Nonprofit sustainability during times of uncertainty

Nonprofit organizations in the United States depend on a diverse set of funding streams to sustain their operations. This study examines the ability of nonprofits to leverage funds from the private sector during the current economic downturn within four areas receiving federal funding for community and economic development. Both survey research and individual interviews were used to examine how nonprofits within these areas are incorporating their board members and community leaders to continue services during a time of resource scarcity.     

Explaining Trust in Canadian Charities: The Influence of Public Perceptions of Accountability,Transparency, Familiarity and Institutional Trust

Public trust of nonprofits can augment social benefits of the nonprofit sector by enhancing engagement of the general population in the sector. This study analyzed cross sectional data collected from a random sample of Canadians (n?=?3853) to test the effects of respondents’ perceptions of financial accountability, transparency, and familiarity of charitable nonprofits, along with the effects of trust in key institutions on their general trust in charitable nonprofits. Results show that each factor (except for trust in government institutions) has a significant effect on the level of trust respondents had in charitable nonprofits. The study helps advance our understanding of what contributes to trust in charitable nonprofits among Canadians and offers suggestions on how nonprofits can garner greater trust with the population.

     

Nonprofit cash holdings and spending: The missing role of government funding

Charitable nonprofit organizations have long been under scrutiny with regard to how they manage excess funds, particularly cash holdings. Given previous empirical evidence, agency problems have been treated as an effective lens to explain the consequences of cash holdings among nonprofits. That is, nonprofit managers spend cash holdings for their own interests as opposed to the social interests of the organization. This study revisits the question of how charities manage extra cash and further examines the role of government funding in nonprofits' spending decisions. The results suggest that nonprofit managers make decisions on how to manage extra cash in accordance with the level of cash holdings; therefore, agency problems do not effectively explain how nonprofits manage extra cash. Furthermore, the results illustrate two contrasting roles of government funding in nonprofits' financial behavior: government funding may be used to monitor unscrupulous behaviors among managers, but it may also restrain nonprofits from investing in human capital.     

Engaging stakeholders through social networking: How nonprofit organizations are using Facebook

Since social networking sites, such as MySpace and Facebook, began allowing organizations to create profiles and become active members, organizations have started incorporating these strategies into their public relations programming. For-profit organizations have used these sites to help launch products and strengthen their existing brands; however, little is known about how nonprofit organizations are taking advantage of the social networking popularity. Through a content analysis of 275 nonprofit organization profiles on Facebook, this study examines how these new social networking sites are being used by the organizations to advance their organization's mission and programs. Solely having a profile will not in itself increase awareness or trigger an influx of participation. Instead careful planning and research will greatly benefit nonprofits as they attempt to develop social networking relationships with their stakeholders.     

Common Agency in Nonprofit Advocacy Organizations

Most theories of nonprofit organizations and nonprofit leadership recognize the multitude of stakeholders—including board members, donors and volunteers, funders, the media, and policy makers—that organizational leaders must contend with in doing their work. For nonprofits engaged in advocacy, demands from stakeholders may be even more challenging to meet. Although stakeholder theory recognizes the effect of various groups on an organization, it does not explain how leaders manage the preferences of their often‐competing stakeholders while they make choices for the organization. This study develops a common agency framework, evaluating the roles of three groups crucial to nonprofit advocacy organizations: the organization's board of directors, elected officials, and donors/members. The common agency framework is then illustrated with interviews with leaders of nonprofit advocacy organizations in California. Findings suggest that the leaders of these groups have a significant amount of discretion in guiding their organizations’ activities and operations.     

Hide and don’t seek: analyzing strategies for concealing organizations and their members

Although the contemporary landscape is filled with organizations promoting their identity to various audiences, we know very little about how a different set of collectives purposely conceal themselves (e.g., anonymous support groups, secret societies, covert military units, terrorist organizations). In this study, we qualitatively analyzed concealment strategies used by 12 hidden organizations as they attempt to hide themselves and their members to achieve various goals. We found both organizations and their members use a variety of communicative strategies to conceal themselves, which we label administrative, partial concealment, complete concealment, deception, moving target (organization only), and membership exit (individual member only). These findings have implications for hidden organizations and those who wish to reveal them; furthermore, they add to our understanding of the role of communication in concealing and revealing organizational identity.     

