique dataset that consists of 938 organizations from Minnesota, this study examines whether nonprofits adopting the four widely implemented financial management practices are associated with securing larger grant amounts and/or a greater number of government grants. Our analysis results indicate that maintaining fiscal leanness is associated with receiving a greater number of state government grants, and diversifying revenue streams can attract larger amounts of state government funding. However, efforts to minimize overhead and/or avoid debt do not consistently yield comparable funding advantages. Government responses to these financial management practices appear more complex than previously assumed. Our findings have important implications for nonprofit financial management and for government funding decisions.
Succession planning (SP) has been presented as an essential practice for nonprofit organizations (NPOs) to ensure a future supply of leaders, organizational stability, and mission continuity. Despite SP's anticipated benefits, many NPOs do not implement this practice, and few studies have examined why. This study aimed to provide a more detailed qualitative exploration of NPOs' reasons for implementing or not implementing SP. Twenty senior NPO managers were interviewed about their organization's current SP practices, reasons for adoption or non-adoption, and challenges experienced or anticipated with implementing SP or developing their current SP programs. The findings demonstrate the varied approaches NPOs take to implementing SP and clarify the barriers they perceive to SP. Most organizations recognized SP's importance but also identified barriers to its application in their organization. For NPOs that did not implement SP, many preferred other options for finding leaders or did not consider SP to be their highest priority. Ten inductively identified barriers emerged that explain why NPOs do not implement SP. In practice, this study's findings may aid consultants, human resource practitioners, leaders, benefactors, and policymakers in finding ways to overcome barriers to SP or in strategically reflecting on alternative approaches to leadership succession that match with the organizations' culture, resources, or priorities.
This study investigates how combinations of organizational capacities shape nongovernmental organization (NGO) managers' prioritization of staff and beneficiaries. While stakeholder theory identifies which stakeholders' interests attract attention, it offers limited guidance on how managers ultimately prioritize among stakeholders in decision-making. We reconceptualize capacity not as an aggregate construct but as distinct capacity profiles in which interdependent capabilities and resources jointly shape managerial discretion. A comparative analysis of NGO survey data, supplemented by expert interviews, reveals configurational pathways in stakeholder prioritization. Findings show multiple, equifinal pathways to prioritization with no single capacity being necessary or sufficient. Mission orientation is the most consistent enabling condition across configurations, operating as a compensatory mechanism in low-resource environments. Resource availability shapes who gets prioritized in divergent ways, with greater resources supporting beneficiary prioritization and, under constraint, a strong mission orientation alone enabling staff prioritization. In well-resourced contexts, multiple capacities and mission orientation do not always yield staff prioritization, indicating competing demands and a context-dependent relationship between capacities and managerial discretion. Theoretically, the study reframes stakeholder salience and representation as a dynamic managerial process conditioned by capacity profiles, shifting attention from outcomes to enabling conditions of choice and broad accountability. These findings contribute to managerialism debates by demonstrating its effects on prioritization are contingent rather than deterministic, depending on how capacities and resources interact. Practically, prioritization depends on aligning people, processes, and resources to fit context-specific configurations, rather than increasing capacity in aggregate. The study illustrates that stakeholder prioritization depends on how managers leverage their NGO's capacity profile.
Volunteers are vital to nonprofit organizations, yet persistent misalignments between managerial practices and volunteer expectations pose challenges to sustainable engagement. While prior research has examined volunteer motivation and organizational efficiency separately, few studies have compared how nonprofit managers and long-term volunteers interpret the volunteer experience across multiple domains. This study addresses this gap through an exploratory qualitative design, drawing on in-depth, semi-structured interviews with 12 managers and 26 long-term volunteers across three nonprofit organizations in T & uuml;rkiye. Using reflexive thematic analysis, 10 critical domains of misalignment were identified-onboarding, communication, task clarity, feedback, recognition, emotional support, learning opportunities, scheduling flexibility, voice in decision-making, and peer relationships. Findings reveal systemic disjunctions: while managers prioritize structure, standardization, and efficiency, volunteers seek meaningful participation, emotional reciprocity, and autonomy. These discrepancies are not merely operational but reflect deeper symbolic tensions between institutional rationality and civic relationism. Secondary data-including organizational policies, volunteer manuals, and public communications-further substantiate these misalignments. The study advances theoretical discussions by conceptualizing volunteer engagement as a co-constructed, relational process shaped by both formal systems and affective labor. It challenges dominant managerialist approaches and calls for a paradigm shift toward dialogical, flexible, and trust-centered engagement strategies. Practically, the study offers actionable insights for nonprofit leaders to improve volunteer satisfaction, retention, and relational infrastructure. It also provides a framework for future research to examine volunteer-organization dynamics as sites of negotiation, identity formation, and public value creation in an increasingly complex civic landscape.
