scholarly journals Measuring Concentration and Competition in the U.S. Nonprofit Sector: Implications for Research and Public Policy

2014 ◽  
Vol 5 (2) ◽  
pp. 231-259 ◽  
Author(s):  
Bruce A. Seaman ◽  
Amanda L. Wilsker ◽  
Dennis R. Young
Keyword(s):  
Public Policy ◽  
Nonprofit Organizations ◽  
Metropolitan Areas ◽  
Nonprofit Sector ◽  
Important Distinction ◽  
Effective Competition ◽  
Starting Point ◽  
Distribution Of Resources ◽  
Funding Programs ◽  
Concentration Patterns

AbstractIn an era of dramatic financial challenges, pressure is growing for U.S. nonprofit organizations to consolidate. Yet, we know little about the current concentration of the sector and even less about the degree of competition in various nonprofit subsectors. In this paper we offer a detailed analysis of concentration patterns across the sector and analyze variations in these patterns by subsector and metropolitan areas. It is well known that measuring concentration is not identical to assessing effective competition and is but a starting point for a more thorough competitive analysis. An important distinction is made between the concentration of resources within larger subsector organizations and inequality in the distribution of resources across those organizations. Some subsectors may be concentrated yet behave competitively because resources are distributed relatively equally among several large organizations. By contrast, other concentrated subsectors may behave less competitively because resources are very unequally controlled by a few organizations. Understanding the patterns of both concentration and inequality in the nonprofit sector is likely a prerequisite to drawing defensible conclusions about the degrees of competition in the sector and the desirability of further consolidation. This analysis has implications for both public policy and philanthropy. It bears on the issues of whether antitrust policy should be forcefully applied to the nonprofit sector, whether government funding programs should encourage nonprofit consolidation or competition, and whether philanthropic institutions should implore nonprofit organizations to consolidate further or to compete more vigorously.

Asian American Nonprofit Organizations in U.S. Metropolitan Areas

2005 ◽  
Vol 3 (1) ◽  
pp. 67-104 ◽  
Author(s):  
Chikan Richard Hung
Keyword(s):  
Nonprofit Organizations ◽  
Asian American ◽  
Public Interest ◽  
Community Organizing ◽  
Metropolitan Areas ◽  
Nonprofit Sector ◽  
Central Cities ◽  
Cultural Organizations ◽  
Related Information ◽  
Cultural Service

This article analyzes the characteristics of Asian American nonprofit organizations in major U.S. metropolitan areas. The data are based on internet archives of nonprofit organization Form 990 and related information. Asian American nonprofits are less than 20 years old on average. They remain a relatively small part of the nonprofit sector. Religious organizations are generally the largest group among Asian American nonprofits, followed by cultural organizations, service agencies, and public interest associations of similar proportions. Asian American secular organizations as a group tend to be younger, are more likely to be in central cities, in wealthy and poor communities, as well as in metropolitan areas with a more homogenous Asian ethnic population and a relatively more active general population in community organizing. The opposite is true for religious Asian American organizations. The pattern is less consistent among Asian American cultural, service, and public interest organizations. Regarding organization size, more established Asian American nonprofits, Pan Asian American organizations, and those agencies located in communities with larger Asian American population have more total assets and annual revenue.

ARNOVA's Symposium on Public Policy for Nonprofits

2011 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Thomas Jeavons
Keyword(s):  
Public Policy ◽  
Nonprofit Organizations ◽  
Nonprofit Sector ◽  
Federal State ◽  
Voluntary Organizations ◽  
Public Charities ◽  
State And Local ◽  
The Impact ◽  
Local Levels

There are serious gaps in our knowledge and understanding of how public policy at the federal, state, and local levels affects the work of a wide array of nonprofit organizations. On October 4th and 5th, 2010, the Association for Research on Nonprofit Organizations and Voluntary Organizations (ARNOVA), with the support and encouragement of the Bill and Melinda Gates, Kresge and C.S. Mott foundations, convened a group of thirty nonprofit scholars and leaders to explore what we know about the impact of public policy on the nonprofit sector. The conference focused on how public policy helps or harms the ability of nonprofit organizations, particularly but not exclusively public charities, to fulfill their missions.

