Author: Lauren Van Patter, Quinn Rausch, Nicole Geddes, Tsai-Ping Liao
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Challenges and Opportunities at the Intersection of Caregiving, Animal Welfare, and the Nonprofit Sector
Nonprofit and Voluntary Sector Quarterly, Ahead of Print. Despite growing recognition of animal companions as significant social relationships, consideration of the human–animal bond remains marginal within health and social service provision. Dominant social hierarchies result in differences between how care … Goto full post >>
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Rajasthan’s cooperatives are helping migrant women artisans escape decades of exploitation
Inside a modest home in Indira Nagar, a neighborhood in the border district of Barmer in India’s western state of Rajasthan, several women gather in a small room one afternoon, preparing their needles and yarns for the hours of work ahead. The women have gathered, as women in these villages often do, to work through…
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Announcing Our Largest Grant to Date
GiveWell, with co-funding from Coefficient Giving, recently made our largest grant to date: $276 million to the Against Malaria Foundation (AMF) to support the procurement and distribution of 92 million nets in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) from 2027 through 2029. We estimate that the nets, 46 million of which we think would…
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Who Pays the Piper Calls the Tune: Funding Sources and Earnings Management in Charities
Nonprofit and Voluntary Sector Quarterly, Ahead of Print. This study examines how funding structures shape earnings management behaviour in charities and, in doing so, contributes to the nonprofit accountability literature. Drawing on resource dependence theory, we argue that funding sources create distinct … Goto full post >>
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Untangling the Web: How Executive Pay, Performance, and Trust Shape Nonprofit Donations
Nonprofit and Voluntary Sector Quarterly, Ahead of Print. Executive compensation is a double-edged sword for nonprofit organizations. On one hand, above-market salaries might be required to attract and retain individuals with the talent and skills required to effectively run these complex organizations. On the … Goto full post >>
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Classifying Arts and Culture Organizations for Effective Comparative Research
Nonprofit and Voluntary Sector Quarterly, Ahead of Print. Overlapping and competing taxonomical systems are persistent barriers to comparative research in the cultural sector. Cross-discipline studies typically navigate this challenge by relying on a single taxonomical datapoint. However, data quality issues and … Goto full post >>
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The Optimism of Critical Theory
Nonprofit and Voluntary Sector Quarterly, Ahead of Print. Goto full post >>
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A Long Lineage: Donors, Intermediaries, and Accountability in Action
Long before philanthropy formalized intermediaries, movements relied on stewards. In the abolitionist era, networks collected funds to sustain newspapers, legal defense, and underground organizing. During the Reconstruction era, community-based funds protected Black political participation when law was weaponized. Throughout the Civil Rights Movement, philanthropic foundation, the Garland Fund’s critical resourcing enabled battles against lynching and…
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Configuring the Geography of Social Service Provision: Neighborhood Characteristics, Nonprofit Spatial Strategies, and Public Funding
Nonprofit and Voluntary Sector Quarterly, Ahead of Print. Social services in the United States are delivered jointly by government and nonprofits. Prior research examineseitherthe locationorthe resources of nonprofits; it rarely examines how these factors jointly influence social service availability or … Goto full post >>
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Finding the Bottlenecks in Family Planning Access
When GiveWell investigates a new cause area, we’re often focused on two priorities: directing funding where we think it can help people most and generating evidence to inform larger investments later. Family planning is a clear example. Recent foreign aid cuts—including reductions from the US, UK, and Dutch governments—deepened an already substantial need and opened…
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Understanding What Nonprofits Say Versus What They Do When It Comes to Advocacy
Nonprofit and Voluntary Sector Quarterly, Ahead of Print. This paper explores a notable paradox in nonprofit advocacy: nonprofit leaders frequently claim in surveys and interviews that they do not engage in advocacy or lobbying, but many of them often report conducting activities that qualify as such. This … Goto full post >>
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July 2026 Updates
Every month we send an email newsletter to our supporters sharing recent updates from our work. We publish selected portions of the newsletter on our blog to make this news more accessible to people who visit our website. For key updates from the latest installment, please see below! If you’d like to receive the complete…
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The Social Costs of Signaling: On the Negative Relationship Between Social Image Concerns and Green Crowdfunding
Nonprofit and Voluntary Sector Quarterly, Ahead of Print. This study examines the role of social signaling in charitable giving on a green crowdfunding platform. Using a dataset linking survey responses on motivations and social signaling with real donation data from a German platform, we examine how reported … Goto full post >>