Public Sponsorship and the Adoption of New Practices in the Homeless Shelter Industry

Abstract

Homelessness is one of the most persistent social problems facing contemporary society. For decades, the federal government has been a key source of support for the nonprofit organizations that provide shelter and other services to the homeless. However, in the 21st century, dramatic increases in public funding have corresponded to the rapid diffusion of a new practice, the Permanent Supportive Housing shelter model, across this organizational population. We build on the nascent theory of public sponsorship to ask how sponsorship relates to the adoption of new practices. Taking into account sponsoring entity goals and incentives, we hypothesize that sponsorship increases sponsor- preferred practice adoption. Furthermore, we explore the environmental contingencies inherent in this relationship, predicting that local nonprofit density and network closure increase this relationship, while social problem size attenuates it. Using multilevel modeling, we test our hypotheses on a rich dataset of all homeless sh...