Policy analysis and the nonprofit sector

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Steven Rathgeb Smith
Keyword(s):  
Public Policy ◽  
Strategic Planning ◽  
Policy Analysis ◽  
Nonprofit Organizations ◽  
Return On Investment ◽  
Nonprofit Sector ◽  
Policy Research ◽  
Theory Of Change ◽  
The Impact ◽  
Related Process

This chapter explores the use of policy analysis by nonprofit organizations, from its beginnings in the late 19th century to its significant expansion in the last 30 years. While policy analysis in nonprofits began as an extension of advocacy efforts for particular reform agendas, scarce funding, professionalization of the nonprofit workforce, and greater emphasis on accountability have increased the use of outcome-oriented policy analysis approaches including the theory of change, logic models and log-frames, and collective impact or social return on investment approaches. Nonprofits have also begun to use the related process of strategic planning to identify benchmarks and targets and to structure periodic assessment. Nonetheless, nonprofits continue to undertake policy research and to use policy analysis to influence public policy in ways that advance their mission and goals. As the use of policy analysis in nonprofits expands, one challenge will be to take a broad view of the potential outcomes of nonprofits to ensure the impact of nonprofits is adequately assessed.

Economic Way of Thought and Legislationon Nonprofit Organizations

2012 ◽  
pp. 48-63
Author(s):  
L. Yakobson
Keyword(s):  
Nonprofit Organizations ◽  
Empirical Data ◽  
Nonprofit Sector ◽  
Social Medium ◽  
The State ◽  
Rapid Changes ◽  
Comparative Advantages ◽  
Essential Prerequisite

The article considers proper legislation as an essential prerequisite for actualization of NPOs comparative advantages. Restrictions imposed on NPOs are reasonable if they are compensated by benefits from greater trust. The rigidity of constrains and requirements should be optimized while accounting for peculiarities of a social medium, the state of the nonprofit sector, and the governments readiness to encourage the development of the latter. As empirical data suggests, Russian NPOs being on different stages of maturity need separate legal treatment. In the meanwhile, interests that prevail in the NPOs community are not always conducive to rapid changes.

The Role of Nonprofit Sector Networks as Mechanisms for Immigrant Political Participation

2012 ◽  
Vol 7 (1) ◽  
pp. 27-46 ◽  
Author(s):  
Luisa Veronis
Keyword(s):  
Political Participation ◽  
Nonprofit Organizations ◽  
Latin American ◽  
Social Action ◽  
Multiple Scales ◽  
Nonprofit Sector ◽  
Ethnographic Study ◽  
Immigrant Community ◽  
Immigrant Political Incorporation

Issues of immigrant political incorporation and transnational politics have drawn increased interest among migration scholars. This paper contributes to debates in this field by examining the role of networks, partnerships and collaborations of immigrant community organizations as mechanisms for immigrant political participation both locally and transnationally. These issues are addressed through an ethnographic study of the Hispanic Development Council, an umbrella advocacy organization representing settlement agencies serving Latin American immigrants in Toronto, Canada. Analysis of HDC’s three sets of networks (at the community, city and transnational levels) from a geographic and relational approach demonstrates the potentials and limits of nonprofit sector partnerships as mechanisms and concrete spaces for immigrant mobilization, empowerment, and social action in a context of neoliberal governance. It is argued that a combination of partnerships with a range of both state and non-state actors and at multiple scales can be significant in enabling nonprofit organizations to advance the interests of immigrant, minority and disadvantaged communities.

The Effects of Capital Campaigns on Local Nonprofit Ecologies

2018 ◽  
Vol 47 (3) ◽  
pp. 645-656 ◽  
Author(s):  
Joanna Woronkowicz
Keyword(s):  
Nonprofit Organizations ◽  
Internal Revenue Service ◽  
Arts Organizations ◽  
Natural Distribution ◽  
Capital Campaign ◽  
Internal Revenue ◽  
Capital Campaigns ◽  
Short Period ◽  
Distribution Of Resources ◽  
Nonprofit Arts

