Nonprofit Employment Research Articles

Beyond assumptions of altruism: Examining nonprofit work with a job fit framework and response surface analysis

AbstractScholars frequently investigate how nonprofit employees, as a group, differ from public or for‐profit employees. However, there is less focus on how motivational profiles vary among nonprofit employees. Particularly as the nonprofit sector professionalizes, the reasons why people seek nonprofit employment are diversifying. Recent work highlights a more individualized understanding of employee motivation, which can lead to more nuanced and tailored human resource management techniques. I amplify this stream of scholarship, guided by a job fit framework and introducing a robust methodological approach from organizational psychology that accounts for interactions between an employee's work preferences and work experiences on outcomes of interest. With two waves of original data on international aid workers, I demonstrate that the experience of prosocial work (i.e., work that aims to help other people) is associated with greater job satisfaction for those with strong prosocial work preferences but can be associated with reduced job satisfaction for those without. These findings necessitate nuanced attention to employees' work preferences, moving beyond assumptions that prosocial work will universally motivate nonprofit employee performance.

Nonprofits: a look at national trends in establishment size and employment

This article explores trends and highlights of 501(c)(3) organizations at the national level. An examination of total private employment and industry-level employment reveals that nonprofit organizations tend to employ more workers at an establishment than do their for-profit peers. These data also show that nonprofit employment grew at a steady rate from 2007 to 2017, including during the 2007–09 recession.

Fiscal shocks and non-profit employment

ABSTRACT This paper uses novel data from the Quarterly Census of Employment and Wages (QCEW) to identify the impact of countercyclical fiscal policy on non-profit wages, employment, and entry in the non-profit sector. The paper extends an existing empirical literature that uses the ‘Great Recession’ (2007–2009) as a shock to identify the responsiveness of non-profit labour markets to aggressive fiscal policy. The paper adopts an identification strategy which exploits variation in the Federal Medical Assistance Percentage (FMAP) reimbursement rates across states in the context of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) of 2009. An instrument is applied in the place of ARRA expenditures to avoid estimation bias. I find that non-profit employment and wages are less responsive to fiscal stimulus, relative to previous point estimates for all United States firms. Point estimates indicate estimated cost of $104,000 per non-profit job saved. However, there is wide variation across non-profit sub-sectors.

Scripting the Conviction: Power and Resistance in the Management of Criminal Stigma

ABSTRACTPeople with criminal records seeking employment face a dilemma: how to discuss their conviction(s) in a job interview. Convicted job seekers are encouraged to draft, revise, and rehearse their “conviction scripts” and to approach their delivery as a Goffmanian performance. Drawing from participant observation within a nonprofit employment program in Southern California, this article analyzes job seekers’ attempts to craft narratives that will satisfy employers’ curiosities and concerns, with the assistance of professional coaches. I find that rather than challenge criminalizing practices or stigma itself, job seekers are encouraged to dissociate from criminal stigma and develop narratives that reinforce dominant frameworks of personal responsibility, remorse, and rehabilitation. They also regularly veer, however, from these conventions, in search of narratives that more accurately explain and contextualize their decisions. I argue that the act of scripting convictions is thus a political process in motion, a negotiation of power, with real life consequences. While at present, conviction scripting tends to reproduce the inequalities that underlie the criminal punishment system, the article concludes by exploring how criminalized people could craft scripts that contribute to their liberation. [stigma, criminalization, race, criminal records, employment]

Employment data show strong, growing nonprofit sector in U.S.

The most recent analysis of the state of employment in the philanthropic sector shows that—at least prior to COVID‐19—the nation's nonprofits continue to represent a large and growing segment of the overall U.S. private employment picture. In their analysis of their collected data, the researchers at the Johns Hopkins Center for Civil Society Studies found that in 2017, U.S. nonprofits, as a sector of the economy, remained the third largest employer in the U.S., behind only retail trade, and the accommodations and food services industry. In fact, they found that employment by nonprofits overtook employment in manufacturing by nearly 100,000 workers nationwide in 2017, an important milestone as manufacturing is perceived as a sort of bellwether for the health and vitality of the broader economy. Thus, with nonprofit employment eclipsing that of manufacturing, it signifies a robust and healthy employment environment for the sector.

Precarity in the Nonprofit Employment Services Sector.

