Nonprofit Human Service Research Articles

Identifying the Characteristics and Competencies Executive Directors Need to Lead Human Service Organizations in Today’s Operating Environment: What Boards Need to Know for Succession Planning

Executive directors, senior managers, and board chairs of organizations operating in the nonprofit human service sector have different expectations regarding the characteristics and competencies needed for future organizational leaders. We asked current organizational leaders to describe the characteristics and competencies needed for a future executive director. The responses suggest that future leaders will need different skills than those of current leaders, that the most likely candidate pool for successors is not there, and that boards of directors are unaware of these realities in their (lack of) succession planning.

Revising Financial Policies and Practices to Support the Nonprofit Human Services Sector

The nonprofit human services sector has long recognized the need to strengthen overall human services capacity and promote social and economic mobility for the people and communities they serve, especially for people of color. Yet many community‐based organizations (CBOs), which comprise a key component of the human services ecosystem and whose proximity to community is the closest, have themselves been caught in a cycle of poverty.

Are You Ready: Financial Management, Operating Reserves, and the Immediate Impact of COVID-19 on Nonprofits

Scholars and practitioners have argued that effective financial management, particularly the development of operating reserves, can help nonprofits survive economic shocks. The COVID-19 pandemic, which has had a significant impact on the nonprofit sector, provides an opportunity to test whether nonprofits have followed that recommendation, and if so, whether nonprofits with operating reserves were better prepared for the pandemic. Using data from an original survey of more than 600 nonprofit human service and arts organizations, administered when most states had stay-at-home restrictions, we show that most nonprofits experienced an immediate impact on their programs and financing. Yet, those nonprofits with more reserves were less likely to reduce operating hours, lose staff, or experience difficulty acquiring supplies or vendor services. Our study provides rare empirical data on the benefits of operating reserves for nonprofits. Our results also confirm that arts and culture nonprofits were more severely affected than human service nonprofits.

Predictors of Success and Failure in Cross-sectoral Partnerships in Nonprofit Human Services: Reflections and Challenges

Predictors of Success and Failure in Cross-sectoral Partnerships in Nonprofit Human Services: Reflections and Challenges

When Government is Late to Fulfill its End of the Bargain: The Relational Effects of Payment Delays on Nonprofit Organizations

Government payment delay is one of the major problems that nonprofits encounter when delivering government funded services. This study argues that government payment delays not only impose negative impacts on nonprofits’ operations but also damage underlying relationships between nonprofits and government. Employing data from a national survey of U.S. human service nonprofits, we examine the relational effects of payment delays on nonprofits. The study finds that nonprofits that experienced government payment delays perceived higher levels of distributive and procedural injustice and displayed lower levels of instrumental and motive-based trust. The findings offer implications for managing government-nonprofit contractual relationships.

Decomposing the Effect of Commercialization on Nonprofit Donations

Whether commercialization crowds out nonprofit donations has been a concern for nonprofit professionals and scholars. If the crowding-out effect exists, is it because of donors’ reactions to nonprofit commercialization or nonprofits’ decisions to reduce efforts in fundraising? Using data from the National Center for Charitable Statistics on human service nonprofit organizations in the USA, this study examines the relationship between commercial revenues and donations, breaking the relationship into smaller parts to understand its composition. The results show that commercial revenues crowd out donations in human service organizations. An increase in 1 dollar of commercial revenues leads to a decrease in .14 dollar of donations. Up to 16% of the crowding-out effect is attributable to nonprofit organizations’ reducing fundraising activities. The crowding-out effect is not merely due to donors’ reactions to nonprofit commercialization.

Job strain in nonprofit human service agencies: Job demands and job control's additive effects, and goal‐related feedback's mediating role

AbstractFew quantitative studies in the nonprofit literature have examined job demands' strain‐inducing impact. The classic demand‐control (DC) model predicts a positive main effect for job demands and a negative main effect for job control on job strain, respectively. However, four decades of DC model studies have uncovered modest support for this additive model. As a means of addressing both issues, the present study tested a recently introduced modified additive model using 621 employees from two different types of nonprofit human service agencies located in the city of New York. Two mediational analyses, structural equation modelling and bootstrapping, corroborated goal‐related feedback's intervening role on the control‐strain relationship. Findings not only replicate and extend prior research, but also make a unique contribution to the nonprofit literature. Implications for the stress management of nonprofit human service employees, as well as recommendations for the DC model literature are also discussed.

The Perils of Privatization: Bringing the Business Model into Human Services.

