Abstract
This research note identifies seven key dimensions of the nonprofit sector that nonprofit stakeholders want to monitor to assess the sector’s condition, including financial resources; human resources; the diversity of nonprofit boards, staff, and clients; the impact of the nonprofit sector; advocacy activity; ethical and legal behavior; and the existence of a supportive environment. The article then describes current measures of these dimensions, noting the shortcomings of many of these measures. Two government data sources, the National Income and Product Accounts (NIPAs) and the Current Population Survey (CPS), are highlighted that contain timely information about the nonprofit sector but which, to date, have been underutilized by sector stakeholders. Next, the article describes the picture of the nonprofit sector that emerges from the relevant measures before concluding with discussion of further work needed to improve measurement of the sector.
Keywords
Introduction
Today, a variety of data sources provide a broad range of useful and timely information about the state of the for-profit sector in the United States. For example, we learn quarterly about changes in the gross domestic product (GDP), monthly about variations in the unemployment rate, and nightly—or even more frequently—about the ups and downs of the Dow Jones Index. Unfortunately, similarly helpful indicators of the condition of the country’s nonprofit sector seem elusive. The lack of relevant, high-quality, current information about the nonprofit sector is a significant challenge for nonprofit researchers and leaders, foundation and other funders, government policymakers, and others seeking to take good care of this important part of our society.
To address this gap in knowledge about the state of the nonprofit sector, this research note first describes some of the major existing measures of the sector’s condition and their shortcomings. It then identifies seven indicators of the nonprofit sector’s health that nonprofit leaders and other stakeholders would like to have available, including measures of the sector’s financial resources; human resources; the diversity of nonprofit boards, staff, and clients; the impact of the nonprofit sector; nonprofit advocacy activity; ethical and legal behavior, and the supportiveness of the environment for nonprofit activity. Existing data that speak to these seven indicators are reviewed, with gaps noted in information about several of these dimensions including effectiveness, advocacy, and issues regarding nonprofit clients. At the same time, special attention is given to describing two currently underutilized data sources, the National Income and Product Accounts (NIPAs) and the Current Population Survey (CPS). The article closes with suggestions for improved monitoring of the sector’s condition. As hopefully is clear, our interest is in identifying a range of useful indicators of the state of the nonprofit sector, and not in developing a single, composite index of the sector’s health.
Existing Measures of the Nonprofit Sector
To be sure, there are a variety of measures of the U.S. nonprofit sector now available. Perhaps the most important compilation of sector-wide data is undertaken by the Urban Institute in its annual “Nonprofit Sector in Brief” series and occasional longer, more comprehensive Nonprofit Almanacs (see, e.g., NCCS Project Team, 2020; McKeever et al., 2016). Among the other most frequently used references on the nonprofit sector are reports on volunteering from AmeriCorps (formerly the Corporation for National and Community Service, e.g., AmeriCorps, n.d.; AmeriCorps, 2018), data on nonprofit employment from a partnership of the Center for Civil Society Studies at Johns Hopkins University and the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (e.g., Bureau of Labor Statistics, 2019; Center for Civil Society Studies, n.d.-a; Salamon & Newhouse, 2020), and information on charitable giving from Giving USA (e.g., Giving USA 2021, 2021).
Information from these sources has been complemented by findings from other regular, occasional, or one-time surveys, including national, local, and subsector and issue-specific studies (see, e.g., Americans for the Arts, n.d.; Center for Civil Society Studies, n.d.-c; Independent Sector, 2020a; Nonprofit Finance Fund, 2018).
Shortcomings of Existing Measures
While the reports identified above and others provide important information about the nonprofit sector in the United States, unfortunately they fall short, in a number of important ways, of what is needed to provide nonprofit leaders and other stakeholders with timely measures of the state of the nonprofit sector. A variety of concerns can be raised about existing measures of the condition of the U.S. nonprofit sector. For example, a drawback of many surveys of nonprofits is their use of convenience rather than random samples of nonprofits, which limits their generalizability. Another important shortcoming is the lack of timeliness of many indicators.
