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This article develops an executive compensation model focusing on board governance structure in nonprofit organizations. Drawn from a panel of nonprofits in three Upstate New York cities from 1998 to 2014, the analysis shows that chief executive officers (CEOs) compensation is positively associated with interlocking directorships of CEOs and boards of directors. The results reveal that the executives enjoy more compensation when they serve on the boards of other nonprofit organizations, hold more power in a leadership position with CEO duality and longer tenure, and when the organizations are led by busy boards where a majority of members in the boardroom sit on the boards of multiple other nonprofits. The analysis further shows that financial rewards offered to the executives are contingent upon women's representation in the boardroom. These findings suggest board governance composition plays a critical role in executive compensation. Implications for practice and future research are discussed.

A board interlock creates interorganizational networks where organizations are interconnected via overlapping board of directors. Board interlock is important for nonprofits because of its potential to impact organizational performance through the flow of information, resources, and status. While much is known about the consequences of board interlock, little is known about the mechanisms underlying its antecedents. This study explores three types of predictors of board interlock: organizational, dyadic, and structural characteristics. Inferential network analysis of a 17-year-period panel of nonprofits demonstrates that network relationships are shaped by the existing network structures, such as the tendency for preferential attachment (e.g., a social preference to connect with those who are already well connected) and transitivity (e.g., a social preference to connect with friends of friends). Findings inform nonprofit leaders about how to bridge to a board interlock network by recruiting well-connected board members serving on multiple boards.

Previous research lags behind in illuminating theoretical mechanisms that shape governance decision-making on board practices. Using an integrated theoretical approach, I examine how board interlock network and institutional factors are associated with board governance policy adoption in nonprofit organizations. A linear regression model is employed to investigate policies adopted by a panel of public charities in three cities in Upstate New York during 2008 and 2014. Results show that not only the presence of board interlock networks but also central network positions relate to extensive policy adoption. Results also reveal that the use of paid professionals in management relates to institutional isomorphism reflected by more extensive governance policy adoption. These results provide insights for nonprofit leaders seeking to facilitate good governance practices by paying attention to board members' affiliations and institutional environment considerations.

AbstractBoard interlock represents a phenomenon where organizations are connected via overlapping board members and executives. Board interlock is an important area of research in governance study because of its potential to impact governance outcomes through the flow of information, resources, and status. Despite its potential significance, the role of board interlock in governance has not been explicitly discussed in the nonprofit board governance literature. I review and synthesize corporate and nonprofit board governance literature and link this literature to the study of board interlock. Then, I review the extant literature on the antecedents and consequences of board interlock. I conclude by identifying gaps in the literature and proposing directions for future research.

Recent scholarship on organizational change has de-emphasized environment, core competencies at founding, and structural inertia in favor of the study of strategic management. We encourage renewed consideration of forces over which managers have less control. In a reconsideration and conceptual extension of Hager and Brudney's nature and nurture influences on nonprofit efforts to recruit volunteers, we introduce central dimensions of organizational ecology theory. We assert that more attention to the tenets of organizational ecology will sensitize the field to the influence of environments in which organizations operate. Consistent with Hager and Brudney, our longitudinal assessment of nonprofits not only records the value of purposeful adjustments of programs but also highlights how the evolution of structural conditions plays an essential role in core organizational outcomes in volunteer management. Beyond the usual validation of strategic management, we emphasize that the influence of environment and structure is an essential determinant of the fates of organizations over time.

AbstractInstitutional form is believed to influence organizational behavior and performance in producing collective goods such as healthcare services. Recent efforts in the United States seek to increase healthcare services provided by hospitals, but it is unclear whether and how these organizations respond to the policy changes. In this study, we examine the extent to which nonprofit hospitals change their provision of charity care in response to a regulatory policy specifying a target benchmark aimed at expanding charitable obligations. Specifically, we focus on the minimum charity care provision (MCCP) requirements in Illinois. Importantly, unlike previous research, we differentiate between hospitals facing minimum charity care spending requirements (nonprofits) and those not (for-profit and public). We use panel data from Illinois' Annual Hospital Questionnaire and county data from the American Community Survey, employing a differences-in-differences model. We find no evidence that nonprofit hospitals increase charity care in response to the MCCP requirements on average. Instead, we find that there is heterogeneity in responses; hospitals providing low levels of charity care prior to the policy increase charity care, while hospitals providing high levels of charity care prior to the policy do not respond or, if anything, decrease charity care. Thus, while regulations that set low-target benchmarks provide insufficient incentives for nonprofit hospitals to increase charity care on average, explicit policy mandates that reduce directive goal ambiguity may still narrow gaps in performance.