“Fractured Reflections” of High-Status Black Male Presentations of Self: Nonrecognition of Identity as a “Tacit” Form of Institutional Racism

ABSTRACT

This article examines the effects of “tacit” expectations about race, which are institutionalized in an Interaction Order that frames how we “see” high-status occupational identity. There is an essential moment in presenting Self before Other(s) when it is the turn of the Other(s) to recognize, respond to, and ratify that presentation. The Self is a social accomplishment that requires mutual cooperation from others. Failure to recognize and ratify competent presentations of self, reported frequently by black men, can strip those presentations of the social identity they claim and the dignity, power, and authority associated with that identity. We argue that these “tacit” expectations about identity follow black men wherever they go—no matter how successful they are. Using accounts drawn from interviews, we examine the persistent failure of Others to recognize and ratify high-status black male identities and the legitimate authority they carry.     

How the State Shaped the Nonprofit Sector: Public Funding in British Columbia

This article examines how the state has used its spending power to shape the nonprofit sector in British Columbia since the 1960s. The province's thriving nonprofit sector and its polarized political culture provide an ideal case study for exploring the relationship between the state and nongovernmental organizations. The following study documents changes in state policy, the trajectory of funding, funding patterns, and organizations that have received state funding. Although public funding for nonprofits in Canada has been pervasive for decades, there is little empirical evidence on the nature and scope of this funding. This article is based on an innovative new database that provides a comprehensive list of grants from the provincial government to nonprofit organizations between 1960 and 2014. Despite concerns regarding cuts to public funding in recent years, this study finds that there has been an overall increase in funding. However, there has also been a significant shift in funding from women's issues to Aboriginal peoples since the early 2000s.     

Which Nonprofit Gets More Government Funding?

Government represents one of the most important funding sources for nonprofit organizations. However, the literature has not yet provided a systematic understanding of nonprofits’ organizational factors that are associated with their receipts of government funding. This study combines interorganizational relationships and organizational institutionalism literature to examine the determinants of nonprofits’ obtainment of government funding. Based on a survey of human service nonprofits in Maryland, this research finds that nonprofits with higher bureaucratic orientation, stronger domain consensus with government, and longer government funding history are more likely to receive government contracts and grants. Nonprofits’ revenue diversification, professionalization, and board co‐optation might have very limited impacts.     

Who Determines How Nonprofits Confront Uncertainty?

This study examines the impact of managers, board members, beneficiaries, donors, and government entities on nonprofit strategic decisions. Using data collected from GuideStar, the National Center for Charitable Statistics, and surveys, we provide evidence that strategic decisions of nonprofits are shaped by the ability of the aforementioned stakeholders to diversify their interests. Our findings offer nonprofits another means by which they can understand and therefore manage their strategic decisions. In addition, our framework suggests future applications of stakeholder theory conceive of stakeholder salience as a bidirectional phenomenon.     

Dynamics between fragmentation and unity: Identity and nonprofit relationship management in the Asian American Community

Focusing on community-based nonprofits with specific missions of serving the Asian American community, this study examined the dynamics between various layers of identity, including ethnicity and panethnicity, and identified how intercultural relationship management contributed to a sense of community and empowerment among minority communities. Interviews from both nonprofit community organizations and community members revealed the following major findings. First, Asian American community nonprofits needed to manage a myriad of identities within their community, particularly the interplay between diverse ethnic identities and the pan-Asian ethnic identity. To help manage these identities, these nonprofits adopted a dual approach using both segmented outreach and coherent advocacy. Second, these community nonprofits used intercultural relationship management to build a sense of community and efficacy, promoting outcomes such as health awareness, communicative activeness, cultural shift, political engagement, and community alliances. This study contributes to relationship management literature through introducing identity-based relationship building strategies.     

