Nonprofit Human Service Research Articles

Rethinking Change: Complexity Theory and Its Application to Human Service Nonprofits

The following article introduces complexity theory as an alternative for conceptualizing the dynamics of change in nonprofit health and human service organizations. We begin by reviewing theories most frequently used to frame change in nonprofits, identifying knowledge gaps that limit their explanatory capacity. The authors then introduce complexity theory as a lens for studying change as ongoing adaptation in dynamic systems; it emerges from the resolution of dualities and can appear unpredictable and nonlinear. Given the criticality of these organizations to public services, we consider new ways of analyzing nonprofit adaptation, and how understanding could lead to enhancing the sector’s capacity to respond to crises.

Employee Compensation of Nonprofit Child Welfare Agencies in New York: Crises and Strategies

ABSTRACTWhile existing literature documents the low compensation of nonprofit human services workers, it is not well understood how managers of these organizations perceive and respond to the problem. Adopting resource dependency and competing institutional logics perspectives, we chose the New York nonprofit child welfare sector—a heavily government‐funded field—as a collective case to study these issues. Based on interviews with 17 leaders of the primary NY nonprofit child welfare agencies, we found that these agencies' employee compensation was primarily constrained by government contracts, and they were torn by conflicting institutional logics from the state, the labor market, private funders, and unions. Overall, government contracts and market competition determined worker pay, and nonprofit child welfare agencies faced labor competition not only from peer organizations, but also from the government and for‐profit sectors. With the “great resignation” atmosphere and increased cost of living intensified by the COVID‐19 pandemic, agencies were under tremendous pressure to raise worker pay. However, programs chronically underfunded by the government were incapable of providing competitive wages and were experiencing high staff turnover and vacancies. Agency leaders agreed on the need to push the government to pay programs adequately but disagreed about advocacy goals and messaging. Most leaders had reservations about aggressive collective bargaining measures such as “going on strike.” These common but attenuated labor dynamics, related managerial responses, and implications for the future of the sector are discussed, particularly in response to competing institutional pressures.

Leaders of Color and Diversity Management Practices: A Study of Human Service Nonprofits in Georgia

Leaders of Color and Diversity Management Practices: A Study of Human Service Nonprofits in Georgia

Does Revenue Diversification Really Improve Mission Performance? Evidence from a Sample of Human Service Nonprofits

While our understanding of the relationships between revenue diversification and nonprofit financial health has deepened over the past three decades, little is known about the association between revenue diversification and nonprofit mission performance. Moreover, there is an ongoing debate as to whether revenue diversification hinders or improves nonprofit performance. Some expect performance improvement from diversification strategies, while others contend that concentration strategies drive performance. This study aims to fill this research gap by investigating the effect of revenue diversification on nonprofit managers’ perceived mission performance. Using data from a sample of Taiwan’s human service nonprofits collected in 2020, we estimate relationships with regressions, employing a more detailed measure of organizational performance and various revenue diversification measurements. The results suggest that revenue diversification is positively associated with nonprofit managers’ perceived mission performance. This study further discusses theoretical contributions to the literature and practical implications for human service nonprofit organizations.

Nonprofit Management’s Perceptions of Unions in Government-Funded Child Welfare Agencies: Can They Help Raise Wages in This Triangular Relationship?

ABSTRACT This study explores the potential of unions as a solution for addressing chronic low compensation in government-funded nonprofit human services organizations. We used the primary child welfare agencies in New York as a collective case to study nonprofit management’s views on the role labor unions can play in addressing these issues. Our in-depth interviews with 15 nonprofit leaders reveal several findings: 1) Existing unions were relatively weak and had achieved limited gains for workers, which in turn demotivated workers to unionize; and 2) Most leaders doubted that unions can help in this matter because government, as opposed to nonprofits, controls prices. Some leaders, however, expressed a belief that a larger-scale worker unionization could provide nonprofit management with more leverage to ensure the government pays adequate contracts. We also discuss the theoretical and practical implications of the role unions can play in helping improve worker compensation in nonprofit-union-government funder triangular relationships.

