Center faculty and staff are currently engaged in a variety of projects focusing on:
More information on these projects can be found below.
Global Civil Society
Government Relations
Government and nonprofit relationship patterns set the stage for intersectoral collaborative efforts at the organizational level. In recent years, these relationship patterns have been undergoing considerable change, calling the prevailing “partnership paradigm” increasingly into question. Reflecting these changes, different frameworks were recently proposed to take account of the growing complexity of intersector relations. New work by Center faculty and international colleagues probes the usefulness of these frameworks for cross-national comparison. Specifically, the work applies the frameworks to the cases of Germany and the U.S. to demonstrate how these frameworks have comparative applicability and also illuminate different aspects of intersector relations that showcase their high level of complexity. The case discussions focus on the human services and social welfare policy field and highlight the contributions the frameworks can make to understanding government and nonprofit relationships in different contexts. Presented at the 2024 ISTR Conference, the research is leading to a chapter in a forthcoming, new volume on collaboration by Sagamore Press.
Changing Policy Contexts for Nonprofit Management
This project will chart and analyze key policy developments affecting nonprofit management in both the U.S. and around the world. New opportunities due to growing civic engagement on social equity, climate, reproductive rights, and other global policy issues balance challenges to nonprofit organizations resulting from outdated regulatory frameworks, policy neglect–the unwillingness of governments to improve conditions and tax benefits, or political polarization challenging the legitimacy of nonprofits that are engaged in advocacy and value-based work in particular. One outcome will be a chapter for the 5th edition of The Jossey-Bass Handbook of Nonprofit Management and Leadership, published by John Wiley.
Nonprofit Trends, Activities, and Impacts
Nonprofit Trends and Impact
This project established a collaborative research infrastructure with American University and the Urban Institute to produce and integrate nationally representative data on nonprofit management and governance in the U.S. through two key project components. First, the National Survey of Nonprofit Trends and Impacts gathers data from a representative sample of 501(c)(3) organizations, helping to improve understanding of the effects of changes in giving and volunteering on nonprofits and their communities. During the 2023-24 academic year, the project administered the third-year national survey and prepared the contact information for the fourth-year survey. The survey will launch its fourth-year survey during the fall of 2024, continuing to build freely available public-use panel datasets. Second, the project contributes to an open data platform that houses this survey data alongside public datasets from the IRS and the U.S. Census Bureau, advancing transparency, interoperability, and research in the nonprofit sector.
Mapping and Assessing the U.S. Social Sector Infrastructure
This project is examining the national infrastructure – or support system – for nonprofit and philanthropic organizations in the U.S. The research is being conducted jointly by staff at George Mason University and the Urban Institute. The research team is currently gathering input from a broad range of stakeholders to develop several reports, including: a typology and map of the social sector infrastructure; an assessment of infrastructure financing; an analysis of the current state of the infrastructure; and recommendations for strengthening the infrastructure. For more information, see the project page on the Urban Institute’s website.
Nonprofit Entrepreneurship: What Do We Know, Where Are Our Current Data Gaps, and What Can a Multi-Disciplinary Approach Teach Us?
This project aims to highlight the state of our research knowledge regarding the broader dynamics of the nonprofit sector and the role these dynamics play in the vitality of the nonprofit sector. Nonprofit organizations are important contributors to the U.S. economy and key social services but the conventionally used 990 data and our existing theories do not appropriately account for early-stage nonprofits and thus we lack key insights into the establishment and growth of nonprofits.
Welcoming America Network: Local Government – Nonprofit Nexus in Serving the Immigrant Population
The growth of immigrants in the United States and their residential dispersion into different communities have given rise to various local responses to the immigrant population across policy domains. Launched in 2009, Welcoming America now has over 200 members from both local governments and nonprofits joining its immigrant-welcoming initiatives. To better understand the ways that local public service organizations serve the immigrant/refugee community and how they work with Welcoming America, this project implemented an online survey with about 110 nonprofit organizations and local governments that are currently part of the Welcoming America network as well as 35 interviews with leaders at these organizations. The initial findings of this research are accepted for publication in the State and Local Government Review and another manuscript is currently under review.
Data on Nonprofits
Nonprofit Employment Data Project
With support from the Charles Stewart Mott Foundation, this project is generating new information on trends in nonprofit sector employment and producing reports on key components of the nonprofit economy. The project is also working with other stakeholders to expand the use of a variety of federal data systems to enhance understanding of the nonprofit sector and its important role in our society. Tapping into these additional data sources will allow for a more robust understanding of the nonprofit sector’s economic role, the demographics of the nonprofit workforce, and federal funding of nonprofit organizations. The project received a renewal grant of $150,000 from the Mott Foundation in the fall 2023, which will fund the project through 2025. In 2024, a major project activity is transferring the Nonprofit Works website from Johns Hopkins University, with a complete rebuilding of the site. Over the past year, several project working papers were drafted. See additional, detailed information on this project on the Center website.
Developing a Data Platform for Analysis of Nonprofit Organizations
The goal of this NSF-funded project is to create a data platform for social science research on nonprofit organizations. The platform will be a publicly accessible, internet-based, and collaborative research space that will help lower the costs of collecting and sharing large amounts of high-quality, multiyear data on nonprofits and their impacts. This platform project will strengthen research and evaluation, broaden access to data-intensive research, and lead to more scientifically informed decision-making by organizations, policymakers, and funders, and improved outcomes for the communities they serve.