Exploring the link between government funding and efficiency in nonprofit colleges

Previous literature has suggested that federal funding can hinder the efficiency of nonprofit organizations, but this has yet not been empirically tested. This study used a two‐stage data envelopment analysis (DEA) model to measure the efficiency of a set of private nonprofit teaching‐oriented colleges, then estimate the impact of federal and state funding on organizational efficiency. The findings indicate that, on average, increases in neither state nor federal funding effect efficiency of nonprofit colleges. Increasing state funding negatively impacted the efficiency of public colleges (N = 799). This study suggests that the challenges for nonprofits that accompany government funding may not rise to a quantifiable negative effect on efficiency.     

English as a medium of instruction and the discursive construction of elite identity

Debates over medium of instruction, as ideological skirmishes, showcase discursive identity construction, reproduction, and contestation by different social groups. Drawing on such debates in letters to the editor and internet‐based newsgroup posts written by Bangladeshi English‐medium (EM) and Bangla‐medium (BM) educated writers, this article examines the construction of elite identity by the EM educated group. It illustrates how this group drew on changing discourses of elitism, language ideologies, and other identity resources to construct self‐identity that emphasized the achievement of qualifications and attributes rather than unearned social privilege, and how the territorially bound elite identity was transformed into deterritorialized cosmopolitan identity in the process. The article contributes to our understanding of the relationship between language, identity, and society by illustrating struggles for identity and status maintenance in education that is increasingly being dominated by English and English as a medium of instruction under the influence of neoliberal globalization. It also suggests how English and national languages may relate to (post)colonialism, nationalism, national identity, and social class in a globalized world.     

Discourse marker ‘oh’ as a means for realizing the identity potential of constructed dialogue in interaction1

This research explores how discourse marker oh works with constructed dialogue (quoted speech), identifying a use of oh not discussed in previous research in which it can serve to signal speaker stance towards quoted material. While both discourse markers and constructed dialogue have been widely discussed as identity resources in the discourse analytic and interactional‐sociolinguistic tradition, there has been little work considering how these linguistic features may work together. In this paper, I address this gap by illustrating how Bakhtin's (1984) notions of uni‐directional and vari‐directional double voicing articulate with information display and evaluation functions of oh identified by Schiffrin (1987) , suggesting that oh (when occurring as a preface to constructed dialogue), works both to display and evaluate quoted material for the purposes of identity construction in interaction. Such uses of this discourse marker provide illustration of how footing works together with related concepts of evaluation, positioning, and alignment as part of a process of stancetaking in interaction ( Du Bois 2007 ). Examples are taken from ethnographic interviews collected as part of a larger study of the linguistic style of a community of improv performers in Washington, D.C. focusing primarily on examples contributed by one speaker, Josh.     

Identity processes in the global era: the case of young immigrants living in Italy

The paper explores processes of identity construction in young people of foreign origin living in Italy. The aim was to understand how youth construct their selves in the global era, characterized by an increase in the possibility of choosing but also in the perception of uncertainty; how they perceive this uncertainty, whether as a chance to construct multifaceted and continually changing identities or as a source of insecurity and loss for their identity. Drawing on 46 in-depth interviews, the research reveals that young people of foreign origin are continually shaping their identities mixing different cultural repertories related to their – or their parents’ – homeland, to the host country, global cultures and youth cultures. Several patterns of identity emerge and they are linked to different perception of uncertainty. A typology of these patterns was developed: young people construct flexible identities or hyphenated identities, or move from a fixed identity to an undefined identity. These types of identity are respectively associated with the perception of uncertainty as a resource, as a constraint, finally with a strategy of reducing or eliminating uncertainty.     