Governance Structures and Processes in Interorganizational Collaboratives: The Critical Role of Power and Equity

ABSTRACT Interorganizational collaboratives among human service nonprofit organizations are potential hubs for innovation and progress. The purpose of this study was to explore the role of governance in an interorganizational collaborative, the “Sport for Good Cities” initiative, which was intentionally designed to achieve collective impact. Drawing on interviews with 30 stakeholders, the findings provide important theoretical and practical insights for governance in interorganizational collaboratives in terms of the central role and challenges related to power and decision-making, backbone support, and equity and engagement. For example, the findings highlight the need to decide how collaboratives will be governed during the formative stages of interorganizational endeavors, along with governance structures and processes that deconstruct systemic and structural inequities.

How High Is Too High? An Experimental Analysis of Donors’ Aversion to Nonprofit Overhead

Despite the abundance of literature related to nonprofit overhead, the following questions remain unclear: (a) How high is too high for individual donors when considering an organization’s overhead? (b) Is there a difference between nonprofit subsectors in individual donors’ aversion to nonprofit overhead? Moreover, (c) Does trust play a role in individual donors’ overhead aversion? This study used a survey experiment and randomly assigned participants to one of four overhead ratio conditions (5%, 20%, 35%, and 50%). We find that individuals’ donations to human service nonprofits substantially decrease when the overhead reaches 35%. In contrast, their donations to health care nonprofits do not decrease until the ratio reaches 50%. In addition, we find that donors lose trust in nonprofits when overhead costs are higher, leading to decreased donations. The findings contribute to the theoretical understanding of donors’ giving behavior, offering practical implications for promoting sustainable giving.

A Typology of Social Media Use by Human Service Nonprofits: Mixed Methods Study.

Nonprofit organizations are increasingly using social media to improve their communication strategies with the broader population. However, within the domain of human service nonprofits, there is hesitancy to fully use social media tools, and there is limited scope among organizational personnel in applying their potential beyond self-promotion and service advertisement. There is a pressing need for greater conceptual clarity to support education and training on the varied reasons for using social media to increase organizational outcomes. This study leverages the potential of Twitter (subsequently rebranded as X [X Corp]) to examine the online communication content within a sample (n=133) of nonprofit sexual assault (SA) centers in Canada. To achieve this, we developed a typology using a qualitative and supervised machine learning model for the automatic classification of tweets posted by these centers. Using a mixed methods approach that combines machine learning and qualitative analysis, we manually coded 10,809 tweets from 133 SA centers in Canada, spanning the period from March 2009 to March 2023. These manually labeled tweets were used as the training data set for the supervised machine learning process, which allowed us to classify 286,551 organizational tweets. The classification model based on supervised machine learning yielded satisfactory results, prompting the use of unsupervised machine learning to classify the topics within each thematic category and identify latent topics. The qualitative thematic analysis, in combination with topic modeling, provided a contextual understanding of each theme. Sentiment analysis was conducted to reveal the emotions conveyed in the tweets. We conducted validation of the model with 2 independent data sets. Manual annotation of 10,809 tweets identified seven thematic categories: (1) community engagement, (2) organization administration, (3) public awareness, (4) political advocacy, (5) support for others, (6) partnerships, and (7) appreciation. Organization administration was the most frequent segment, and political advocacy and partnerships were the smallest segments. The supervised machine learning model achieved an accuracy of 63.4% in classifying tweets. The sentiment analysis revealed a prevalence of neutral sentiment across all categories. The emotion analysis indicated that fear was predominant, whereas joy was associated with the partnership and appreciation tweets. Topic modeling identified distinct themes within each category, providing valuable insights into the prevalent discussions surrounding SA and related issues. This research contributes an original theoretical model that sheds light on how human service nonprofits use social media to achieve their online organizational communication objectives across 7 thematic categories. The study advances our comprehension of social media use by nonprofits, presenting a comprehensive typology that captures the diverse communication objectives and contents of these organizations, which provide content to expand training and education for nonprofit leaders to connect and engage with the public, policy experts, other organizations, and potential service users.

