This paper explores the link between nonprofit financial support and the service quality of city park systems. Specifically, this research constructs a longitudinal dataset and utilizes the fixed effects model to empirically investigate the relationship between nonprofit financial support for major US city parks and service quality. The findings show that the level of nonprofit financial support to city parks has a positive relationship with two major indicators of city park service quality: the size of parkland and the public access to parks. However, a small statistically significant relationship is found for the number of playgrounds in parks and the level of nonprofit financial support. This research contributes to the theoretical understanding of government–nonprofit relationships which heavily emphasize the resource flow from park-supporting charities to governments. It also improves our empirical knowledge of the general associations between public service provision and nonprofit organizations in urban areas.

The growing prominence of patient and public involvement in health services has led to the increased use of experiential knowledge alongside medical and professional knowledge bases. Third sector organisations, which position themselves as representatives of collective patient groups, have established channels to communicate experiential knowledge to health services. However, organisations may interpret and communicate experiential knowledge in different ways, and due to a lack of inherent authority, it can be dismissed by health professionals. Thus, drawing on individual interviews with organisation representatives, we explore the definitions and uses of as well as the ‘filters’ placed upon experiential knowledge. The analysis suggests that whilst experiential knowledge is seen as all-encompassing, practical and transformative, the organisations need to engage in actions that can tame experiential knowledge and try to balance between ensuring that the critical and authentic elements of experiential knowledge were not lost whilst retaining a position as collaborators in health care development processes.

This article examines the role of nonprofit organizations in government-nonprofit collaboration in the provision of social services in China. A single case study design is implemented to explore how and why the government engages nonprofit organizations in providing social services. A theoretical framework for government-nonprofit collaboration is articulated by analyzing the case of organization A. The role of nonprofit organizations has been found to mainly be manifested in service delivery and capacity building. The case further reveals that nonprofit organizations that establish close ties with the government demonstrate strong capacities for delivering services, in which government support is critical to the survival of nonprofit organizations. On the one hand, whether a nonprofit organization can survive depends not only on its capacity to provide services but also on the capacity to partner with the government in a sustainable manner. On the other hand, the provision of social services is largely government guided, in contrast to the citizen-initiated approach practiced in some European countries. These findings also suggest the necessity of government-nonprofit collaboration for long-term social service delivery.

Interest in collaboration between government and private, grantmaking foundations has grown considerably in recent years both in the USA and abroad. In the USA, one outcome of the increased interest has been the emergence of liaison offices in federal agencies tasked with facilitating partnerships between government and grantmaking foundations and others, such as corporate philanthropic programs. As the government/foundation relationship is still under-conceptualized, we propose a framework that extends general government/nonprofit relationship typologies to grantmaking foundations and present empirical evidence on the foundation roles that government liaison officers prioritize in developing partnerships with their foundation counterparts. Empirically, the article is based on semi-structured interviews with these officers in U.S. federal cabinet departments and independent agencies. Having foundation funding substitute for government outlays factors heavily for government liaison staff. At the same time, the role of foundations in seeding government innovation plays a relatively modest role, despite the prominence of the foundation innovation role in the literature. Rather than having government scale foundation-identified innovations, government liaison officers emphasize foundations funding support services that provide access to or enhance government programs and foundations providing expertise to help co-design better government programs.

The financial well-being of the charity sector has important social implications. Numerous studies have analysed whether the concentration of income in a few sources increases financial vulnerability. However, few studies have systematically considered whether the type of income (grants, donation, fund-raising activities) affects the survival prospects of the charity. We extend the literature by (a) explicitly modelling the composition of sources of income, (b) allowing for short-term volatility as well as long-term survival and (c) testing alternative specifications in a nested form. We show that the usual association between income concentration per se and financial vulnerability is a specification error. Greater vulnerability is associated with dependence on grant funding, not overall concentration. Previous studies showing that concentration of income per se is problematic are picking up a proxy effect. We also show that the volatility of income streams may be an important factor in the survival of charities, but that this also varies between income sources.