Social Enterprise
Public Policy for Social Enterprise
Hybrid organizations, often called “social enterprises,” seek to both “do good” and “make money” and appear to be increasing in number. Their emergence has led some scholars to say they constitute an emerging fourth sector of the economy, alongside the business, government, and nonprofit sectors. This project, with support from the Schar School’s Schar Initiative, is examining current legal and regulatory provisions in the U.S. and around the world related to social enterprise activity and is developing policy recommendations for the hybrid sector in the U.S. New project papers are now being developed in collaboration with Public Policy PhD student Sonali Chowdhary.
Public Administration
Updated Edition of The Tools of Government: A Guide to the New Governance
Center faculty are editing an updated edition of The Tools of Government: A Guide to the New Governance. This landmark book, originally edited by the late Lester Salamon and published in 2002 by Oxford University Press, explores in detail the current reality in the U.S. in which individual federal and other government agencies deliver relatively few services themselves but rather often partner with other governmental and non-governmental entities to implement government programs. The book explores this concept of “third-party government” – in which government agencies collaborate with other, “third-party” entities – in 22 chapters that focus largely on the different “tools” – including contracts, grants, vouchers, regulation, direct loans, loan guarantees, and others – that government agencies use to engage with other government agencies, nonprofits, and businesses to provide goods and services. With the untimely passing of Lester Salamon, center faculty are serving as the editors of the updated edition and are working with chapter authors to produce a new version of this important book.
The Choice of Governance Partners: Does It Matter?
As part of the updated edition of The Tools of Government: A Guide to the New Governance (see above), center faculty and staff will be contributing a new chapter that examines the values and capabilities that different kinds of institutions – including federal, state, and local governments, nonprofits, and businesses – bring to partnerships that implement government programs.
Implementation of NASPAA Standards
In 2019, NASPAA amended its accreditation standards in an effort to move nonprofit management to the core of public administration curricula, but little guidance for implementation was given. To gauge the baseline of current nonprofit management education and provide guidance for the field, Center faculty conducted a survey of MPA Directors probing whether, and if so how, MPA Programs have begun to change and expand their nonprofit management offerings and what positive or negative factors are affecting these efforts. The research resulted in a forthcoming article that is slated to be included in a Journal of Public Affairs Education special issue on the Future of Nonprofit Education.
Advocacy for Broad, Nonprofit Sector-Wide Interests
Nonprofit Advocacy
The center seeks to continually engage in sector-wide policy conversations. To do so, this project, with support from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and the ASAE Foundation, analyzed the advocacy activities of nonprofit leaders around broad, nonprofit sector-wide interests, such as the tax deductibility of charitable contributions and the regulation of election activity by nonprofits. A special interest is the advocacy efforts of nonprofit leaders around the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017 and more recent legislation addressing the challenges of the coronavirus pandemic. A report of project findings was presented to the project funders, and Cambridge University Press recently published a revised version of the report in its Cambridge Elements series.
Current State of U.S. Nonprofit Advocacy
The goal of this project is to conduct a one-time, comprehensive assessment of nonprofit institutions’ advocacy activity to fill knowledge gaps in the Independent Sector’s Sector Health Report, diagnose barriers to advocacy, identify opportunities to build advocacy capacity in nonprofits, better understand the role equity plays in nonprofit advocacy, and gauge nonpartisan civic engagement rates. The project conducted a nationally representative survey of nonprofit organizations and reported the resulting survey data. This research serves as a robust baseline against which other, more regular research, like the NSF-funded Nonprofit Trends and Impact project, may benchmark sector progress. During 2023-24, the project completed 40 interviews with executive directors who completed the national survey. A report of project findings was submitted to Independent Sector for publication in the fall of 2024.
Nonprofit Theory and Research Trends
Impact of Public Administration on the Evolution of Nonprofit Studies
This bibliometric research explores what the “embrace” of public administration will mean for the future evolution of nonprofit studies. Nonprofit studies evolved as an interdisciplinary field, but is gradually drifting into the orbit of the public administration discipline. While the importance of collaboration and relationships between the public and nonprofit sectors is widely acknowledged, it is but one aspect of the traditional scope of nonprofit studies. What is more, the public affairs focus on intersectoral relations also encourages research along more technical lines, such as performance measurement, PSM and its implications for personnel policies, and efficiency in service delivery. This raises important questions for the future of nonprofit studies: Will there be consequences for what researchers study within nonprofit studies? Will research interests become more technical, focus on the how-to of nonprofit collaboration with government, optimizing nonprofit performance and so on, at the expense of broader research agendas? Initial results were presented at both NASPAA and ARNOVA conferences.
Future Directions of Nonprofit Theorizing
Center staff contributed to a broad initiative by the International Society for Third-Sector Research investigating the past and future of nonprofit research in a global context. The resulting forthcoming chapter will critically review past cross-national, comparative research, identify key trends, and outline promising directions for future research. The chapter will be published in a volume on The Future of Third Sector Research by Springer.