Nonprofit Human Resources: Crisis Impacts and Mitigation Strategies

This study empirically evaluates the relationships between the state and human service nonprofits’ human resources during a crisis. We employ qualitative content analysis to critically assess the experiences of 31 nonprofits that experienced the 2015 to 2017 Illinois Budget Impasse. We evaluated the nonprofits’ strategic human resource management implications through a resource dependency lens at three levels: micro-, meso-, and macro-. Human service nonprofits pull from a toolbox of strategies in surprising ways. Strategy choices were intrinsically linked to the impacts experienced by the individual workers (micro-) and organization (meso-). Micro-level impacts included additional emotional labor and reduced benefits, while meso-level impacts included loss of capacity and short-term planning changes. Finally, the sector-level impacts included a multipronged brain drain of the nonprofit human resource industry. The findings are helpful for nonprofit employees, managers, policy-makers, and anyone concerned about the delivery of social services by nonprofits during crises.

How Digital Platforms Promote Roles of Nonprofit Human Service Organizations During the COVID-19 in China

ABSTRACT The COVID-19 pandemic compelled nonprofit human service organizations (NPHS) to rapidly adapt to heightened service demands while prioritizing the well-being of their staff and volunteers. Although digital platforms hold promise in facilitating NPHS adaptation, little is known about their impact during the crisis. How and through what pathways do digital platforms help NPHS adapt their service roles in times of crisis? Did digital platforms with different types of sponsorship vary in the way they affect NPHS’s roles? Our study, based on 94 interviews in China, reveals that digital platforms assisted NPHS through three pathways: reducing transaction costs in stakeholder engagement, mitigating information asymmetry in targeting service recipients, and promoting shared responsibility for volunteer participation. Different sponsorship types influenced these pathways: government-sponsored platforms enhanced legitimacy, business-sponsored platforms leveraged private resources, and nonprofit-sponsored platforms bolstered citizen trust. This research informs scholars and practitioners on understanding how NPHS remained agile and innovative while facing extraordinary external challenges.

The Three P’s in Nonprofit Human Service Mergers: Strategic Response to Coping with a Crisis

ABSTRACT COVID-19 has heralded a health and socioeconomic crisis that has made it difficult for nonprofit human service organizations (NPHSOs) to play their social roles and achieve their goals. This article examines how the merger of NPHSOs can serve as a strategy for coping with an organizational crisis caused by external extreme events such as the COVID-19 pandemic. The study focused on eight mergers of Israeli NPHSOs. Using in-depth interviews and a survey methodology of senior managers and board members who have participated in the merger process, we explore the motives, challenges, and key processes characterizing these mergers. The findings are organized around three stages in the merging process – the Three P’s in human service mergers: Pre-merger, when the motives and barriers were examined; Process, where decision-making mechanisms, issues of belonging and identity, and coping with conflicts and trust-building were examined; and Post-merger, where attitudes toward the outcomes of the merger and its success in various organizational areas were assessed. The findings also point to a lack of proper preparation and orientation for the merger, ego struggles between managers and workers, and the need for socializing the employees to the merger. We conclude by discussing the importance of planning for and attending to the human capital in the merged NPHSOs, the need to build a shared sense of belonging, and the value of shaping a new and shared organizational culture. Implications to theory, practice, and policy are discussed.

Are we on the same page? Individual interpretations of missions within human service nonprofits

AbstractWithout unique missions to serve a public purpose, nonprofits have no justification to exist. Much of the focus on mission in scholarship centers on concerns with mission drift and pressures from external actors. Yet internal dynamics may be just as important in developing a common mission and the coherent activities pursuing it. This research identifies the structural forces shaping organizational members' individual mission conceptions and leading them to emulate and converge around a shared dominant conception. We apply the concept of institutional isomorphism to 104 interviews conducted with staff, managers, board members, and volunteers from 14 human services nonprofits and explain the isomorphic pathways of individuals adopting dominant mission conceptions. Employing qualitative comparative analysis, we analyze the interviews capturing various combinations of individual backgrounds, motivations for joining the organization, and language used to share the mission with others. We find the presence of seven isomorphic pathways leading nonprofit professionals to adopt the dominant interpretations.

