Metropolitan Nonprofit Sectors: Findings from NCCS Data

Abstract

Data from the National Center for Charitable Statistics (NCCS) and other secondary sources was used to examine the nonprofit sectors of nine metropolitan regions. The results indicate that nonprofit sectors vary widely in terms of the numbers of organizations in them and the proportions of different types of providers. Moreover, the findings showed complex and intriguing relationships between nonprofit sectors and political culture, generosity, wealth, poverty, and heterogeneity. Traditionalistic sites had sectors with the opposite characteristics. The sectors in individualistic sites lay between these two patterns. Wealthier sites had larger, better-supported and secure sectors. Sites with higher poverty had less well supported sectors with smaller human service components. The most and least heterogeneous sites had the largest and smallest nonprofit sectors respectively. These findings bolster confidence in the use of NCCS data.