Although previous studies tend to emphasize the role of influencers in donation campaigns, this study shifts attention to focus on influencees, namely donors who are highly receptive to the influence of others within local social networks. We integrated insights from social influence research with that of the COM-B model and examined the distribution of influencees in eight donor populations. In addition, we examined how donors' capabilities, opportunities, and motivations influence their propensity to be influencees. We found that across eight mutually exclusive donor networks, about 10% of donors can be classified as influencees and they, on average, donate two to 10 times more than other donors. Our analysis consistently demonstrated that donors with extensive connections and those associated with tightly interconnected clusters were more inclined to be influencees. Social influence was clearly present and played a large role for these influencees. Additionally, both the capability and motivation of donors played crucial roles in accurately pinpointing the most receptive individuals to social influence. Notably, disparities were observed among different racial groups. Overall, models that integrated all three sets of COM-B factors exhibited superior predictive performance.
BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, and People of Color) nonprofits have gained increased attention and funding; however, a lack of clear definition and identification persists. This ambiguity hinders our understanding of the BIPOC nonprofits population and racial disparities in nonprofit funding. Utilizing first-hand survey data from a sample of nonprofits in Minnesota, the study operationalizes six identification referents for BIPOC nonprofits. It presents a descriptive tabulation of BIPOC nonprofits across these referents and estimates revenue disparities between BIPOC and non-BIPOC nonprofits based on various definitions and identifications. The findings reveal a substantial shift in the BIPOC nonprofits population when different definitions are applied. Furthermore, racial inequities in nonprofit funding could be distorted depending on how BIPOC nonprofits are defined and identified. Specifically, revenue disparities between BIPOC and non-BIPOC nonprofits increase as more identification referents are used to define BIPOC nonprofits. The paper posits that the ambiguous definitions and identifications of BIPOC nonprofits may serve as mechanisms for racialized nonprofit organizations to legitimize the uneven distribution of resources along racial lines. It also advocates for data transparency and the implementation of more nuanced funding strategies to promote racial equity within the nonprofit sector.
Although there is extensive literature on (strategic) change content, nonprofit research on whether and how perceived aspects of strategic change communication impact change-related attitudes of nonprofit employees largely remains in the dark. This study addresses this gap by focusing on the predictors of strategic change commitment and behavioral support for strategic change. Drawing on survey data collected from 115 employees within a Belgian human service nonprofit that changed its goal framework in the wake of an organizational merger, we apply self-determination theory to hypothesize that a participative communication climate, interpersonal pressures, and perceived ability to contribute impact nonprofit employees' strategic change commitment. Change commitment, in turn, acts as a catalyst for employees' willingness to implement proposed changes (i.e., behavioral support for strategic change). Our findings show that (1) about 64% of the variance in employee commitment to strategic change is explained by our independent variables, with (2) participative communication being the most potent antecedent. Based on these results we suggest that proactive, yet comprehensive strategic change processes in a nonprofit setting are best approached as a collective effort where all relevant stakeholders ought to be involved.
This study examines how private foundations distribute grants and which organizational characteristics are associated with these patterns. While much of the existing literature focuses on grantee traits, this research shifts the focus to foundations themselves, analyzing how their internal features relate to grant distribution strategies. It introduces two key indicators of grantee accessibility: concentration of funding across recipients and persistence in funding the same grantees over time. Using IRS Form 990-PF e-file data from 2012 to 2016 for 18,310 grantmaking foundations annually, the analysis employs hybrid models to distinguish within-foundation change from between-foundation differences in grant distribution. The findings reveal systematic variation in concentration and persistence across foundations and over time. Professionalization is associated with different distribution patterns depending on the dimension examined, indicating that professionalized foundations adopt focused, diversified, or mixed grantmaking strategies. Larger foundations distribute funding across a broader range of recipients with varying degrees of continuity. Corporate foundations exhibit lower concentration and persistence relative to independent foundations. This study introduces an empirical framework for analyzing how foundations allocate resources across nonprofit recipients, contributing to research on philanthropic behavior and offering new insights into the strategic dynamics and societal implications of grant distribution.