The study employs the person–organization (P–O) fit approach to explaining volunteers’ organizational commitment (OC). It examined three dimensions of P–O fit that contribute to OC (degree of: needs-fulfillment, values-realization, self-identity and its expression) and their relationships with three manifestations of OC (identification, contribution, staying). Based on a questionnaire given to 138 volunteers results showed that values-realization was central in its contribution to OC, and its greatest contribution was to the components expressing identification with the organization and contribution to the organization. However, needs-fulfillment and self-identity expression also contributed to OC. Moreover, the three types of P–O fit were distinct from one another; they contributed differentially to the explanation of OC manifestations, and their respective contributions to the prediction of OC level were additive. Therefore, volunteer organizations which put emphasis not only on realizing their members’ values but also satisfying their needs and allowing for the expression of their self-identity should extract a higher degree of commitment from their members.

Despite a growing evidence of transmigrants’ political activism, empirical research is still in its infancy. This paper examined how migrants’ political agency was constructed by their emotions, identities and transnational contexts. Data were collected from in-depth interviews with 11 Korean migrants who were residing in Brisbane, the third largest city of Australia, and engaging in home-country politics through self-organized activities. The study found that participants developed a human rights frame to suit their identities and contexts and in turn, the frame shaped their identities and political agency around human rights. The concepts of ‘framing’ and ‘small group development’ assisted in understanding interview participants’ experiences of negotiating differences in conceptualization and strategization of social issues.

With a clear agenda to reform the public service system and promote a service-oriented nonprofit sector, the Chinese government has been building a local service system by contracting with nonprofit organizations (NPOs) at the community level. Through the competing institutional logics perspective, this article examines the challenges that NPOs experienced and their responding strategies. The study found that bureaucratic logic, managerial logic, professional logic, and guanxi relations logic coexisted in the service field and each had different expectations of NPOs. In juggling the various requirements of these competing institutional logics, NPOs faced three major challenges: powerless status, legitimacy crisis, and accountability dilemma. Nevertheless, they were committed to the community and demonstrated agency in addressing these challenges. The strategies they used included using an intermediary platform to reduce power imbalance, compromising to share legitimacy with neighborhood committees, establishing professional identity, building community, and meeting both upward and downward accountability.

Market orientation has been presented as an important predictor of business performance, and it is presumed to contribute to long-term success in both profit-oriented and non-profit enterprises. Similarly, entrepreneurial orientation is a concept that has been widely applied to business firms but has not been empirically tested in social enterprises. Moreover, the literature does not present a widely accepted and tested conceptual model relating entrepreneurial orientation, market orientation and performance, in the realm of social enterprises. In order to fill this gap, this research assesses how these strategic orientations affect social and economic performance in the setting of social enterprises. Structural equation modeling was used as a means to analyze the hypothesized relationships. After testing the model on a sample of 805 Portuguese social enterprises, the findings show that both social entrepreneurship and market orientations significantly impact social performance. The results also indicate that market orientation mediates the effect of social entrepreneurship orientation on the performance of social enterprises.

Public Ancillary Funds (PubAFs) are grantmaking philanthropic foundations, largely held to be independent. However, some PubAFs exist in significant and exclusive relationships (dyadic partnerships) with a dominant stakeholder involving shared values, strategy, resources, and goals. This paper examines the benefits and challenges for PubAFs of being in a dyadic partnership and how this relationship affects their identity, accountability, and independence. Interviews with 28 PubAFs reveal significant differences between the operating forms and practices of PubAFs in dyadic partnerships, and those which were not. While dyadic partnerships are most commonly associated with donor organisations that establish and provide ongoing funding to foundations (e.g. corporate foundations), this study’s findings show that to be a limited understanding, with PubAFs existing in dyadic partnerships in a range of different contexts. Further, the closeness and exclusiveness of a dyadic partnership presented both benefits and challenges which PubAFs must actively manage over time.

