Nonprofit and Voluntary Sector Quarterly

This article studies the influence of the procedural justice resulting from participation in decision-making on employees’ affective commitment in social enterprises. It also examines whether any potential link between participation and commitment is due to social exchange, as is the case with for-profit companies. The study is based on data from employees of French work integration social enterprises. The results confirm the positive relationship between procedural justice and affective commitment and the mediating role of perceived organizational support and leader–member exchanges. Managerial recommendations are then given to best maintain or increase employees’ involvement in the decision-making processes of social enterprises.

Using data from a survey of large nonprofits across Canada, this study focuses on the determinants of the range of diversity (defined as the number of different ethnocultural and visible minority groups represented) on boards across the country. The determinants of diversity that the article examines include community, organizational, and general board characteristics as well as board diversity practices. We examine the extent to which these factors are related to an increased range of diversity on the boards. It appears that the diversity of the community that nonprofits operate in and efforts to institutionalize formal diversity-related policies are particularly significant determinants of diversity, although board size and reliance on interorganizational alliances in recruitment of board members also have a small relationship. The implications for theory and practice are examined.

This paper investigates the how the volunteering behaviors of family and household members influence an individual’s decision to volunteer. Using data from the 2005 Current Population Survey’s Volunteering Supplement, I test how living with volunteers and living with people who have never volunteered affect volunteering. I find that living with volunteers dramatically increases the likelihood of volunteering, especially for religious volunteering. The more volunteers the person lives with, the higher the person’s probability of volunteering. People who live with others who say that they have never volunteered in their lives are much less likely to volunteer and volunteer fewer hours. Living with volunteers also changes the methods by which people become involved in volunteering.

Nonprofit human service organizations operating within the same regional network are often faced with dual pressure to compete as well as coordinate administrative operations (by sharing funding, staff, or space) to enhance efficiency. Emerging evidence has demonstrated that competing organizations coordinate, despite the risks. Trust, or perceived trustworthiness between two organizations may mitigate the negative influence of competition on coordination, however there have been few explicit tests of this hypothesis among nonprofit organizations. Drawing on quantitative data collected from a network of 36 nonprofit children’s behavioral health organizations, this article empirically tests how competition and perceived trustworthiness interact to influence administrative coordination. Results support the hypothesis that trustworthiness moderates the influence of competition on administrative coordination. Findings suggest that as competing nonprofit leaders build trust, the more their agencies coordinate their administrative functions. This study highlights the importance of leaders’ perceptions for organizational strategy.

In the current debate on social capital, a key issue relates to the growing popularity of more passive forms of involvement at the expense of active participation in voluntary associations. While some authors claim that this trend leads to a decline in social capital, others call for a reevaluation of the role of passive involvement. This article aims to contribute to a better understanding of the relationship between passive involvement and social capital. Using data from a representative survey of the Dutch-speaking population in Belgium, we assess the relationship between passive membership, financial support, and social capital. We find that financial support is a distinct form of participation that generates the strongest link with social capital. This indicates that voluntary associations, in addition to their socialization function, also perform an important representation function. This conclusion supports the institutional approach to social capital.

Based on a national representative sample of U.S. internet users, this article examines the impact of associational participation on the likelihood of making an online donation to a charity. The results indicated that internet users engaged in more offline groups and networks are more likely to donate online. Frequency of use of internet and social media do not influence general propensity to donate, thereby suggesting that online donations are a function of actual engagement in social groups, rather than of frequent exposure to the internet media. Individuals involved in choice-based groups were the most likely to donate online, compared to other types of organization participation and/or affiliation. The authors also find that general propensity to donate online (including charities respondents are unaffiliated with) and making monetary contributions specifically to the particular organizations individuals are active in have somewhat distinct determinants.

This article considers one mechanism that could create a clearer accountability path between nonprofits and their beneficiaries: Outcome measurement. Outcome measurement focuses attention on a nonprofit’s beneficiaries and whether they are better off as a result of the nonprofit’s work. The article analyzed 10 outcome measurement guides targeted to nonprofits, totaling more than 1,000 pages of text. The analysis shows that the guides were neither uniform in the conceptualization of nonprofit beneficiaries nor in how they directed nonprofits to use outcome measurement with their beneficiaries. Despite scholars’ suggestion that a nonprofit’s relationship to their beneficiaries is a key accountability relationship, the guides suggest that beneficiaries have an ambiguous standing, relative to other stakeholders, in the nonprofit accountability environment.

High annual turnover among volunteers heightens policy and practitioner concern about effective retention strategies. Volunteer commitment is a complex interaction between the antecedents to volunteering, including a volunteer’s personal characteristics and motivations, and situational factors of the volunteer experience such as organizational practices that encourage sustained volunteerism. Using the Penner (2002) volunteer process model to illustrate this interactive approach, I estimate future volunteering intentions among a distinct group: Members of occupational associations. Data come from a large international pool of professional and occupational society members, and analyzed using GZLM and multinomial logistic regression. The findings suggest that the strongest influences on sustained commitment come from situational factors related to the volunteer experience rather than prior social conditioning. The findings support theory building on volunteer motivations generally and are also useful in building an understanding of voluntary membership behavior in professional associations, where research is still in the early stages.

Although pay differences between men and women with comparable characteristics are generally smaller in the nonprofit than in the for-profit sector, gender pay gaps in the nonprofit sector vary widely across industries. In some industries, gender pay gaps are as large as in the for-profit sector, but in others, women make more than comparably qualified men. Using Hierarchical Linear Modeling on the combined 2001-2006 American Community Surveys, we test nonprofit labor motivation theories against a gendered-job hypothesis to explain this variation. We find that gender pay gaps in the nonprofit sector are smaller in industries where nonprofits outnumber for-profits and where higher proportions of female-dominated occupations exist.