During the last three decades in both the United States and Europe, neoliberal policies, especially privatization, have restructured services in ways that dramatically affect the capacity of human services workers and agencies to serve all clients. Privatization means not only transforming public programs such as Social Security, but also managerialism-the incorporation of business principles, methods, and goals into public and nonprofit human services organizations. Few researchers have looked at the impact of market-based managerialism (focused on productivity, accountability, efficiency, and standardization) on social work's mission and the effectiveness of human services workers and organizations. Using an anonymous survey of 3,000 New York City human services workers, authors examined the impact of managerialist practices including performance measures, quantifiable short-term outcomes, and routinized practices on frontline workers and service provision. A troubling trend emerged. Workers in agencies with a high commitment to managerialism found it considerably more difficult to adhere to social work's mission and fundamental values. This conflict between the "logic of the market" and the "logic of social work" subsided dramatically in agencies with a low commitment to managerialism, indicating that even in today's competitive environment, agencies can protect the social work mission.

Measuring quality for human service improvement: How nonprofits meet the quality requirements of public authorities

AbstractThe growing pressure for service quality has led to an increase in the dissemination of quality models in nonprofit human service organizations. In spite of this, little is known about their implementation. The present study therefore examines how quality management directives imposed by public authorities affect the adoption and use of quality measurement systems under different sets of conditions. Key findings, based on survey data from 536 human service nonprofits in Switzerland, suggest that external quality requirements foster the adoption of measurement systems to the greatest degree, but simultaneously reduce their actual utilization for service improvement. The strength of these effects is contingent on the organizations' resources and the quality of indicators. Managers' commitment to quality measurement shows the strongest effect on the use of quality measurement systems. These findings and the implications for future research and practice will be discussed.

Terms of engagement: Facebook and Twitter use among nonprofit human service organizations

AbstractThis study uses Lovejoy and Saxton's (2012) hierarchy of engagement to analyze how nonprofit human service organizations use Facebook and Twitter to engage stakeholders. Their framework has not been applied to this nonprofit subgroup, and most previous scholarship on this topic focuses on just one platform. We also contribute by drawing on organizational theory to better understand variation in the modes of engagement organizations emphasize. Based on our analysis, we add new subcategories to the hierarchy of engagement. In addition, we find that compared to other nonprofit subgroups examined in previous research, the organizations in our sample placed a greater emphasis on using social media messages to ask stakeholders to take action. We report only modest variations in how organizations were using Facebook and Twitter. Finally, according to our results, resource dependence and stewardship theories help explain the modes of engagement organizations prioritize.

Interpersonal leader responses to secondary trauma in nonprofit human service organizations

ABSTRACTSecondary trauma is concerned with the intrapersonal affective responses an individual can experience during or subsequent to an interaction(s) with another person who recounts his or her personal stories of abuse, trauma, or disempowerment. Secondary trauma can engender a host of detrimental intrapersonal effects on nonprofit staff who express empathy toward clients experiencing primary trauma. I explore the interpersonal‐level responses to secondary trauma‐affected staff available to the leaders of nonprofit human service organizations. These secondary trauma‐sensitive leader behaviors, I theorize, will reduce the prevalence of secondary trauma in nonprofit organizations and generate follower engagement.

Technological and Organizational Innovations and Financial Performance: Evidence from Nonprofit Human Service Organizations

The aim of this research was to explore whether several types of innovations were related to relevant measures of nonprofit organizations’ financial performance. Data on innovations were collected via a survey of nonprofit human service organizations. Financial performance indicators were obtained from IRS 990 forms. The results showed that technological innovation was not a significant predictor of financial performance. Organizational innovation was a significant predictor of total assets, total revenues, and ER. Based on the results of this study, practice implications are discussed along with suggestions for future research.

New York state human services nonprofits unite to boost funding

Determined to not to be left out of the legislative equation while ensuring long‐term funding support for more than 1 million New Yorkers in need of life‐preserving services, more than 30 statewide nonprofit human services organizations have banded together to urge Gov. Andrew Cuomo and state lawmakers for needed, appropriate funding.

The Coerciveness of the Primary Key

The premise of a primary key is simple enough: every record or row in a table should have some number or string that can uniquely identify it. Primary keys are essential for linking data spread across database tables, and for looking up and retrieving data from specific records. Yet for an identifier that seems so straightforward and uncontroversial, we find myriad ways that this unassuming bit of infrastructure has an outsized influence in human services work. Through case studies of the organizational networks of two nonprofit human services organizations, we find that different stakeholders use variants of identifiers to support work practices that are far more complex and social than the linking of tables or the lookup of data. Yet we also find that the low-level technical properties of the primary key are often coercive, forcing end-users to work on the infrastructure's terms-influencing the nature and order of the work, creating new forms of work, and influencing the tenor of the relationships among stakeholders. The technical abstractions of the underlying infrastructure, then, start to become the de facto public policy. We conclude by offering design provocations for better supporting identification across a variety of contexts.

