Nonprofit Work Research Articles

The Dissonance of “Doing Good”: Fostering Critical Pedagogy to Challenge the Selective Tradition of Nonprofit Management Education

Nonprofit management classrooms are filled with students who yearn to “do good” in the world and yet, in practice, they confront a dissonance between their vision of doing good and the realities of nonprofit work. This dissonance is in part created by contemporary nonprofit management education (NME) through the development and perpetuation of a selective historical tradition of the nonprofit sector which mythologizes the sector and its work. These traditions and myths of the nonprofit sector are based squarely in white American and Eurocentric values and downplay the histories of people of color and thus perpetuate whiteness as central to nonprofit norms and practice. We present a critical reading of these histories in an effort to help educators and students reclaim and reimagine the histories of the nonprofit sector and offer tenets of a critical pedagogy that emphasizes historical consciousness and a praxis of emancipation so that nonprofit educators and students can re-envision nonprofit theory and practice in the future.

Exploring the gendered dimensions of meaningful non-profit work under marketised conditions

Neoliberal marketisation is altering the nature of non-profit work, leaving workers to navigate a ‘double bind’ of mission- and market-based values. Some feminist scholars suggest these dynamics are particularly challenging for female workers. Drawing on a larger study of meaningful non-profit work and neoliberal marketisation as well as on contemporary critical and feminist scholarship, this exploratory study examines how neoliberalism’s entrepreneurial subject manifests along gender lines among non-profit managers. Data from interviews with 28 non-profit managers demonstrate that while both men and women evoke elements of neoliberalism’s entrepreneurial subject, female managers wrestle more with conflicting discourses of market and mission values and rhetoric as well as sociocultural expectations around gender, resulting in a ‘triple bind’. This article suggests that neoliberal market discourses are impactful in the manner suggested by feminist scholarship but not necessarily totalising nor deterministic.

California Joins Six States in Setting Standards for MH/SUD Appointment Wait Times

California Joins Six States in Setting Standards for MH/SUD Appointment Wait Times

The Hybridization of Meaningful Nonprofit Work: An Exploratory Study of the Effects of Marketization on Nonprofit Managers’ Sense of Meaningfulness in Work

Nonprofit work is oftentimes viewed as inherently meaningful work, but the world of nonprofit work is changing by becoming increasingly marketized. These changes are impacting nonprofit workers’ conception and experience of meaningful work. Drawing from scholarship on neoliberal marketization, enterprise culture, and meaningful nonprofit work, this exploratory study examines how an increasingly marketized work environment is influencing nonprofit managers’ experience of meaningful work. Findings from interviews demonstrate that nonprofit managers conceive of and experience meaningful work in expected ways (e.g., through serving others). At the same time, findings indicate that their experience of meaningful work evokes elements of enterprise culture. These findings suggest that meaningful nonprofit work is becoming hybridized such that it evokes both prosocial and neoliberal market values. This in turn necessitates a reconsideration of the motivations of nonprofit workers as well as our understanding of the mechanisms by which the nonprofit sector is becoming marketized.

The Great Interstate Divergence: Partisan Bureaucracies in the Contemporary United States

Among American states, differences in welfare programs and civil rights protections are growing. Conventional explanations point to conservative organizations that score flashy legislative victories. We draw on case studies of Medicaid and election administration in Rhode Island and Kansas to show that much policy divergence is due to a banal and ideologically symmetric process of partisan administration. Most federal policies rely on state governments for implementation. In the cases studied here, agency workers turned to interstate networks of experts, advocates, and nonprofit workers that provide competing models of policy implementation that mirror party priorities: backdoor expansion of social services and voter registration in Rhode Island and introduction of market principles into Medicaid and restrictive registration practices in Kansas. Partisan administration makes state implementation of federal policy a key field of political struggle, on which administrators working beyond public view advance partisan priorities that often cannot be realized by other means.