The major references on the U.S. nonprofit sector provide data that are generally at least 6 months—and sometimes several years—old by the time they are reported. For example, the Urban Institute’s latest “Nonprofit Sector in Brief” appeared in June 2020 with information on nonprofit finances in 2016 (NCCS Project Team, 2020). The most recent full-scale nonprofit employment report from the Johns Hopkins Center for Civil Society Studies was published in June 2020 with employment data through 2017, although the center has used estimating techniques to produce more timely, shorter nonprofit employment reports during the coronavirus pandemic (Center for Civil Society Studies, n.d.-b; Newhouse, 2022; Salamon & Newhouse, 2020). The annual Giving USA reports, which are researched and written by Indiana University’s Lilly Family School of Philanthropy, provide a somewhat timelier account of charitable giving, with reports now typically appearing in June regarding giving levels for the previous year (Giving USA 2021, 2021).
Previous Studies
To address concerns about timeliness and other shortcomings, the project reported on here sought to find new measures to complement the existing indicators currently being produced. An initial step was to identify the most important kinds of measures to collect (e.g., indicators of the financial condition of nonprofits, the human resources available to nonprofits, the diversity of nonprofit workforce and boards).
Previous studies that have discussed measures of the state of the nonprofit sector have focused largely on indicators identified by the researchers who developed these reports. Several papers prepared for a recent policy symposium hosted by ARNOVA and Independent Sector proposed measures that should be considered in assessing the health of the U.S. nonprofit sector (see papers in a special issue of Nonprofit Policy Forum, 2018). There have also been a variety of efforts to chart—and compare—the nonprofit sectors in different countries around the world. Some of these studies have combined multiple indicators into a single, composite index of the health of the nonprofit sector, which is not a goal of this project. For example, an entry by Heinrich (2010) on “Civil Society Indicators and Indexes” in the International Encyclopedia of Civil Society lists six of these composite indices that, at least for a time, have been available for a substantial number of countries.
The Indiana University Lilly Family School of Philanthropy (n.d.) and the Charities Aid Foundation (n.d.) now produce reports on the state of philanthropy around the world. A 2014 article by the International Center for Not-for-Profit Law (2014) provides a useful review of eight assessment tools that measure the state of the enabling environment for civil society around the world.
Method
In contrast to these previous projects that have mostly highlighted measures of concern to the researchers who conducted the studies, we especially wanted to identify indicators of interest to nonprofit sector leaders. Secondary audiences were nonprofit scholars and journalists who cover the nonprofit sector. To this end, input was solicited from, among others, senior staff at national nonprofits and foundations (e.g., Independent Sector, United Way of America, GuideStar/Candid, YMCA of the USA, Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation), state nonprofit associations, researchers affiliated with the Association for Research on Nonprofit Organizations and Voluntary Action (ARNOVA), and staff at the Chronicle of Philanthropy.
Overall, responses were collected from 159 individuals in various formats, including 16 one-on-one interviews, 40 small group sessions with two to 10 participants; and 103 individuals in larger groups of 13 to 40. To be sure, the feedback from this convenience sample of nonprofit leaders and others regarding priority indicators would differ from input from other respondents. However, this survey is, we believe, an important early step in identifying what nonprofit stakeholders want to know about the state of the nonprofit sector, and is an effort that has not generally been undertaken by others reporting on the state of the nonprofit sector.
Priority Indicators
When respondents were asked about the most important measures that they would like to have available about the health of the nonprofit sector, they identified the following:
Amount of financial resources in the nonprofit sector, including the extent of nonprofit revenues from fees and other service charges, government funding, philanthropic support, and other sources;
Aggregate level of human resources in the nonprofit sector, including the number of paid employees and volunteers working at nonprofits;
Diversity of nonprofit boards of directors, staff, and clients;
Nonprofit impact, effectiveness, and adherence to good/best practices;
Amount of advocacy activity and level of engagement of nonprofits themselves and nonprofits’ mobilization of their clients;
Ethical and legal behavior of nonprofits; and
Enabling environment for nonprofit action, including supportive laws and regulations governing nonprofit activity, public trust and confidence in the nonprofit sector, and the level of for-profit competition.