Drawing on interview and focus group data, this article explores research undertaken as part of a larger research project exploring precarity in the nonprofit employment services sector in a mid-sized Canadian city. We critically survey major legislative changes to Canadian employment and income security policies and programs, including the restructuring of work and labor relations, growth of performance-based contracting-out, erosion of intergovernmental transfers, worker stress, and emotional tolls. Our study's results demonstrate how employment precarity in the nonprofit employment services sector is amplified by top-down and centralized relationships with funding partners and policymaking divorced from the employment experiences of frontline staff. We make the case that it is important to work against rising workplace precarity to strengthen organizational and workplace conditions, as well as build environments more supportive of optimal employment support services. En se fondant sur des entretiens et des données découlant de groupes témoins, cet article présente des explorations entreprises dans une recherche plus large étudiant la précarité dans le secteur des emplois de service dans une ville canadienne de taille moyenne. Nous faisons une revue critique de changements importants intervenus dans la législation portant sur l'emploi au Canada et les politiques et programmes de la sécurité du revenu, incluant la restructuration du travail et des relations de travail, l'augmentation de la privatisation se fondant sur la performance, la diminution des transferts intergouvernementaux, le stress au travail et les conséquences émotionnelles. Les résultats de notre recherche démontrent comment la précarité de l'emploi dans les secteurs des services à but non lucratif est amplifiée par des relations allant du haut vers le bas et centralisée avec des partenaires et des politiques séparés de l'expérience des travailleurs sur le terrain. Nous démontrons qu'il est important de travailler contre la précarisation en renforçant les conditions organisationnelles et de travail, tout en construisant des environnements favorisant une offre de services de l'emploi optimaux.

Blessing in Disguise? Social and Institutional Determinants of Entrepreneurial Intentions following Involuntary Job Loss

In this study, drawing from occupational identity theory, we argue that self‐employment decision is influenced by the extent to which one's perceived social status will be enhanced by pursuing such a career, as well as the presence of favorable institutional climate. Using nonprofit employment assistance agencies, we surveyed 266 individuals in the southern part of the United States who had faced involuntary job loss. The result of our hierarchical moderated regression data analysis indicates that perceived social status and business climate were significant predictors of self‐employment intentions. Overall, our findings highlight the role of social and institutional environment in facilitating self‐employment.

Measuring positive, psychological rewards: The validation of the Intrinsic Work Rewards Scale

This study sought to validate the Intrinsic Work Rewards Scale (IWRS) using a transnational sample. Respondents were 486 non-profit employees from Australia, South Africa and the United States of America (females = 72.0%; managerial/ supervisory job level employees = 57.4%). Data analysis included reliability testing, exploratory and confirmatory factor analysis, and concurrent validity testing with established measures to which the IWRS is theoretically linked. The scores from the IWRS obtained an overall acceptable reliability coefficient of 0.86. Factor analysis confirmed its five factor structure, and correlations indicated that intrinsic rewards are positively related to work engagement, and negatively related to intention to quit. The IWRS appears to yield reliable scores for human resource managers advising in the non-profit employment sector.

Reconsidering Causes and Effects of Public Service Motivation: Old Questions, New Evidence from a Sample of Twins

I leverage an identical co-twin control design to assess whether education, political ideology, and spirituality are antecedents of public service motivation and whether hours spent volunteering and a preference for public sector employment are outcomes of public service motivation. I show that, after differencing out unobserved genetic and social endowments, self-sacrifice is decreasing in political conservatism and increasing in spirituality; that commitment to the public interest is increasing in spirituality; that attraction to public policymaking is decreasing in education; and that compassion is decreasing in political conservatism and increasing in spirituality. Commitment to the public interest and attraction to public policymaking predict a stated preference for public sector employment compared to nonprofit and private sector employment, while self-sacrifice and compassion do not. None of the dimensions of public service motivation appear to predict the number of hours spent volunteering. Although low statistical power and measurement error may explain some of the null findings, the results are credibly causal and have a number of implications for a theory of public service motivation, empirical research on the construct, and its potential use in practice.