Beyond 'Psychic Income': An Exploration of Policy Interventions to Address Work-Life Imbalances, Burnout, and Precarity in Contemporary Nonprofit Work

Beyond 'Psychic Income': An Exploration of Policy Interventions to Address Work-Life Imbalances, Burnout, and Precarity in Contemporary Nonprofit Work

Homelessness in Southern California: Street-Level Encounters with the State and the Structural Violence of Performative Productivity

For the unhoused, the criminalization of their existence amplifies their entanglement with the state. Drawing on interviews and over 200 hours of ethnographic observations in Southern California, US, this paper focuses on everyday interactions between street-level bureaucrats and unhoused residents to examine when and how discretion is exercised and how unhoused residents experience these actions. It elucidates the ‘performative productivity’ employed by street-level bureaucrats to perpetuate ‘the myth’ that housing is available and that the central reason we still have homelessness is that unhoused individuals are service resistant. Performative productivity is a set of practices employed by actors including frontline government workers, non-profit workers, and interfaith and other volunteers as the terms of service. They include setting up meetings, filling out countless forms that require invasive sharing of information, signing up for waitlists that go nowhere, and surrendering rights and often accepting an externally imposed moralistic framework. If a person wants any services at all the terms are non-negotiable, thus compelling the unhoused to participate in the performance or risk loss of eligibility for any housing and non-housing services they have been able to attain, as minuscule or limited as these may be. I contend that this is tantamount to state violence. To make salient this point, I include a series of vignettes that present the street-level presence of the state in the lives of unhoused individuals and places it in a global context to highlight the ways in which the system is arbitrary, unhelpful, and potentially fatal.

Community‐engaged philanthropy: The role of the fundraiser in building equitable communities

AbstractIn recent years, fundraisers have become increasingly focused on major gift solicitation while donors have been making larger gifts to fewer organizations. As this trend continues, some have begun to question whether major organizations and/or wealthy individuals now have too much control over the work of nonprofits and the communities they serve. While it is true that major gifts are important and can made a noticeable, positive impact, in some cases community members might see their impact as intrusive. In situations such as this, what is the “best” course of action? How should fundraisers consider, balance, and address the perspectives and rights of their organization, donors, and community members? This paper creates a framework for fundraisers as they consider not only their responsibilities to their organization and constituents, but also their responsibilities for promoting equity within their community as a whole. This paper draws on the social‐ecological model, as well as concepts from intersectionality, to explore how fundraisers can increase involvement from all community members in a nonprofit's work to create a participatory and community‐engaged process, with a special focus on including those who are typically marginalized, rather than maintaining a hierarchical system of power. It also draws on the theories of rights‐balanced fundraising ethics, community‐centric fundraising, and other ethical frameworks of fundraising and public administration to compare what is being done by fundraisers to what should be done to encourage ethical practices in fundraising. The paper is supplemented by examples of the impact of implementing (or not implementing) community engagement in fundraising practices. This paper aims to create a community‐engaged philanthropy framework for fundraisers as they consider not only their responsibilities to their organization and donors, but also their responsibilities for promoting equitable distributions of power within their community. This framework provides specific guidance for fundraisers as to how they can balance these multiple (and sometimes competing) responsibilities while also keeping ethics at the forefront of their actions. It demonstrates how, by taking a community‐engaged approach to their work, fundraisers are able to bring about better long‐term outcomes for their organization. Specifically, the framework considers: (1) To whom are fundraisers most responsible, and to whom should fundraisers be most responsible—their nonprofit, their donors, or those being served? (2) For what rights of community members must the fundraiser account when soliciting funds, and to what extent is the fundraiser responsible for upholding these rights? (3) In what ways can an invitation from a fundraiser to make a gift also invite some level of power or control over the organization's work? (4) To what extent do fundraisers have the responsibility to maintain an equitable power balance among their constituents, including donors and those served? (5) How can fundraisers help ensure that all community members are able to participate in the organization's work to extent that they are willing and able?

Job Demands and Resources, Burnout, and Psychological Distress of Employees in the Chinese Non-profit Sector.

The non-profit sector in China has expanded significantly in the past few decades. However, employees in non-profits experience high burnout rates, indicating a need to study non-profit work conditions and their effect on employees. This study applies the job demands and resources (JD-R) model and examines the effects of job demands (JD) and job resources (JR) on burnout and psychological distress experienced by non-profit employees, recruited via quota sampling, across China (n = 233). The findings from path analysis showed that JR had strong and negative effects on burnout and on psychological distress, while JD had strong and positive effects on burnout and on psychological distress. Burnout partially mediated the relations between JD-R and psychological distress. These results highlight the importance of JD-R in reducing burnout and psychological distress in non-profit employees in China. Research and practice implications are discussed.