Black Women in Leadership Positions in Rural Nonprofit Organizations: Shifting Toward Intentional Intergenerational Leadership and Mentorship Model Centered on Black Women’s Collective Identity

ABSTRACT Black women overcome various social and structural obstacles while advancing to leadership positions. The purpose of this study is to understand the lived experiences of Black women leaders as they rose to the leadership position. We used the grounded theory method to analyze the lived experiences of n = 12 Black women leaders working in nonprofit organizations, from a broader sampled study from 2017–2018, using semi-structured interviews, in rural East Texas. Based on our analyses, Black women's leadership trajectory centered around intergenerational leadership development, leadership values, and other’s perception of Black woman in leadership. The themes generated show that Black women have remarkable resilience in a service-driven leadership ideology grounded in faith, family, community support, and the collective identity of being a Black woman. Generating intentional leadership pathways for strong and compassionate next-generation of Black women leaders and mentors is essential for development and sustainability of nonprofit human service organizations.

Bridging and Bonding Social Capital by Analyzing the Demographics, User Activities, and Social Network Dynamics of Sexual Assault Centers on Twitter: Mixed Methods Study.

Social media platforms have gained popularity as communication tools for organizations to engage with clients and the public, disseminate information, and raise awareness about social issues. From a social capital perspective, relationship building is seen as an investment, involving a complex interplay of tangible and intangible resources. Social media-based social capital signifies the diverse social networks that organizations can foster through their engagement on social media platforms. Literature underscores the great significance of further investigation into the scope and nature of social media use, particularly within sectors dedicated to service delivery, such as sexual assault organizations. This study aims to fill a research gap by investigating the use of Twitter by sexual assault support agencies in Canada. It seeks to understand the demographics, user activities, and social network structure within these organizations on Twitter, focusing on building social capital. The research questions explore the demographic profile, geographic distribution, and Twitter activity of these organizations as well as the social network dynamics of bridging and bonding social capital. This study used purposive sampling to investigate sexual assault centers in Canada with active Twitter accounts, resulting in the identification of 124 centers. The Twitter handles were collected, yielding 113 unique handles, and their corresponding Twitter IDs were obtained and validated. A total of 294,350 tweets were collected from these centers, covering >93.54% of their Twitter activity. Preprocessing was conducted to prepare the data, and descriptive analysis was used to determine the center demographics and age. Furthermore, geolocation mapping was performed to visualize the center locations. Social network analysis was used to explore the intricate relationships within the network of sexual assault center Twitter accounts, using various metrics to assess the network structure and connectivity dynamics. The results highlight the substantial presence of sexual assault organizations on Twitter, particularly in provinces such as Ontario, British Columbia, and Quebec, underscoring the importance of tailored engagement strategies considering regional disparities. The analysis of Twitter account creation years shows a peak in 2012, followed by a decline in new account creations in subsequent years. The monthly tweet activity shows November as the most active month, whereas July had the lowest activity. The study also reveals variations in Twitter activity, account creation patterns, and social network dynamics, identifying influential social queens and marginalized entities within the network. This study presents a comprehensive landscape of the demographics and activities of sexual assault centers in Canada on Twitter. This study suggests that future research should explore the long-term consequences of social media use and examine stakeholder perceptions, providing valuable insights to improve communication practices within the nonprofit human services sector and further the missions of these organizations.

Exploring the Implementation of Socially Entrepreneurial Approaches in Pre-Existing Nonprofit Human Service Organizations

The following research aims to identify salient implementation strategies utilised by traditional nonprofits to imbed socially entrepreneurial activities, while providing insight into related challenges and barriers. An exploratory qualitative approach was adopted to generate emergent themes using interview data from a sample of executive directors (n = 31), while a content analysis provided findings on data coverage across main themes and sub-themes. Findings identify activities related to proactivity, social innovation, risk-taking, and market engagement. Market engagement had the highest data coverage, while the remaining main themes were more evenly distributed. A discussion provides further interpretation and application of findings.

