Suchergebnisse

Since 1997, the U.K. Government has sought to expand the provision of public services by supporting the independent nonprofit sector. With policies to build the capacity of the sector, public spending on voluntary organizations has grown from £2 billion in 1996/1997 to £6.88 billion in 2005/2006. Theory suggests that the comparative advantage of nonprofits lies in the mission motivation of workers, and predicts that motivated workers will accept lower wages. We examine sector wage differentials in time series to show that growth in voluntary sector wages for males has outpaced the private and public sectors, while relative female wages have remained static.

Current evidence suggests that nonprofits' use of Twitter is not strongly related to organizational size, unlike other technological developments. However, this evidence is primarily based on studies of large nonprofit organizations. This study uses a random sample of charities, stratified by size, to present evidence that organization size is a significant factor in multiple dimensions of social media use: the percentage of charities owning a Twitter handle, activity on the site, and popularity within the charities' network. Many charities are using Twitter, but larger charities are making more effective use of the platform to connect to other organizations. The very largest charities exhibit an overwhelming popularity effect in the network, whereas small charities are notably less active than their larger counterparts. Besides the substantive findings, we further demonstrate the methodological potential of using exponential random graph modeling to gain a deeper understanding of the characteristics of nonprofits' social media networks.

Interestingly, although many authors consent that nonprofit organizations and the nonprofit sector have grown in many countries, there is little discussion of how to best measure this growth. Looking at the broad universe of nonprofit organizations, there is no single measure that is relevant for the whole sector and captures changes adequately. This article gives an overview of commonly-used growth measures in the existing nonprofit literature and discusses the informative value of the various measures. Using Austrian and Scottish time-series data, we present an empirical example of how the growth story of the nonprofit sector can change depending on the measures used. The correlations between measures such as the number of organizations, income/expenditures, and assets are particularly small. We recommend that researchers measuring the growth of the nonprofit sector should be clear about the properties of their selected measure, and where possible should present alternative measures in their analysis.

Charities in the United Kingdom have been the subject of intense media, political, and public scrutiny in recent times; however, our understanding of the nature, extent, and determinants of charity misconduct is weak. Drawing upon a novel administrative dataset of 25,611 charities for the period 2006-2014 in Scotland, we develop models to predict two dimensions of charity misconduct: regulatory investigation and subsequent action. There have been 2,109 regulatory investigations of 1,566 Scottish charities over the study period, of which 31% resulted in regulatory action being taken. Complaints from members of the public are most likely to trigger an investigation, whereas the most common concerns relate to general governance and misappropriation of assets. Our multivariate analysis reveals a disconnect between the types of charities that are suspected of misconduct and those that are subject to subsequent regulatory action.

AbstractThe Global South contains low‐information environments that impose information search costs on organisations. We compare explanations for how employers make decisions in these environments. To do so, we analyse salaries collected from employers in Haiti, including local and international non‐profits and domestic and foreign businesses. Although preliminary findings suggest that international non‐governmental organisations pay above‐market salaries, accounting for alternative explanations from behavioural economics causes the organisational form's importance to dissipate. We find that anchoring and framing mechanisms separately influence decision‐making. These findings direct us to focus more on the actions and tools managers use to make decisions in low‐information environments.

AbstractIn the absence of a statutory instrument to enforce payment of a regulatory fee, regulators must rely on a combination of "carrots" and "sticks" to encourage financial contributions by the organizations they oversee. In contrast to studies of public funding of nonprofits, this article empirically evaluates the effectiveness of a government policy to rely on nonprofit funding of statutory regulation. The authors exploit a sharp discontinuity in the eligibility threshold for charities contributing to the new Fundraising Regulator in England and Wales to estimate a causal effect of the levy on participation. The article shows that the regulator's threat to "name and shame" was effective at incentivizing regulatory participation and generating income, but it raises some concerns about the long‐term viability of this approach. The results are significant at a time when many jurisdictions are considering how best to fund the regulation of nonprofits.

The first book of its kind, this volume brings together a range of experts to review key methodological issues in the study of voluntary action, charitable behaviour and participation in voluntary organisations. Using case studies from around the world – from ethnography to media analysis and surveys to peer research – chapters illustrate the challenges of researching altruistic actions and our conceptualisations of them. Across different fields and methods, authors unpick the methodological innovations and challenges in their own research to help guide future study. Demystifying research and deepening our ability to understand the role of the third sector, this accessible book is suitable for social researchers at all levels