Measures
Based on the indicators recommended by interviewees, the next step was to identify measures of these elements, including indicators of financial resources, human resources, diversity, and others. Important goals of this project were to seek measures that are high quality, timely, and would not require a significant new investment of funding to obtain.
A contribution of this project is the highlighting of two data sources—the National Income and Product Accounts (NIPAs) and the Current Population Survey (CPS)—that can provide timely and sustainable indicators of the state of the nonprofit sector. To be sure, other research and reports on the nonprofit sector have used information from these data sources. 1 For example, the Urban Institute’s periodic Nonprofit Almanacs discuss data on nonprofits from the NIPAs in several chapters, and AmeriCorps annually conveys volunteering data from the CPS. But few existing reports appear to use quarterly NIPA or monthly CPS data to report on the nonprofit sector in a timely way.
National Income and Product Accounts
The U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA) produces the NIPAs which contain extensive information on economic activity in the United States. The economic activity of nonprofit organizations is included in the NIPAs in data on “nonprofit institutions serving households” (NPISHs). According to the BEA, NPISHs are private organizations with tax-exempt status that primarily provide services to households in one of the following categories: religious and welfare (including social services, grant-making foundations, political organizations, museums and libraries, and some civic and fraternal organizations); medical care; education and research; recreation (including cultural, athletic, and some civic and fraternal organizations); and personal business (including labor unions, legal aid, and professional associations). [NPISH] does not include nonprofit institutions that primarily service business. (BEA, 2018)
Thus, tax-exempt chambers of commerce, trade associations, and homeowners’ associations, which are considered to serve businesses rather than households, are included in the business rather than NPISH sector of the NIPAs. Other nonprofits that operate like for-profit businesses, including tax-exempt cooperatives, credit unions, mutual financial institutions, and tax-exempt manufacturers, such as university presses, are also treated as businesses in the NIPAs (Mead et al., 2003).
In the NIPAs, business activity is measured by the prices paid for the goods and services produced by businesses. However, according to BEA, “Because NPISHs produce services that are not generally sold at market prices, the value of these services is measured as the costs incurred in producing them,” which are largely the costs of the labor working for NPISHs (BEA, 2019).
The BEA’s quarterly NIPA estimates include a range of information about the revenues and expenses of NPISHs with some breakdowns by types of revenues, expenditures, and nonprofits (see, for example, the underlying data shown in BEA, 2022c).
The NIPA tables also include an annual comparison of BEA’s estimates of NPISH revenue and expenses with similar estimates by the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) Statistics of Income report that draws on data from 990 forms filed by nonprofits (BEA, 2021b). As the relevant BEA analysis makes clear, there are important definitional differences in what BEA and IRS cover in their nonprofit-related statistics, with BEA reporting a significantly smaller nonprofit sector in its data on NPISH than the IRS conveys in its data on tax-exempt entities. As also discussed further below, first comprehending and then perhaps reducing or at least being clear about differences among nonprofit data sources should be an important agenda item for nonprofit researchers, government officials involved in producing nonprofit data, and nonprofit leaders, who all have a stake in deepening understanding of the nonprofit sector. 2
Current Population Survey
The Current Population Survey (CPS), which is a joint project of the U.S. Census Bureau and the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, is the main source of labor force statistics for the United States. Each month a representative national sample of approximately 60,000 U.S. households is surveyed for the CPS (Census Bureau, 2020).
Included in the CPS is a question that asks respondents about which sector they work in—government, business, or nonprofit—or whether they are self-employed or work in the family business. Responses to this question, along with responses to other demographic and work-related questions that ask about gender, race, and ethnicity of respondents, respondent earnings, and so on, are helpful in providing a picture of the human resources in the nonprofit sector. The September supplement to the CPS includes questions on volunteering that provide a picture of this important aspect of the nonprofit sector.
Other Measures
In addition to the NIPA data on NPISH and CPS data on nonprofit employees, there are a variety of other sources of data on the state of the nonprofit sector that speak to the key dimensions identified above. Table 1 lists important dimensions of the nonprofit sector along with selected measures that are currently available for these components.
Selected Indicators of the State of the Nonprofit Sector.