Assessing the effectiveness of financial support for socially oriented non-profit organizations: The main approaches

Subject. This article discusses the specifics of the existing systems of State and municipal support for non-profit organizations. Objectives. The article aims to develop a methodology for assessing the effectiveness of financial support for socially oriented non-profit organizations. Methods. For the study, I used the methods of analysis, synthesis, and generalization. Results. Based on the analysis of the methods used to assess the effectiveness of financial support for socially oriented non-profit organizations, the article identifies their advantages and disadvantages and offers an original methodology that takes into account the practice of providing financial support to non-profit organizations and existing information limitations. Conclusions. Assessment of the effectiveness of financial support for socially oriented non-profit organizations requires simultaneous consideration of the current legislation, multidirectional activities of non-profit sector organizations and the projects implemented by them, the specifics of the result of the work of non-profit organizations and existing information restrictions.

Creating Meaningfulness in Public Service Work: A Qualitative Comparative Analysis of Public and Nonprofit Managers’ Experience of Work

Public service work and public-serving institutions are evolving by incorporating neoliberal modes of working more and more. Contemporary research oftentimes neglects to account for these changes in how we understand public service work, however. This article draws on the meaningfulness in work and public service motivation literature to explore how public service workers are making sense of their work and work environments to create meaningful work experiences under evolving conditions. The findings from 45 interviews with public and nonprofit managers are presented and compared. The changing world of work has implications for how public and nonprofit workers narrate and find meaningfulness in work but not what they find meaningful about their work. The findings suggest that both public and nonprofit workers create positive meaningfulness in work but in dissimilar ways. The findings also suggest that organizational leaders play a substantial part in workers’ meaningfulness-making process. The findings hold theoretical and practical implications for understanding the role workplaces and organizational leaders play in workers’ experience of meaningful public service work.

“WE LOST THE PLADO”: Tracing privileged school literacies in one kindergarten classroom

Drawing from a network case study, this article traces enactments of a letter writing enquiry in one Kindergarten public school classroom in New York City, and in doing so, explores both the affordances and limitations of sociomaterial approaches employed by the researcher towards school literacies. Looking down at one morning meeting revealed rotting pumpkins, playdough, pocket charts and cheese sandwiches, doing the work of environmental nonprofits, DOE officials, and cafeteria staff, all becoming entangled with the teacher and students in solving the problem of food waste at lunch, and ultimately to students writing letters to their school administrators. Yet, in looking out from this same data, I reconsider how the curriculum was not only constituted by networks of circulating materials, but also by networks circulating students' bodies into unequal school spaces, fuelling changes in the school’s enrolment and funding through neighbourhood gentrification. I propose ways in which sociomaterial accounts of literacy curriculums may contribute bridgework along with accounting for structural inequalities mobilized in and through schools.

Evaluation of Social Media Impact on UN Agencies in Yemen

Nowadays, the whole world is becoming a small village. Globalization is the fact of living everywhere. The use of the internet and advanced technology integrates with all different life angles and can never be neglected in our daily lives. As part of this technology advancement, social media has broken into our daily lives and you can find these platforms or at least one of them in every home. Social media is now part of any business everywhere, and all businesses now think of it as the first marketing option for all kind of services provided. Starting from the fact that social media is a critical tool for any business, this study analyzes how social media can affect the work of non-profit organizations. The study targets UN agencies in Yemen. To assess and evaluate this impact of social media on UN agencies in Yemen, a questionnaire of 25 questions was constructed and circulated among different people in these agencies. As in the case of other previous studies, the results of this study show that there is a great positive impact of social media on brand awareness, community engagement and organizations performance. Similar to other studies, fundraising is used as purpose of social media use, but it still needs more strategic plans in the future to be applied efficiently. UN agencies have to keep on more strategic plans to keep their social media platforms into their own targets.

Black Women and Social Justice Education: Legacies and Lessons by Stephanie Y. Evans, Andrea D. Domingue, and Tonia D. Mitchell