The global COVID-19 health pandemic has put extraordinary pressure on already fiscally strapped local governments. As local jurisdictions search for strategies to meet rising service expectations with declining resources, use of volunteers would seem to offer significant advantages. This study examines the involvement of volunteers to deliver services in all county governments in one U.S. state, as well as the factors that explain the extent of use of this service approach. Our analysis is based on information collected from a survey of county government officials working in 10 service domains, supplemented by demographic and other data drawn from a variety of sources. To arrive at valid estimates of volunteer involvement in the delivery of county services, we introduce a novel methodology that corrects our survey data for possible sample and response biases based on a calibration estimator using auxiliary information. The results of our inquiry reveal a higher use of volunteers to deliver services by county governments than suggested by the literature. The findings show, moreover, that counties with higher per capita income, greater percentage of residents attaining a bachelor's degree or higher formal education, and lower unemployment are likely to involve volunteers in the delivery of more services, as are those county governments with greater per capita spending and per capita property tax revenues. These results have important implications in regard to the capacity of local governments to use volunteers, which we treat in the Discussion.

Nonprofit hospitals receive significant federal, state, and local tax exemptions, partly based on the rationale that nonprofit hospitals provide public goods and services. Through Minimum Charity Care Provision (MCCP) requirements, nonprofit hospitals are required to spend a certain percentage of their revenues on charity care. However, it is not clear whether these requirements increase spending on charity care. This brief summarizes findings from research examining the differences in provisions of charity care across different hospital market sectors – non-profit, for-profit, and government. Findings suggest that MCCP requirements for nonprofit hospitals do not lead to more charity care. If anything, targeting policies that use external incentives may have crowded out some organizations' internal motivations to provide public goods and services.

What can governments do to encourage nonprofit hospitals to provide greater benefits to their communities? Recent efforts by the federal and state governments seek to hold hospitals accountable for community health, in part by incentivizing charity care provision. Laws that set benchmarks for charity care spending are increasingly used, but their efficacy is uncertain. In this study, we examine the extent to which Illinois' minimum charity care provision (MCCP) law increases nonprofit hospital charity care. Importantly, we differentiate between responses for hospitals required to provide minimal charitable spending (nonprofits) and those that are not (for-profit and public). We use detailed panel (2009-2015) data from Illinois' Annual Hospital Questionnaire and county-level data from the American Community Survey. We exploit a discrete change in charitable care requirements for nonprofit hospitals to identify the effect of the MCCP law on charity care, controlling for hospital characteristics, county demographics, and year and county (or hospital) fixed effects. Employing a differences-in-differences model, we find no evidence that the MCCP law increases charity care on average. Instead, we find some evidence that the law's effects vary by how much charity care hospitals provided previously – charity care increases for those providing lower levels at baseline, narrowing the gap in charity care provision with those that provide high levels at baseline. The results suggest that setting low benchmarks does not create sufficient incentives for nonprofit hospitals to provide greater charity care on average, but instead may narrow the gap between high and low charity care hospitals.

This article takes a first step toward analyzing the characteristics of a cross-policy, state-wide collaborative system. Specifically, using data from the Atlas of Collaboration project, we offer a big-picture analysis of how over 200 externally directed collaborative governance regimes (CGRs) are operationalized in a state-level collaborative system consisting of 13 collaborative platforms operating across five policy areas (economic development, education, health, natural resources, public safety) in Oregon. We focus on three attributes—geographic scope, collaborative size, and collaborative characteristics—aggregated at the system level across CGRs, as well as across collaborative platforms and policy areas. The descriptive findings reveal that collaborative efforts are geographically dispersed across the state, involve thousands of participants representing organizations from the public, private, and nonprofit sectors, and vary across multiple characteristics, such as organizational form, lead organization, funding model, structural roles, staffing, and extent of face-to-face dialogue. These findings lay the groundwork for future theoretical development and empirical research.

AbstractModern election campaigns leverage social media and the networks within to get their messages directly out to the public. We use the theory of extended party networks to explore networks of engaged users who extensively amplify messages posted by political candidates. Using Twitter data from the Senate races in the U.S. 2018 midterm election, we build Twitter extended party networks out of dedicated amplifiers to understand how those engaged users associate with the candidate message amplification. Results show that certain super‐amplifiers have a disproportionately large impact on information flows, and that decentralized networks with higher rates of follower reciprocity are associated with higher rates of message diffusion. Our study also finds some support for the idea that super‐amplifiers engage in coordinated efforts to diffuse political messages.