While some of the measures identified in Table 1, including the NIPA and CPS data, seem of high quality, others have important shortcomings and should only be used with caution. In particular
USAspending.gov only covers federal funding and not state and local government funding and does not adequately track federal funds that pass through state and local governments to nonprofits;
the Fundraising Effectiveness Project reports on fundraising totals for an unrepresentative sample of nonprofits;
Lobbying is only one form of nonprofit advocacy, and therefore nonprofit lobbying expenses as recorded in 990 forms are not a very good measure of the overall advocacy activity of nonprofits;
Census Bureau surveys of service providers report on the revenues of tax-exempt and for-profit organizations, yielding some insight into nonprofit versus for-profit competition. However, the surveys cover only a portion of the nonprofit sector, and survey reports group some government organizations, like government hospitals, with nonprofit agencies.
As reflected in the table by their absence, it was also judged that appropriate measures do not currently exist for client diversity, the impact of the nonprofit sector, the extent to which nonprofits mobilize their clients to engage in advocacy, and the supportiveness of laws and regulations governing nonprofits. As discussed below, developing better measures for these and other dimensions should be a priority for future work. And, to repeat, addressing definitional differences among the NIPA, CPS, and other important data sources should also be a major concern.
State of the Nonprofit Sector
Drawing on the measures identified above, what follows are highlights of the picture that emerges of the U.S. nonprofit sector in 2020–2021. While not reflected in the information that follows, current, quarterly data are available from BEA on the finances of NPISH and from CPS on the nonprofit workforce. To take advantage of the timeliness of this data, the data would have to be presented in a format, such as an online brief (see, e.g., Independent Sector, n.d.-a), that facilitates quicker availability than a scholarly journal, for which there is generally a significant time lag between the submission of a paper and its publication. However, the discussion that follows indicates the kind of information that is available through the BEA and CPS data.
Financial Resources
According to data from the BEA, the nonprofit sector—as measured by the gross value added by nonprofit institutions serving households (NPISH)—accounted for $1.3 trillion, or 5.7%, of the overall economy—as measured by the GDP—in 2021 (BEA, 2022a).
While the GDP grew by an inflation-adjusted 5.7% from 2020 to 2021, the gross value added by NPISH also increased, but at a much lower, inflation-adjusted 1.5% in the same period (BEA, 2022b).
Human Resources
Paid workers
Based on data from the CPS, nonprofit organizations employed 7.0% of all workers—including nonagricultural wage and salary workers and excluding military, family, and self-employed workers—in June 2020, the same percentage of workers that the nonprofit sector employed in June 2019 (IPUMS CPS, n.d.; see Note 3 on the differences between CPS and Bureau of Labor Statistics [BLS] nonprofit employment data).
Volunteers
AmeriCorps reports that in 2017, 30.3% of adults volunteered through an organization, with 77.4 million Americans volunteering 6.9 billion hours (AmeriCorps, 2018).
The 2017 adult volunteering rate of 30.3% represents a dramatic increase over the 24.% volunteer rate in 2015 and marks a reversal in the general decline of the volunteer rate since the early 2000s (Grimm & Dietz, 2018). However, importantly, some experts feel that, because of changes in survey methodology, the 2017 figures for volunteering are not consistent with previous measures and overstate the increase in volunteering (Grimm & Dietz, 2019).
Diversity
In June 2020, nonprofit workers were 68.4% White, 11.8% Black, 10.2% Hispanic, 5.9% Asian, and 0.6% American Indian. Thus, the nonprofit workforce is less diverse than the overall workforce which in June 2020 was 60.5% White, 12.2% Black, 18.3% Hispanic, 6.5% Asian, and 0.7% American Indian (Current Population Survey, 2020).
Public Trust
The Edelman Trust Barometer reports that 45% of the general population in the U.S. trusted nongovernmental organizations to do what is right in 2022, a decline from 50% in 2021 (Edelman, 2022). 4
Further Work Needed
In the initial phase of this project, a broad range of nonprofit stakeholders identified important dimensions of the nonprofit sector that they would like to see tracked. Some existing sources, like Giving USA data on charitable giving, provide a portion of the desired information. Two other data sources, the NIPAs and CPS, which have been underutilized to date as sources of information about the nonprofit sector, can contribute especially timely evidence about the state of this important sector. All of the data sources referenced are easily accessible and, importantly, do not require a significant new expenditure of funds to be used.