Reviewed by: Black Women and Social Justice Education: Legacies and Lessons by Stephanie Y. Evans, Andrea D. Domingue, and Tonia D. Mitchell Alicia Brunson (bio) Evans, Stephanie Y., Andrea D. Domingue, and Tonia D. Mitchell. Black Women and Social Justice Education: Legacies and Lessons. Albany, State University of New York Press, 2019. 398 pp. ISBN: 9781438472942. $35.95 Paperback. This book is well-needed, especially during tumultuous times like these. Black Women and Social Justice Education: Legacies and Lessons contextualizes the ways in which Black women survive and thrive in academia, community engagement, and nonprofit work. Organized into four sections, the readings center Black women's voices and experiences, theorizing and putting social justice education into practice. Liberatory consciousness, an essential component of social justice education, is incorporated within every section of the book. In the readings, not only is social justice explained, but readers are made privy to how the authors navigate their work and fields of activism to put into practice social justice education that often fails to take our identities or needs into consideration. As Black women have shown, the practice of putting social justice education into action leads to the transformation of institutions. The writers argue that the implementation of social justice education is effective because it values the knowledge and experiences of oppressed communities. In addition, those who engage in social justice education not only want social justice and community transformation, but also inner peace. Several of the pieces in this edition focus on how Black women learn to value themselves and their communities while doing this incredibly difficult work. Part 1 underscores the importance of theory and identity as key components of social justice theory in 6 chapters. This section of readings demonstrates that we not only have responsibility for our communities, but to ourselves when engaging in social justice work. Social justice is theorized as liberation for all people. Layli Maparyan's "Social Justice Education and Luxocracy" is particularly engaging because of the focus of the Divine nature in all of humanity. It is a call for to see everyone through the practice of Imago Dei even if people oppose the advances of social justice. Another key issue in this section's readings is the relevance of intersectionality. Diversity will mean nothing, and equality and equity are not likely to manifest without using an intersectional approach. On an individual level, using an intersectional perspective is helpful in examining individual identities and the function of privilege versus being marginalized. Understanding our identities, the writers assert, will provide a better ability to both survive in oppressive environments, but also thrive while dismantling systemic inequalities. Michele D. Smith and Maia Niguel Moore in "Black Feminist Thought: A Response to White Fragility" posit that Black women navigate and survive by being persistent, remaining knowledgeable about society, finding sisterhood with other Black women, and creating and maintaining a healthy image of oneself. Practicing [End Page 329] social justice education and thriving while doing so is not an individual feat. A community of supporters are needed. Part 2 includes 4 chapters and is a collection of narrative and historical accounts of Black women who contended for power, equality, and equity. The emphasis of Black women's voices that were often silenced in social justice movements is a theme in this section. In Ashley Robertson Preston's "A Seat at the Table: Mary McLeod Bethune's Call for the Inclusion of Black Women During World War II," we learn that Mary McLeod Bethune not only advocated for her own upward social mobility, but for many other Black women's ability to work during WWII. This chapter also illustrates that although this work is arduous, we should not give into despair and hopelessness. We learn in this chapter and others in the book that education can be used as a means of fighting for equality. Social justice does not only take place in the classroom and traditional forms of education. Modern forms of activism, such as students' protests are highlighted in Shennette Garrett-Scott and Dominique Garrett-Scott's "This Ain't Yo' Mama's Revolution--Or Maybe It is: #TakeBackTheFlag and the new Student Activism." An important point in this...

New Virginia partnership aims to increase MH service access

PRS, a behavioral health nonprofit serving Northern Virginia, announced Aug. 19 a partnership with Access Hope to increase access to mental health services, including to those who are uninsured or otherwise would not qualify for needed services. As part of the long‐term partnership, Access Hope has awarded a $210,000 grant to help PRS respond to the rise in mental health issues, with additional emphasis on diverse communities, a news release stated. The grant from Access Hope, a nonprofit working to eliminate barriers to mental health services in the D.C. metro region for underserved populations by building local partnerships, will enable PRS to add staff capacity and ensure more access to these existing PRS programs.

Bahnhofsmission in Deutschland. Im Kontext der Epochen der Wohlfahrtspflege

Abstract The ›Bahnhofsmissionen‹ developed in the context of the tradition of Christian non-profit welfare work in Germany. Through their supporting organisations, they belong to the associations of the Protestant Diakonie and the Catholic Caritas, which have held a dominant position in social work in German society for many decades. The ›Bahnhofsmissionen‹ are highly respected by the public but nontheless work under permanently precarious financial conditions. Without the large number of volunteers, the persistence of their work would not be safeguarded. This makes their 125-year history all the more astonishing, interrupted only by bans during the National Socialist era (between 1939-1945) and the German Democratic Republic (between 1956 and 1990).

