ARNOVA's Symposium on Public Policy for Nonprofits

2011 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Thomas Jeavons

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.

Author(s):  
Steven Rathgeb Smith

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.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mary K. Meinhard Agnes G. Foster

[First paragraph of introduction]: One of the many challenges facing the nonprofit sector in Canada today is developing public awareness of the important role voluntary organizations play in the everyday lives of Canadians. Ranging from food banks, children’s aid societies, and immigrant service organizations, to opera companies and sporting societies, nonprofit and voluntary organizations offer a startlingly wide array of services which cannot be adequately provided directly through the open marketplace or the state. There are approximately 200,000 nonprofit organizations, 75,000 of which are registered charities. They account for 12% of the country’s GDP employing 5% of the national labour force and comprising nearly 10% of service sector employment (Stewart, 1996). In the past five years this sector accounted for 13% of job growth in Canada (Hall, 1996). The value of donated labour output was 13 billion dollars (Day and Devlin, 1996), representing an estimated half a million full time, full year jobs (Duchesne, 1989). Keywords: CVSS, Centre for Voluntary Sector Studies, Working Paper Series,TRSM, Ted Rogers School of Management Citation:


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mary K. Meinhard Agnes G. Foster

[First paragraph of introduction]: One of the many challenges facing the nonprofit sector in Canada today is developing public awareness of the important role voluntary organizations play in the everyday lives of Canadians. Ranging from food banks, children’s aid societies, and immigrant service organizations, to opera companies and sporting societies, nonprofit and voluntary organizations offer a startlingly wide array of services which cannot be adequately provided directly through the open marketplace or the state. There are approximately 200,000 nonprofit organizations, 75,000 of which are registered charities. They account for 12% of the country’s GDP employing 5% of the national labour force and comprising nearly 10% of service sector employment (Stewart, 1996). In the past five years this sector accounted for 13% of job growth in Canada (Hall, 1996). The value of donated labour output was 13 billion dollars (Day and Devlin, 1996), representing an estimated half a million full time, full year jobs (Duchesne, 1989). Keywords: CVSS, Centre for Voluntary Sector Studies, Working Paper Series,TRSM, Ted Rogers School of Management Citation:


2005 ◽  
Vol 3 (5) ◽  
pp. 49
Author(s):  
Robert H. Beach, PhD

Numerous programs and policies have been developed at federal, state, and local levels to mitigate damages associated with natural disasters. However, agriculture has not been a priority area for natural disaster preparation, response, and recovery planning. Understandably, reducing deaths and injuries and aiding homeowners take precedence in an emergency. Nonetheless, agricultural losses account for a substantial share of total damages resulting from natural disasters. This article summarizes the findings of a study designed to identify key areas for improving agricultural disaster response and to recommend policies to reduce damages and expedite recovery from weather-related natural disasters affecting North Carolina agriculture.


Author(s):  
Benjamin S. Bingle ◽  
C. Kenneth Meyer ◽  
Ann Taylor

Centralto this paper is the task of identifying and understanding what differentiatesnonprofit human resources management from that practiced in public sectoragencies (e.g., federal, state, and local governments). The key differences highlighted here arevolunteer employment, the presence and role of a board of directors, and theemphasis nonprofit organizations place on strategic planning. Understanding these unique areas is arguablyvaluable if it leads to more effective human resource management practices,enhanced techniques, and uniquely tailored approaches to the administration ofnonprofit organizations. The analysisincludes an overview and discussion of topics (e.g., strategic human resourcesmanagement, employee motivation, and compensation) essential to enhancing ourunderstanding of human resources management in the nonprofit sector. Finally, existing literature is surveyed toidentify current trends and inform our discussion of future considerations fornonprofit human resources management.


2017 ◽  
Vol 8 (3) ◽  
pp. 211-235 ◽  
Author(s):  
Erynn Beaton ◽  
Hyunseok Hwang

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.


Author(s):  
Husam Abu-Khadra

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. 


2015 ◽  
Vol 33 (4) ◽  
pp. 112-140 ◽  
Author(s):  
Andrei S. Markovits ◽  
Joseph Klaver

The Greens' impact on German politics and public life has been enormous and massively disproportional to the size of their electoral support and political presence in the country's legislative and executive bodies on the federal, state, and local levels. After substantiating the Greens' proliferating presence on all levels of German politics with numbers; the article focuses on demonstrating how the Greens' key values of ecology, peace and pacifism, feminism and women's rights, and grass roots democracy—the signifiers of their very identity—have come to shape the existence of all other German parties bar none. If imitation is one of the most defining characteristics of success, the Greens can be immensely proud of their tally over the past thirty plus years.


2014 ◽  
Vol 5 (2) ◽  
pp. 231-259 ◽  
Author(s):  
Bruce A. Seaman ◽  
Amanda L. Wilsker ◽  
Dennis R. Young

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.


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