However, while these well-known and newer sources of information fill out some of the picture about how the nonprofit sector is faring, there is significant additional work that needs to be done to provide the full and timely assessment of the sector desired by nonprofit leaders and others. In particular, advances are needed in developing better measures for dimensions of the nonprofit sector that have been deemed important, like impact, but for which good data are currently lacking; and in drawing clearer meaning about the state of the nonprofit sector from the measures that currently exist.
Missing Measures
As noted above, there are not yet good measures for several dimensions of the nonprofit sector that nonprofit leaders have identified as important to monitor. Dimensions without good sector-wide measures include fee income, government funding, client diversity, impact, advocacy, ethical and legal behavior, the supportiveness of laws and regulations governing nonprofits, and business competition with nonprofits. Measures of all these dimensions deserve further work, although some of the indicators, such as for nonprofit impact, are likely to be more difficult to develop than others (Land, 2002).
While progress has been made in measuring the impact of individual nonprofits and some advances have been achieved in assessing the impact of clusters, or portfolios, of nonprofits addressing similar challenges, like reducing homelessness or reversing climate change, we are still unable to measure the impact of the nonprofit sector as a whole. 5 This inability to gauge the overall impact of the nonprofit sector is an important deficiency that handicaps efforts by nonprofit leaders and others to make the case for the importance of the overall nonprofit sector in our society. As challenging as the problem of measuring overall sector impact is, nonprofit scholars should be exploring how to make at least incremental progress on this important issue rather than ignoring it as currently seems to be the case.
Besides sector impact, some of the existing measures of sector health also need additional study. For example, one wonders how accurate individuals are in responding to the CPS question that asks in what sector they work. It may be that many individuals don’t really know this information. Another concern that should be investigated is whether there are demographic biases in the CPS and other data that misrepresent the nonprofit workforce and nonprofit activity in communities of color. More representative sampling would be helpful for the BoardSource survey of board and CEO diversity (BoardSource, 2017). Of course, it would also be preferable not to have to rely on a single data source for measures of any of the key dimensions.
Beyond these improvements, more indicators that break down data by nonprofit subsector (e.g., health, education, arts, etc.) and by geographic area (e.g., states, counties, etc.) are also desirable. While ideal measures may take some time to develop, we might start by including reasonable approximations in analyses of the state of the nonprofit sector, keeping in mind cost considerations and the desirability of timeliness in identifying new measures.
If new resources can be raised, significant consideration should be given to establishing a regular national survey of a representative sample of nonprofit organizations, perhaps including a panel component that tracks the same nonprofits over time. 6 This survey could be designed to provide critical and useful data about nonprofits that would fill in some of the gaps in information noted above and yield helpful, new insights for nonprofit leaders and managers of individual nonprofit organizations.
It is especially important for new surveys and other data collection efforts to go beyond the collection of additional financial information from nonprofits and develop measures of client diversity, impact, ethical and legal behavior, and other nonfinancial aspects of nonprofits. For example, to measure nonprofits’ ethical and legal behavior, researchers might explore the value of the following: a survey of nonprofit employees asking about their perception of misconduct at their organizations; a survey of nonprofits querying whether they have an ethics code and a compliance program; reports by nonprofit watchdog groups; and a count of instances of nonprofit misdeeds that show up in the media.
Government relies heavily on nonprofits to deliver government-funded services and has a stake in the health and performance of the nonprofit sector. There seem to be good reasons for government to fund a new, regular survey of nonprofits that would help government and others track where nonprofits need assistance and where they are already strong. 7 Nonprofit researchers and nonprofit leaders should collaborate in encouraging government to improve its coverage of nonprofits in its many databases. 8
Improved Meaning Making
Some of the measures discussed above are easily understood and provide relatively clear signals about needed action. For example, declines in charitable giving noted in Giving USA should prompt consideration of ways to reverse the declines, even if some uncertainty exists about the precise steps that are needed to increase giving. However, while some measures are relatively straightforward, others—such as the NIPA numbers on NPISH—may be more difficult for stakeholders to understand and require further exploration.