Positioned at the crossroads of the market, public policies and civil society, social enterprises are private organizations that achieve social goals and, in an entrepreneurial way, respond to collective needs. By considering the micro-foundation of value generation as emerging from the assessment of three Italian social cooperatives’ business models, the aim of this paper is to understand the contribution, and the approach adopted by work integration social enterprises to the creation of public value. Our findings suggest that the approach adopted in order to generate value, changes according to several contextual factors. We identified, in particular, three models (the cooperative-driven, the people-driven, and the market-driven model) that are characterized by different relationship with the cooperative system, a differentiated tension toward commercial activities and specific catalysts for value creation.

Nonprofits operate in increasingly complex and turbulent environments. However, few studies have explored nonprofits’ resilience during natural disasters. This study uses Hurricane Katrina as a case study to explore whether nonprofits can regain their original financial performance after significant natural disasters and what organizational capacities and abilities influence their ability to bounce back. The results show that recovery is slow, taking between three and five years for half of the nonprofits in the sample. Recovery depends on factors such as organizational size, equity, surplus, and commercial revenue. This study enriches the nonprofit financial health literature and reveals that the factors associated with financial resilience are different from those that predict financial vulnerability.

Against the background of declining volunteering rates in nonprofit and voluntary organizations, this study examined the relationship between the volunteer board members’ (de)motivating style and factors that influence volunteers’ motives to stay volunteer, i.e., volunteers’ motivation and group-task cohesion. To this end, we relied on Self-Determination Theory. Results indicated that the volunteers’ perception of the board members’ motivating style was positively related to volunteers’ autonomous motivation and perceived group-task cohesion via experienced need satisfaction (i.e., a bright pathway), whereas the board members’ perceived demotivating style was positively related to controlled motivation and amotivation via experienced need frustration (i.e., a dark pathway). Implications for volunteer management are illustrated with concrete examples.

Scholars have used varying terminology for describing non-state entities seeking to influence public policy or work with the EU’s institutions. This paper argues that the use of this terminology is not and should not be random, as different ‘frames’ come with different normative visions about the role(s) of these entities in EU democracy. A novel bibliometric analysis of 780 academic publications between 1992 and 2020 reveals that three frames stand out: The interest group frame, the NGO frame, as well as the civil society organisation frame; a number of publications also use multiple frames. This article reveals the specific democratic visions contained in these frames, including a pluralist view for interest groups; a governance view for NGOs as ‘third sector’ organisations, and participatory and deliberative democracy contributions for civil society organisations. The use of these frames has dynamically changed over time, with ‘interest groups’ on the rise. The results demonstrate the shifting focus of studies on non-state actors in the EU and consolidation within the sub-field; the original visions of European policy-makers emerging from the 2001 White Paper on governance may only partially come true.

Existing research on civil society organizations (CSOs) facing restricted civic space largely focuses on the crackdown on freedoms and CSOs’ strategies to handle these restrictions, often emphasizing impact on their more confrontational public roles. However, many CSOs shape their roles through collaborative relations with government. Drawing on interviews with state agencies and CSOs, this article analyes state–CSO collaboration in the restricted civic space context of disaster risk reduction in India. Findings are that the shaping of CSOs’ roles through collaboration under conditions of restricted civic space is only partly defined by the across-the-board restrictive policies that have been the focus of much existing research on restricted civic space and its implications for CSOs. Interplay at the level of individual state agencies and CSOs, based on mutual perceptions, diverse organization-level considerations and actions, and evolving relations, shape who collaborates with whom and to what effect. This article thus stresses interplay and agency, moving away from simple understandings of co-optation, and calling for a more differentiated approach to the study of state–civil society collaboration under conditions of restricted civic space, with close attention to navigation.

This research focuses on understanding how giving circle (GC) member identities are associated with the identities of funding recipients. It examines whether GC members are more likely than non-members to give to people who are like them (bonding social capital) and/or to people who are not like them (bridging social capital). We draw on data from a survey of GC members and a comparison control group of non-GC members. Findings show GC members and those not in GCs are both more likely to give to a shared identity group—related to race, gender, and gender identity—leading to bonding social capital. However, GC members are more likely than those not in GCs to give to groups that do not share their identity, suggesting GCs also encourage bridging social capital. We assert both bonding and bridging social capital might lead to the democratization of philanthropy by expanding giving to historically marginalized groups.