In-kind (nonmonetary) donations are a popular form of philanthropy that have received much less scholarly attention than monetary gifts. This study documents the prevalence of types of in-kind giving and associated organizational practices, then explores links between the perceptions of nonprofit managers, organizational practices, and prevalence of in-kind gifts. Using phone survey data, we conduct a mixed-method cross-sectional analysis of 240 US nonprofit organizations. Findings indicate a wide variety of in-kind donations and ways in which they are solicited. Charity managers ascribe a variety of motivations to donors for giving in-kind, with more offering positive reasons (such as donors believing such donations are useful) than negative reasons (such as donor convenience). Using theoretical insights from contracting as a guide, we find that practices regarding in-kind donations stem from monetary and nonmonetary (such as time or usefulness) considerations, though with differing effects depending on whether there are perceived challenges or opportunities.
Under the roof of Christian churches in Central Europe, some nonprofit organizations (NPOs) grow, while others are in marked decline. Our study in this context extends a previous focus on financial indicators to NPO managers' experiences, their role clarity and job satisfaction, during phases of organizational growth and decline. Specifically, we investigate how differences in strategic orientation (i.e., structure and market orientation) and its implementation (i.e., strategy awareness, performance objectivity, and leadership presence) between mid and late-stage NPOs help explain the relationship between life stage and managers' job satisfaction and role clarity. We conducted 15 expert interviews and an online field survey with lower-, middle-, and upper-level managers (N = 818) in churches and church-affiliated welfare organizations in Central Europe. We found that managers in declining NPOs (i.e., churches) experience more structure orientation and less market orientation, as well as a weaker emphasis on strategy implementation, compared to managers in growing NPOs (i.e., welfare organizations). Moreover, we found that the weaker emphasis on implementation, but not the specific strategic orientation, was related to lower levels of role clarity and satisfaction. It thus seems (more) critical for NPOs in later life stages to effectively implement and communicate their strategy, rather than to fundamentally change their strategic orientation, to foster managerial role clarity and job satisfaction.
The 2023 Maui wildfires provide a unique context to explore the impact of nonprofit crisis networks taking a proactive role in community crisis response, leveraging resources, expertise, and networks. The Hawaiʻi Community Foundation (HCF) has been a key player in Maui's local response, providing critical support, mobilizing volunteers, and convening diverse stakeholders to coordinate support and mobilize collective action throughout the wildfire crisis. This study uses complex adaptive systems theory and draws on evidence from Maui and the nonprofit crisis network response as a case study to explore the importance of capacity building for crisis preparation and offers key lessons for research and practice on effective strategies for building robust capacities at the individual, organizational, and community levels. Findings underscore the importance of proactive planning in various capacities, collaboration among diverse stakeholders, and integration of indigenous knowledge systems to cultivate resilient communities.
Within under-resourced and low-income neighborhoods, many Black women lead nonprofits with an enhanced awareness of their communities' needs and extensive relationships with the local population. Although the lived experiences of Black women nonprofit leaders are increasingly acknowledged, less is known about how they apply effective strategies to overcome substantial barriers to accessing funding for community organizations in marginalized areas. This descriptive and phenomenological qualitative study is grounded in the resource dependence framework, which emphasizes dependence on funding as a potential risk to organizational survival and a source of contention regarding the uncertainty of funding sources in relation to sustainability. Focusing on the lived experiences of nine Black women nonprofit executives leading organizations in low socioeconomic communities, this study identifies four categories of multilayered and structural barriers, uncovered through an inductive approach: personal, social, organizational, and those related to the external environment. The study also identifies approaches that can be used to overcome these barriers within the terrain of fundraising and philanthropy. The implications of this study include informing public policy and grant makers about the drivers that impact nonprofits' sustainability and the importance of interventions, advocacy for funding, and capacity building to support Black-led nonprofits in historically marginalized communities. This research provides insights and suggestions to remedy inequities in philanthropy to enable a more inclusive and equitable nonprofit funding ecosystem.
