Abstract
We are pleased to introduce this issue of Nonprofit and Voluntary Sector Quarterly. The issue contains nine articles, and most of them have a connection to the important topic of strategy in the nonprofit sector, although they concentrate on different aspects of nonprofit strategy.
The first article, by A. A. Lund-Chaix and Erna Gelles, presents “A Cultural Perspective of the Effect of a Government-Voluntary Sector Partnership for Enhancing Access to Postsecondary Education.” Decisions regarding whether and where to attend postsecondary education are often based on limited knowledge and financial resources. The increasing costs of attendance have led to inequalities in access for students from varying backgrounds. Using cultural capital theory as a framework for studying nonprofit and voluntary sector activities, Lund-Chaix and Gelles examine the effect of the State of Oregon’s government-voluntary sector partnership for improving access to postsecondary education, a proposed strategy to improve access that combines a private scholarship program with a volunteer mentoring program. The authors suggest further research on the utility of cultural capital for other cross-cutting policy domains.
Helen Stride and Malcolm Higgs present “An Investigation Into the Relationship Between Values and Commitment: A Study of Staff in the U.K. Charity Sector” that explores staff-organization value fit as a nonprofit strategy. In the management literature, the concept of values fit has long been a significant theme, with the alignment of values of staff and organization thought to lead to positive outcomes. Analysis of the results of a survey and analysis of two U.K. charities show that the perceptions of organization values had the greatest impact on staff commitment, yet the alignment of staff values and perceptions of organization values only had an effect in one of the charities. Stride and Higgs discuss the implications of this result, which challenges the dominant view on such alignment.
In “Strategic Orientation and Social Enterprise Performance,” Gordon Liu, Sachiko Takeda, and Wai-Wai Ko expand our understanding of how application of an organization’s pursuit of strategic orientation (SO) might have positive effects on its performance, with respect to social enterprises. Based on data from British and Japanese social enterprises, they examine the mediating roles of market effectiveness and consumer satisfaction in both the social and commercial domains with regard to SO effects on performance, as well as how performance in one aspect of practice can positively moderate the impact of SO behavior in another. Their article contributes to ongoing efforts to understand strategic management of social enterprises.
In the next article, Markus Beckmann and Anica Zeyen examine “Franchising as a Strategy for Combining Small and Large Group Advantages (Logics) in Social Entrepreneurship: A Hayekian Perspective.” Beckmann and Zeyen develop a Hayekian perspective on social franchising that distinguishes between the logics of small groups and large groups. They argue that mission-driven social entrepreneurs often draw on small-group logic when starting their social ventures but face difficulty when scaling shifts their operations toward a large-group logic. They find that social franchising offers a strategy to replicate the small group despite systemwide scaling to mobilize social capital and reduce agency costs. Employing a Hayekian perspective, Beckmann and Zeyen offer an explanation regarding why social franchising is a suitable scaling strategy for some social entrepreneurship organizations and not others.
In “What Motivates Donors to Athletic Programs: A New Model of Donor Behavior,” Yong Jae KoYong Chae Rhee, Mathew Walker, and Jeoung-Hak Lee investigate strategy in another domain: fund-raising for athletic programs in major universities. More specifically, the authors study donations received from college alumni and boosters, which account for the most substantial portion of many college athletic budgets. To streamline solicitation efforts, the authors propose using Existence Relatedness Growth (ERG) Theory as a guide to develop and test an integrated model of college donor motives. Based on a sample of college sport donors, the results yield a psychometrically sound measurement scale. The authors conclude by suggesting implications and practical applications.
Capacity building attracts considerable attention from funders, researchers, and others as a possible strategy to invigorate nonprofit organization performance. In “The Impact of Capacity-Building Programs on Nonprofits: A Random Assignment Evaluation,” authors Amy Minzner, Jacob A. Klerman, Carrie E. Markovitz, and Barbara Fink implement an experimental design. As the authors note, in the nonprofit sector, capacity-building efforts derive from the desire to increase organizational effectiveness and to shore up limited administration and other support. Despite a general consensus about the importance of capacity building, little high-quality evidence exists on the impact of capacity-building investments. Based on the evaluation of one of the largest organizational capacity-building initiatives in the United States (the federal Compassion Capital Fund Demonstration Program), this article presents the findings from the first random assignment evaluation of nonprofit capacity building. Findings from the evaluation provide evidence that capacity-building efforts increase capacity in each of five critical areas.
Grace L. Chikoto and Daniel Gordon Neely examine another area of capacity building in “Building Nonprofit Financial Capacity: The Impact of Revenue Concentration and Overhead Costs.” The authors test empirically the claim that revenue concentration contributes to the growth of nonprofit organizations. Using National Center for Charitable Statistics (NCCS) digitized data for 1998-2003, the authors examine whether revenue concentration is a viable revenue-generating strategy to bolster nonprofit financial capacity. The findings refute the conventional wisdom of revenue diversification and show that implementing a revenue concentration strategy generates growth in a nonprofit’s financial capacity over time, particularly in total revenue. Contrary to some prescriptions, the authors find that to support financial capacity growth, nonprofits must make positive investments in administrative and fund-raising support but not in high executive salaries.
In “The Invention and Institutionalization of Volunteer Centers: A Comparative Analysis of Norway and Denmark,” Håkon Lorentzen and Lars Skov Henriksen turn to national government strategy. They seek to explain differences in governmental implementation strategies of volunteer centers in Norway and Denmark. Focusing on shifting policies and governmental initiatives, they first describe the emergence of volunteer centers and then turn to the explanation of the observed variations across the two nations. They report that the functions of the volunteer centers were strongly affected by centralistic trends in Danish social policy in contrast to a broader acceptance of local welfare variations in Norway; the Danish volunteer centers were able to establish a national umbrella organization, whereas the Norwegian volunteer centers lacked a national coordinating unit; and finally, an independent legal form in which local associations are members in Denmark may have helped Danish volunteer centers bring about a sense of local ownership, whereas in Norway, volunteer centers had weak ties to other local voluntary associations and were at times perceived as a threat to them.
Whether or not your primary interest lies in the domain of nonprofit strategy, you will find these articles valuable and stimulating. We recommend them to you. Happy reading!