Turnover and Retention in Nonprofit Employment

Korea’s nonprofit sector has undergone a sudden expansion in the last decade and its nonprofits experienced high employee turnover. This study is the first in Korean literature to examine workforce shifts in nonprofit organizations and explore influential factors that explain job changes from the nonprofit sector to other sectors. Using a three-wave panel data set of community college/university graduates, the Graduates Occupational Mobility Survey, we conducted a discrete-time survival analysis with the dependent variable of actual turnover. Our findings indicate that over half of employees left nonprofits within a year, and the majority found a new job in for-profit organizations. Different factors predicted turnover to for-profits, government agencies, and educational or research institutes. Age, wage level, employment type, and the size of nonprofit organizations explained employee shifts. Satisfaction with one’s overall job, job content, social reputation, and opportunities for career development were significant predictors. Implications for nonprofit organizations are discussed.

Getting to work: Experimental evidence on job search and transportation costs

Do transportation costs constrain job search in urban low wage labor markets? I test this question by providing transit subsidies to randomly selected clients of a non-profit employment agency. The subsidies generate a large, short-run increase in search intensity for a transit subsidy group relative to a control group receiving standard job search services but no transit subsidy. In the first two weeks, individuals assigned to the transit subsidy group apply and interview for 19% more jobs than those not receiving subsidies. The subsidies generate the greatest increase in search intensity for individuals living far from employment opportunities. Some suggestive evidence indicates that greater search intensity translates into shorter unemployment durations. These results provide experimental evidence in support of the theory that search costs over space can depress job search intensity, contributing to persistent urban poverty in neighborhoods far from job opportunities.

The feminine sector: explaining the overrepresentation of women in the nonprofit sector in the USA

Purpose– The purpose of this paper is to examine the factors that affect a person's choice to work in a specific sector to understand the overrepresentation of women in the nonprofit sector in the USA.Design/methodology/approach– This study views a sector choice of prime-age salaried workers as a three-way choice among for-profit, nonprofit, and public sectors. One's choice of employment sector in this study depends on extrinsic and intrinsic motivations, and is also shaped by structural factors. These benefits, in turn, tend to be determined by individual characteristics. Consequently, this study estimated the endogenous switching regression of earnings and sector choice.Findings– Results from 2003 to 2007 Current Population Survey (CPS) September supplement data indicate that the so-called “feminine” industries are concentrated in the nonprofit sector, and this gendered industry structure attributes to women's overrepresentation in the sector. The results also suggest that women with more education and experience may choose nonprofit jobs over jobs in the other sector while nonprofit employment is generally associated with negative wage differentials.Research limitations/implications– This study does not model employers’ behaviors while gender segregation and discriminatory hiring practices may have contributed to women's overrepresentation in the nonprofit sector due to the lack of employer-side information in CPS. Consequently, the estimation of sector choice without employer information is likely to suffer from an endogeneity problem.Practical implications– This study highlights the factors affecting the concentration of women in the nonprofit sector. Nonprofit organizations may use the information to better understand their employees.Social implications– The findings suggest that women's sector choice is largely embedded in the industry structure of the nonprofit sector.Originality/value– This study examines a sector choice of prime-age salaried workers as a three way choice, instead of a binary choice, among for-profit, nonprofit, and public sectors, which reflects the reality better. Further, this study contributes to the literature on nonprofit employment by testing the impact of nonprofit status on an individual's earnings. Lastly, this study contribute to understanding women's overrepresentation in the nonprofit sector by examining both the structural and utilitarian aspects of sector choice.

Sexual orientation, work values, pay, and preference for public and nonprofit employment: Evidence from Canadian postsecondary students

AbstractEvidence shows that gay men hold fewer government jobs in the US than their share of the population would predict. Two large surveys of Canadian university and college students, however, indicate no lack of interest in public sector jobs among gay, lesbian, transgender and queer people (GLBTQs). This article explores data on the differing perceptions, motivations, and expectations of GLBTQ students of public and nonprofit employment. We find that (1) GLBTQs are more likely than heterosexuals to prefer public and nonprofit sector employment; (2) GLBTQ career goals and work values predict stronger desire for public and nonprofit sector jobs than heterosexuals; and (3) GLBTQs expect to pay a smaller penalty for working in the public and nonprofit sectors.