When charities launch capital campaigns, they hope to attract large amounts of resources in a relatively short period of time; however, other charities in the area are likely to see such campaigns as disruptive to the natural distribution of resources to area nonprofits by disproportionately directing area donations to a single organization. This study seeks to understand the effects capital campaigns have on both the fundraising performance of other nonprofits and the makeup of a local nonprofit ecology. The analysis uses data from a randomly sampled set of nonprofit arts organizations that had capital campaigns for facilities projects between 1994 and 2007 and Internal Revenue Service Form 990 data on 501 (c) (3) nonprofit organizations in each county. The results illustrate that a capital campaign positively affects the fundraising performance of other charities in a local nonprofit ecology, but that campaigns decrease the size of a local nonprofit ecology.

scholarly journals Telecommunications Deregulation

2012 ◽  
Vol 102 (3) ◽  
pp. 386-390 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jerry A Hausman ◽  
William E Taylor
Keyword(s):  
Effective Competition ◽  
Competitive Process ◽  
Starting Point ◽  
Telecommunications Deregulation

From Fred Kahn's writings and experiences as a telecommunications regulator and commenter, we draw the following conclusions: prices must be informed by costs; costs are actual incremental costs; costs and prices are an outcome of a Schumpeterian competitive process, not the starting point; excluding incumbents from markets is fundamentally anticompetitive; and a regulatory transition to deregulation entails propensities to micromanage the process to generate preferred outcomes, visible competitors and expedient price reductions. And most important, where effective competition takes place among platforms characterized by sunk investment—land-line telephony, cable and wireless —traditional regulation is unnecessary and likely to be anticompetitive.

scholarly journals Increasing the Size of the Pie: The Impact of Crowding on Nonprofit Sector Resources

2017 ◽  
Vol 8 (3) ◽  
pp. 211-235 ◽  
Author(s):  
Erynn Beaton ◽  
Hyunseok Hwang
Keyword(s):  
Nonprofit Organizations ◽  
Fixed Effects ◽  
Free Market ◽  
Nonprofit Sector ◽  
Financial Resources ◽  
Limited Resources ◽  
Barriers To Entry ◽  
Human Services Organizations ◽  
Nonprofit Competition ◽  
The Impact

AbstractThe number of nonprofit organizations is rapidly increasing, which has led nonprofit practitioners to complain of funding scarcity, nonprofit scholars to closely study nonprofit competition, and policymakers to consider increasing nonprofit barriers to entry. Underlying each of these perspectives is an assumption of limited financial resources. We empirically examine this assumption using county-level panel data on nonprofit human services organizations from the National Center for Charitable Statistics. Contrary to the limited resources assumption, our fixed-effects models show that increasing nonprofit density, at its current levels, has the effect of increasing sector financial resources in each county. We suggest that these findings prompt a tradeoff for policymakers. A sector with free market entry results in a nonprofit sector with more, smaller nonprofits, but such a sector may have the capacity to serve more people because it has more total sector financial resources. Conversely, a sector with higher barriers to entry would translate to a sector with fewer, larger nonprofits with less overall capacity due to fewer sector financial resources.

scholarly journals The Impact of Audit Committees on US Nonprofit Organizations’ Governance

2020 ◽  
Vol 27 (1) ◽  
pp. 30
Author(s):  
Husam Abu-Khadra
Keyword(s):  
Nonprofit Organizations ◽  
Audit Committee ◽  
Nonprofit Sector ◽  
The United States ◽  
Preliminary Evidence ◽  
Securities And Exchange Commission ◽  
Audit Committees ◽  
Public Companies ◽  
Policy Makers ◽  
The Impact

All public companies in the United States are required by the securities and exchange commission (SEC) to have an audit committee. Such enforcement can be attributed to high-profile corporate failures and their connections to nonexistence, ineffective or weak audit committees and governance. Despite the efforts to establish a similar argument and enforcement structure for the nonprofit sector, the internal revenue service (IRS) has not pursued legislation, and no empirical evidence has been established to support any public policy changes. This paper contributes to the literature in this field by being the first study to examine 124,980 nonprofit organizations during the period of 2010 to 2015 to test the association between governance in nonprofit organizations and audit committees. We included fifteen measures from these organizations’ IRS Form 990 filings to formulate the study variables. We found significant evidence that the existence of audit committees improves the governance scores of nonprofit organizations. Our study findings have significant implications for nonprofit executives, policy makers and any other interested parties; these findings act as preliminary evidence to support more proactive policies regarding mandatory audit committees for nonprofit organizations. 

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