Latino Faces,Corporate Ties: Latino Advocacy Organizations and Their Board Membership

Although they have increased exponentially since the 1960s, social scientists know little about ethnic advocacy organizations. These nonprofits are important bridges between underresourced communities and mainstream funding organizations and their directors are established ethnic leaders. Sociologists study interlocking directorates—or shared board membership—to understand how organizations fit together within broader social networks. Network concepts, particularly the theory of institutional isomorphism, suggest that organizations are likely to be similar to the extent they are connected and operate within a common organizational field. We apply this logic to Latino advocacy organizations to examine the underlying source of cohesion across this ethnic field. We ask whether the organizations are tied by interlocking directorates of ethnic elites who sit on their boards of directors or if board members' common affiliation with other elite institutions creates the structural conditions that facilitate potential ideological or behavioral similarity. A social network analysis of five prominent Latino advocacy organizations reveals support for both hypotheses: Latino board members are both embedded in ethnic‐based networks and entrenched within elite organizational webs. This suggests that ethnic elites who sit on the boards of Latino advocacy organizations are also corporate elites, selected for the social capital they bring to these nonprofits.     

An interview with bill scales

The mission of a mutual benefit association is so inexorably intertwined with its membership that a change in one cannot succeed without a corresponding change in the other. Two case studies of United Ways' state associations' “remissioning” initiatives give details on the dynamic interplay of mission and membership in mutual benefit associations, a fundamental characteristic that distinguishes them from public benefit nonprofits. To anticipate change, association managers must focus on the shifting demands from their members' stakeholders. They also must clearly understand the nature of their membership and who represent their members when members are organizations, and they must be ready to engage in intra-association politics to effect a change in mission.     

OWING THE SEED: THE DISCURSIVE ECONOMY OF SEX MIGRATION AMONG TURKISH-SPEAKING MINORITY URBANITES IN THE POSTSOCIALIST BALKAN PERIPHERY

This article explores postsocialist change in a non-postsocialist context. It is concerned with discourses on sex and cultural change as articulated by members of the Turkish minority group living in the northern Greek town of Komotini, in an area of northern Greece where, after the collapse of the Soviet Union, immigration from eastern Europe has risen noticeably. The impact of this migration is explored with reference to çapk?nl?k and k?l?b?kl?k, two concepts guiding notions of masculine failure. By analyzing the relations of these to other concepts used to articulate social change (e.g., ‘tradition’ and ‘modernity’), the article exemplifies how the effects of political change on the global level can be subsumed under localized power structures. The article argues that the inconsistencies between informants' physical encounters with eastern European immigrants and their discourses on ‘Russian women’ show that it is their marginal location within local Greek society that is central to their identity conceptualizations. This, in turn, leads to the argument that such discourses can shed considerable light on our understanding of internal and external relations with reference to particular politicized groups, primarily because they offer an understanding of power relations, that foregrounds not one domain of difference over another, but the interplay of gender, ethnic, and economic differentiations.     

Resource Constraints or Cultural Conformity? Nonprofit Relationships with Businesses

Nonprofit interactions with businesses have become increasingly diverse, but which nonprofits establish relationships, and to what extent do relationships depend on the form or type of tie? Focusing on nonprofit collaboration with businesses and donations from businesses, we test arguments based on sociological institutionalism and resource dependence theory. We find that nonprofits relying on earned income, nonprofits led by individuals with management degrees, and rationalized nonprofits all are more likely to report collaborations with businesses, aligning with expectations from institutional theory. For donative ties between businesses and nonprofits, we find that rationalized nonprofits are more likely to have charitable gifts from businesses. However, nonprofits with earned income are less likely to have business donations, and funding diversity has a salient positive effect. These results reveal important but paradoxical institutional and resource dependence effects. We conclude with a discussion of our divergent findings and set an agenda for additional research on the topic.     

Figured Worlds in the Field of Power

This article seeks to deepen our understanding of how structural relations of power should be understood in local accounts of activity and identity. Thus, we critically review the synthesis of Bourdieu and activity theory in Figured Worlds, analyzing two critiques of Bourdieu: his insufficient localism and his overemphasis on embodiment of habitus. We are left with Bourdieu’s overwhelming concern to explain how the field of power is locally refracted and critique its doxa in a field of opinion, while arguably doing so at the expense of imagination, self-authoring, and world making. We conclude with our own suggestions of a synthesis.