As mentioned above, it seems especially important for nonprofit researchers, government data officials, nonprofit leaders, and other nonprofit stakeholders to understand and reconcile definitional and other differences among various indicators, such as differences between data from the BEA and the IRS on the size of the nonprofit sector and between data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics and the Current Population Survey on nonprofit employment. Developing papers that speak to the differences between data sources and organizing convenings that bring together interested parties for discussion of the differences would be sensible first steps.
In addition, it would be especially helpful to understand the reasons behind trends in different measures and to identify corrective actions that can be taken to improve problematic measures. How could we best diversify the nonprofit workforce? What steps need to be taken to improve public confidence in the nonprofit sector? 9
Work on some of the measures discussed in this article is at a relatively early stage, and it is important to encourage more research in this area. For example, it would be beneficial to get economists looking more carefully at the NPISH numbers to better understand their meaning, including the factors that drive the numbers in one direction or another and the implications of the numbers for needed action. In addition, consideration of what are appropriate or target levels for the different indicators would also be useful.
Concluding Thoughts
The call for more complete and timely data about the state of the nonprofit sector rests on the assumption that this information can provide useful insights to scholars, nonprofit leaders, policymakers, and others who care about the nonprofit sector. In fact, in Independent Sector’s (n.d.-a) new quarterly and annual “Health of the Nonprofit Sector” reports, which this author helped develop, this important, national association of nonprofits and foundations has begun to highlight many of the measures referenced in this research note and discuss the implications of the measures for needed changes in policy and practice. The National Council of Nonprofits (2019), another important leadership organization, also recently published a report on the nonprofit sector that relies heavily on data.
Examples from distant and more recent history suggest that having more timely, high-quality data about the state of the sector is critical for nonprofit stakeholders. In the early 1980s, the Reagan administration sought to soften its call for sizable federal budget cuts by claiming that private philanthropy would expand to fill the budget gap in social programs. However, timely research by the Urban Institute cast significant doubt on the ability of philanthropy to grow to this extent, and helped pave the way for increased tax breaks for charitable contributions that assisted in offsetting at least some of the federal budget cuts (Salamon, 1984).
In a contrasting situation where relevant data were not very visible, recovery efforts associated with the Great Recession of 2007–2009 arguably might have been strengthened if there had been better recognition of the important role of nonprofits in providing jobs for the nation’s workers and more government funding had been directed to nonprofits to hire the unemployed. More recently in the COVID-19 pandemic, good data have been limited regarding the capacity of nonprofits to weather the health and economic stresses and address the increased needs for assistance. At the same time, timely information about the significant loss of nonprofit jobs during the pandemic has helped nonprofit leaders make a case for including nonprofits in pandemic relief legislation (Newhouse, 2022).
Finally, the lack of good impact data is striking in efforts to better understand the contribution that nonprofits made to increasing voter turnout in the 2020 elections and to better gauge the role that nonprofits can play in coming years in addressing the concerns about racial inequities now roiling the United States. Hopefully, this article has helped to lay some of the groundwork for new efforts to improve data on important, but not well-understood dimensions of the nonprofit sector and to portray the state of the nonprofit sector in a more relevant and timely way.
Footnotes
Acknowledgements
The author is grateful to Dan Cardinali, Jeff Moore, Allison Grayson, and their colleagues at Independent Sector for hosting him while he started developing this article during a study leave from George Mason University. The author also thanks Lewis Faulk and Jasmine Johnson for their collegial help with the analysis of data from the Current Population Survey, and Kyle Brown, Harvey Davis, and Takashi Yamashita from the U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis for improving his understanding of the coverage of nonprofit institutions in the National Income and Product Accounts. Finally, the author acknowledges the many helpful suggestions of the anonymous reviewers of previous drafts of this research note.
Declaration of Conflicting Interests
The author declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
Funding
The author(s) disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: The author received funding support for the research for this article through a study leave from George Mason University and service as a visiting scholar at Independent Sector.
