How Nonprofits Can Recover from Crisis Events? The Trust Recovery from the Perspective of Causal Attributions

Abstract

While trust is a valuable relational asset for nonprofits, it is fragile and once broken can cause a great deal of damage to the organization. Therefore, once it is lost after a crisis event, valid strategies are needed to rapidly repair the trust. Although trust repair mechanisms have been widely studied, little is known about the way trust changes over time and the methods needed to repair trust and even less is known about trust in nonprofit organizations. Therefore, two studies were conducted in this paper using the three causal attribution dimensions from attribution theory to reveal how trust in a nonprofit can be damaged and repaired. It was found that the attribution cause significantly influenced the trust repair process; that is, when the cause had a higher locus of causality, stability, and controllability attribution degrees, it was more difficult for donors to forgive the organization. While reducing the controllable attribution of individuals was not found to effectively repair trust, reducing the locus causality or stability had a more significant effect. It was also found that the three specific strategies of denial, diminishing crisis, and rebuilding played a critical role in trust repair for nonprofits influenced by the locus of causality. This study provides a useful framework for nonprofit practitioners seeking to effectively respond to crises and win back the trust of their current and potential donors.