The Strategic Action Field of Sex Work and Sex Trafficking: A Case Study of a Contentious Field in Chicago

This paper looks at organizations working on issues of sex work/sex trafficking in Chicago as a strategic action field (SAF): a space where actors engage in collective action with a shared understanding of the field’s purposes, rules, and norms. Through analysis of SAFs, scholars focus on how actors intersect, manifesting in a context that simultaneously allows for reproducing the status quo, as well as producing social change. Using qualitative interviews with members of this particular SAF in Chicago, I demonstrate how actors in the field use the SAF concept of social skill to control the policy field. The challenger organization in particular uses social skill to exploit exogenous shocks to their advantage, pursuing legitimacy through their alignment with human service nonprofits. This paper concludes with a consideration of the use of SAF theory to dynamic fields such as sex work/sex trafficking, conceptualizing how field-level social change may occur.

Stay or Exit: Why Do Nonprofits Maintain Collaborations With Government?

Although the public-management literature has demonstrated a growing interest in public–nonprofit collaborations, it pays little attention to the sustainability of collaborations. This study proposes that nonprofits’ intentions to maintain collaborations with government are influenced by both instrumental and relational factors. Using a national sample of human service nonprofits, this study demonstrates that both nonprofits’ continuance commitment and affective commitment play a role in shaping their intentions to maintain collaborative relationships with government. Specifically, continuance commitment is driven by the presence of a formal agreement and the dependence on government funding, and affective commitment is shaped by distributive and procedural justice. The findings have implications for public managers to effectively manage their collaborations with nonprofits.

In the Pursuit of Practical Solutions and “Satisficing” Performance: The Case of Israel’s Nonprofit Human Services

Evaluating performance in nonprofit human services remains an ongoing empirical and conceptual challenge. Here, we introduce the concept of "satisficing" to capture the influence of intra- and inter- organizational factors on performance. We contend that the combination of organizational age and size, which shapes an organization’s complexity and dependency, will define the balance between social and economic criteria. Further, we contend that this definition will ultimately enable nonprofit human services to reach a satisficing level of management practices. More importantly, we contend that a practical compromise between social and economic performance determines whether satisficing performance is possible though practical solutions so that both effective attainment of the organizational mission and efficient management practices are possible with little risk of goal displacement.

Are You Out There? Internet Presence of Nonprofit Human Service Organizations

Using a sample of nonprofit human service organizations in South Central New York, this article analyzes the nature and extent of their Internet presence by examining their adoption of various Internet-based tools as well as their activity and visibility on the Internet. Nearly all organizations had websites but few provided interactive features, beyond the opportunity to donate. Many organizations also used at least one form of social media, although level of adoption, activity, and visibility varied. High capacity organizations and those with members had higher levels of Internet presence while those reliant on program service fees and government funding had lower levels. In addition, our results suggest distinct aspects of Internet presence are related and organizations can increase their visibility on the Internet by being more active.

NYS braces for new campaign to support investments in human services sector

Observing that rising costs for New York state's nonprofit human services employees have been unaddressed for more than a decade, the state's behavioral health provider community and mental health advocates are waging an all‐out attack to convince the state legislature and the governor to invest in across‐the‐board increases for the field.

Balancing organizational justice and leader–member exchange to engage workforce

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is, first, to examine the role of two key organizational determinants of work engagement among employees operating in human service organizations – organizational justice and leader–member exchange (LMX) – in nonprofit organizations – i.e. social cooperatives in Italy – and, second, whether any interaction effect exists between these two variables, more specifically if LMX plays a moderating role in the relationship between organizational justice perception and employees’ engagement.Design/methodology/approachThe analysis was developed through the administration of a questionnaire to 290 employees operating in ten nonprofit human service organizations in Italy.FindingsThe results support the hypothesis of a positive relation between both distributive and procedural justice and work engagement. In addition, the aforesaid relation was moreover found to be stronger among employees experiencing high levels of LMX than those reporting little LMX.Research limitations/implicationsDespite some limitations, the paper has both theoretical and managerial implications.Originality/valueThis paper contributes to the research on the important role of organizational justice in enhancing employees’ work engagement and the pivotal interacting role of the leader in boosting this relationship.