The Role of Smaller Nonprofit Human Service organizations During the COVID-19 Pandemic: Evidence from England and Wales

ABSTRACT Through four qualitative case studies, we explore how smaller nonprofit human service organizations (SNHSOs) in England and Wales responded to the COVID-19 pandemic and consider the implications for state-nonprofit relations. SNHSOs pandemic response was immediate, dynamic, flexible, and adaptive in response to urgent needs. They supported communities most severely affected by the pandemic due to factors such as health, economic status, geography race, and ethnicity. Whereas several theories of state-nonprofit relations position the relationship as relatively settled at an organizational level, we argue for greater attention to how these relationships can be fluid, dynamic, and subject to change over time.

Promoting Staff Financial Well-Being in Human Service Organizations: The Role of Pay, Benefits, and Working Conditions

ABSTRACT Many U.S. workers struggle with financial challenges. Human service organizations (HSOs) can consider ways to better promote financial well-being among staff, especially lower-wage, frontline workers. In addition to raising pay, HSOs can improve benefits and working conditions in ways that will meaningfully affect staff's financial well-being, such as offering wage-tiered health insurance premiums, financial counseling, access to public benefits, and giving staff more control over their schedules. Doing so will help HSOs strengthen their commitments to social and economic justice, yet financial challenges among nonprofit HSOs – especially those that are minority-led and/or -serving – require changes in public policies.

The Essential Role of Human Service Nonprofits in Restorative Justice Policy Implementation

Abstract Evidence demonstrating the essential role of human service nonprofits in restoring justice to communities has led to an increased need in understanding how these nonprofits view their service delivery role in relation to the state in a restorative justice context. Despite the increase in funding dedicated to restorative justice programs and increased collaborations between states and nonprofits, few studies have explored perceptions of collaborative restorative justice roles in state-led initiatives. This exploratory qualitative study uses semi-structured interviews to understand how leaders in these programs view their organization’s roles in restorative justice implementation. The analysis evaluates the variations in perceptions among nonprofits leaders as well as the differences in perceptions between nonprofit versus public managers/policy makers. Results indicate that nonprofit leaders and public managers/policy makers view nonprofits as pivotal to restorative justice policy implementation given their capacity to engage in grassroots problem-solving and develop strengths-based programs.

Precarious Professionals: The Impact of Neoliberalism on the Workforce of the Nonprofit Human Service Sector

Abstract Forty years of neoliberal policies and protocols, such as privatization, austerity measures, and managerialism, has pushed the U.S. human service sector to the brink of collapse. This commentary delineates the impact of neoliberalism on nonprofit human service agencies. Specific attention is paid to the untenable working conditions of professional frontline staff, who are tasked with providing much needed programs and services to often vulnerable populations. Worker strategies for coping with and fighting against neoliberalism, both individual and collective, are delineated. This piece concludes with some suggestions for more systemic responses to ameliorate and challenge neoliberalism’s impact on the human service sector workforce, although additional strategies are also needed.

Staying Connected While Staying Distant: Social Media Engagement of Food Banks in Texas in the Wake of the COVID-19 Pandemic

ABSTRACT This study explores the social media engagement of human service nonprofits during the early phase of the COVID-19 pandemic. We analyzed 2,726 tweets from 15 food banks in Texas to understand their communication and audience engagement on social media. During the early outbreak, food banks were more active on social media, and these organizations primarily shared community-building and informational content. Before the pandemic, community-building content led to the highest engagement level. However, action and informational content saw greater engagement during the crisis. Our findings reveal that online audiences perceive the importance of each content type differently in varying circumstances. By understanding preferences and needs of online audiences, human service nonprofits can harness the power of social media to amplify their impact while operating during times of crisis.