Psychological Contracts in Nonprofit Employment Relations

Psychological Contracts in Nonprofit Employment Relations

Democratizing the Nonprofit Sector*

IN 1913—just prior to World War I—the United States Congress established a national income tax. There was a concern, however, that the income tax would lead individuals to reduce their charitable contributions. Accordingly, Congress rendered donations to groups ‘organized and operated for charitable, scientific, and educational purposes’ exempt from taxable income. This included an enormous variety of groups: social service agencies, community health clinics, cultural groups, and educational organizations. In the years that followed a variety of more specific groups were included such that non-profit organizations now qualify for tax-exempt donations if their purpose includes assisting the poor, protecting the environment, advancing art, science, education, religion, or culture and, more generally, pursuing purposes beneficial to the community. Although the favorable treatment of such organizations is myriad, this article focuses on the tax-deductible status of donations to such groups in the US. The decision to exempt donations to nonprofits from taxation is an important one for the political community. Total private giving in the US amounted to $295 billion in 2006. Estimates suggest that charitable deductions cost the Federal Government approximately $50 billion annually in foregone revenue. To put this in perspective, in 2007, $57.5 billion was allocated at the federal level for education and $7.7 billion for the Environmental Protection Agency. Moreover, ‘nonprofits account for 5 percent of GDP, over 8 percent of the economy’s wages, and about 10 percent of employment. Nonprofit wages and employment have both been growing as a share of the total economy, with nonprofit employment growing three times

More Similarities or More Differences? Comparing Public and Nonprofit Managers’ Job Motivations

Existing research on career motivations tends to focus either on the difference between private and public organizations or on the difference between nonprofit and for‐profit firms. Although commonalities exist, the literature suggests that there also are many differences in what motivates public and nonprofit employees. Employing data from the National Administrative Studies Project III, this research examines how seven motivational aspects correlate with the choice between public and nonprofit employment. The authors find that managers who value advancement opportunities, a pension and retirement plan, and the ability to serve the public in their jobs are more likely to accept a job in the public sector, whereas managers who value family‐friendly policies and increased responsibility are more likely to accept a position in the nonprofit sector. Participation in volunteering is positively associated with nonprofit employment. The authors suggest a possible link between volunteering and the unique nonprofit motivation that is differentiated from public service motivation.

Modeling Nonprofit Employment

Why are people with same-sex partners more likely than married people to work for nonprofit organizations (NPOs)? Analysis of 2000 Census data suggests that smaller gay–straight pay disparities for men in the nonprofit sector, occupational choices, and ability to afford nonprofit employment explain some overrepresentation of partnered gay men but not of partnered lesbians. Even after controlling for all these factors, people with same-sex partners remain more likely than married people to work for NPOs, suggesting that a strong desire to serve others is an important factor.

The convergence of public and nonprofit values: A research agenda for the intersectoral study of representative bureaucracy

Public administration scholarship has yielded important insights about the extent to which government bureaucracies function as representative institutions. While evidence suggests women and minorities fare better in obtaining higher level positions within government versus the private sector, much less is known about the career trajectories in the third sector. The rise of nonprofit employment has been attributed to widespread government contracting, resulting in a model of government-nonprofit relationships described as complementary and mutually beneficial. Since both are “public-serving,” government and nonprofits share many values. Representative bureaucracy represents one such common value. This article explores the capacity of nonprofit organizations in furthering the aims of representative bureaucracy, and proposes a research agenda for the comparative study of public and nonprofit employment

Does subsidised temporary employment get the unemployed back to work? Aneconometric analysis of two different schemes

Subsidised employment is an important tool of active labour market policies to improve the reemployment chances of the unemployed. Using unusually informative individual data from administrative records, we investigate the effects of two different schemes of subsidised temporary employment implemented in Switzerland: non-profit employment programmes (EP) and a subsidy for temporary jobs (TEMP) in private and public firms. Econometric matching methods show that TEMP is more successful than EP in getting the unemployed back to work. Compared to not participating in any programme, EP and TEMP are ineffective for unemployed who find jobs easily anyway or have a short unemployment spell. For potential and actual long-term unemployed, both programmes may have positive effects, but the effect of TEMP is larger.

Does subsidised temporary employment get the unemployed back to work? Aneconometric analysis of two different schemes

Subsidised employment is an important tool of active labour market policies to improve the reemployment chances of the unemployed. Using unusually informative individual data from administrative records, we investigate the effects of two different schemes of subsidised temporary employment implemented in Switzerland: non-profit employment programmes (EP) and a subsidy for temporary jobs (TEMP) in private and public firms. Econometric matching methods show that TEMP is more successful than EP in getting the unemployed back to work. Compared to not participating in any programme, EP and TEMP are ineffective for unemployed who find jobs easily anyway or have a short unemployment spell. For potential and actual long-term unemployed, both programmes may have positive effects, but the effect of TEMP is larger.