Just Compensation: An Empirical Examination of the Success of Legal Externships for Pay and Credit

For-credit externships offer law students a much-needed opportunity to experience the “real world” of legal practice, rounding out their legal education in ways not possible through classroom teaching alone. So when the ABA changed its rules to allow students to be compensated for their externships while still earning school credit, some in legal academia were worried. Would highly attractive paid externships come at the cost of diminished interest in unpaid government and non-profit work? Would the work that paid externs would be assigned be of a lesser educational quality than their for-credit only peers? Conjecture and anecdotal evidence abounded. This article aims to inject the debate over paid externships with empirical evidence. Drawing on several years’ worth of student and supervisor semester-end evaluations, the author analyzes enrollment patterns, numerical ratings of student performance, and work assignment descriptions to determine whether students who are paid for their externships fare any better or worse than their unpaid counterparts. The resulting data demonstrate that, first, though there has been a tremendous increase in interest in paid law firm and in-house externships, there has been virtually no decrease in interest in traditional placement types. Moreover, while paying students for their work has had some impact on the type of work performed, it is far less than critics might have predicted. Finally, there are some areas, such as quality of work performed, in which the data show that paid externs are thriving even more than their unpaid peers.

Strengthening and transforming non‐profits with leadership profiles and assessments

Non-profit organizations positively contribute to society in a myriad of ways. With their focus on purpose and mission, they raise funds and awareness for specific causes and people. This article points to how assessments and inventories strengthen the volunteer and professional workforce that drives the work of non-profit organizations. The assessments reviewed are the DiSC profile, leadership practices inventory, team dimensions profile, and change style indicator.

COVID-19 as a nonprofit workplace crisis: Seeking insights from the nonprofit workers' perspective.

Due to the COVID‐19 pandemic, nonprofit organizations face increased demands for services alongside decreased revenues and must make tough choices on how to weather these stressors. Alongside these organizational changes, COVID‐19 impacts nonprofit workers and could be a career shock for these individuals, potentially altering how they think of their work and career intentions, even jeopardizing their commitment to the sector. Therefore, this paper outlines a research agenda to understand how the pandemic impacts nonprofit workers and their commitment to working in the sector. Several areas for future research are identified including human resource policy, leadership development, generational differences, gender effects, nonprofit graduate education, and mission‐specific work effects.

Income from Tickets Sale in Georgian Football Clubs

Georgia has a big history in football, many famous Georgian players played for the national team. Football is one of the most popular sport in Georgia. Ticket sales income is one of the main source of football teams. Ticket selling and merchandising is one the most important thing for big clubs, their legal and financial resources are directed towards from the tickets income. We have a serious problem in Georgia, Georgian clubs did not have ticket selling and they don’t have income from tickets. The clubs are not selling tickets and they don’t have income from ticket selling, they don’t have seasonal tickets, which one has one of the most important role in modern clubs. Sport has an important role in establishing the healthy lifestyle. The development of Sport has an important role as in developing as well in high-developed countries. Sport clearly expresses the cultural, social and economical situation on a global scale. For businessmen who are buying clubs, the big part of the motivation is gaining power and respect. Usually, they are fans of the club that they are buying. Most of them want to be famous not only in their own field. Additionally, the most important goal of football clubs is to maximize their revenue. However they are acting according to the money they have, they must do financial balance. Teams are thinking to get the important role in international market tickets and seasonal tickets. Football is currently the most popular sport in the world. In the season 1999/2000, the professional English football league (Premier league) became the first league in the world to pass one billion Euros income marks. (Vopel, 2011) The average club/wages-turnover ratio has increased continuously over the last decade: the total wages and salaries figures in 1999/2000 season were 747 Million Pound Sterlings. Football is a massive sport. People are playing football in every country. Businessmen’s are trying to invest money in football. This sport is one of the biggest sport in the world. In modern life, sport is a big business. To get the success, many things to do are necessary. It is difficult to examine sport as a singular entity. In fact, the multifaceted-sport industry includes such diverse segments as the sport-related media, legal and financial services, sponsorships, advertising, endorsements, ticketing, events, facility operations, wholesale and retail sporting goods, education, nonprofit work, community development, entertainment, gaming, recreation, sport tourism. Sports participants, spectators and business managers hold unique interests in the sports industry. Stakeholders also include educators, tourists, gamblers and gamers. (Baker & Esherick, 2013). Keywords: Income from ticket selling; Financing systems; Management; Salary; Merchandising.