While existing literature has conceptualized the multiple, complex ways in which NGOs might relate to the state, it has paid limited attention to how NGO–government collaboration leads to NGO policy influence. This study examines small, indigenous grassroots NGOs and their interactions with the local state in China. Using a grounded theory approach, we find that the aspiration for both NGOs and the local state is to establish reciprocal engagement, which consists of three dimensions—proximity and communication, mutual support, and joint action. We explain how reciprocal engagement might lead to NGO policy influence: (a) shaping government departments’ internal work methods, (b) facilitating policy implementation, and (c) influencing policy revision. We further define the boundary conditions for the reciprocal engagement and policy influence framework by examining how regions, administrative agencies, and evolving political climate affect the engagement–influence relationship. Our study provides a more nuanced understanding of the dynamics of NGO–government relations in China and of non-contentious methods of policy influence from the grassroots.

The rise and global reach of the corporate foundation (CF) phenomenon has attracted the attention of academic researchers and practitioners and led to a plurality of definitions and understandings. This definitional fuzziness notwithstanding, the term hybridity is widely used as the defining characteristic to describe a CF’s position between business and civil society and its diverse interlinkages with its founding company. However, the extant literature has seldom explained what hybridity signifies, when it occurs and how it is shown. This paper presents the findings of a systematic review of the academic and gray literature on CFs. Based on 80 publications covering 30 countries worldwide, this study proposes 15 characteristics along four global themes as a comprehensive set to account for the complexity of CFs. It develops propositions for a fine-grained understanding of what constitutes the hybrid nature of CFs at the strategic, organizational and contextual levels. Accordingly, this study suggests ways forward by revealing questions that require further research toward a better understanding of the CF phenomenon.

Voluntary sector and non-profit studies require theoretical frameworks facilitating better understandings of what occurs on the ground. Following Lipsky’s (Street-level bureaucracy: dilemmas of the individual in public service, Russell Sage Foundation, New York, 1980) formulation of street-level bureaucracies, scholars have emphasized workplace hierarchies, reproducing dichotomous ‘top-down’ and ‘bottom-up’ conceptualizations of practice which can obscure the full complexity of practitioners’ workplace relationships. In this paper, we offer a thematic model of (collective) action that centres the ‘division of labour’ across, and relations between, professional niches that are differentiated by their ‘helping’ orientations, workplace tasks, and responsibilities to service users rather than their organizational status or salaries. We mobilize qualitative research undertaken in the penal voluntary sectors of Canada and England to highlight the mutually constitutive efforts of frontline and management work with criminalized service users. Drawing on and extending Alinsky’s ‘river dilemma’, we conceptualize practice in the (penal) voluntary sector as organized according to the differing choices practitioners make about whom to ‘help’ and how to intervene, which have consequences for social policy, service delivery, and advocacy work.

This study examines the knowledge sharing (KS) practices of local-level non-governmental organizations (NGOs). Operating at the coalface of sustainable development, these NGOs often struggle for survival due to their relatively small size, limited resources, fluid organizational structures, and reliance on specific individuals. Because KS has the potential to offset some of these shortcomings, better understanding the current KS practices and challenges of these less studied NGOs is important to improve their longevity and sustain the impact they have on the communities they serve. Using interview data from local-level NGOs in Tamil Nadu, India, we established that KS mainly happens on a situational, ad hoc basis when opportunities and possibilities align. The main barriers to more structural ways for KS to occur at the local-level were found to arise from the predominantly voluntary makeup of the workforce as well as the differences in operational styles between the various local-level NGOs. As such, this study concludes that local-level NGOs seem to lack an organizational capacity to institutionalize KS in their existing networks and we offer several recommendations for local-level NGOs to harness the potential benefits of KS more fully.