Nonprofit and Voluntary Sector Quarterly, Ahead of Print. The collapse of public services in Yemen due to a protracted crisis raging since 2015 has compelled some local citizen-based coalitions to initiate community-based service delivery. This preliminary study identifies Community-Based Initiatives (CBIs) as non-state actors supplying basic services ordinarily provided by governmental institutions. It offers an…

Nonprofit and Voluntary Sector Quarterly, Ahead of Print. To mark the 50th anniversary of the Association for Research on Nonprofit Organizations and Voluntary Action (ARNOVA), this article reviews the association’s history, from its 1971 founding by a small group of scholars interested in voluntary action to the current association of more than 1,000 members who…

Nonprofit and Voluntary Sector Quarterly, Ahead of Print. This article examines the uptake of social justice and climate change as focal issues among the largest U.S. environmental nonprofits. We use 2016 Internal Revenue Service (IRS) filings to identify 5,413 large environmental nonprofits of which 8% attend to issues of climate and 10% to issues of…

Nonprofit and Voluntary Sector Quarterly, Ahead of Print. Across the world, many individuals, organizations, and communities rely on the charitable contributions of others to meet critical needs. However, receiving aid can be challenging if donors discriminate against solicitors based on their demographic characteristics. We examined the potential impact of two of such characteristics, namely, the…

Nonprofit and Voluntary Sector Quarterly, Ahead of Print. We study the charitable behavior of the wealthiest individuals in a very affluent and unequal society, that of the Dutch during their “Golden Age” (late 16th to the 17th centuries). Did these wealthy elites share their prosperity with those less fortunate? Using rare data from printed sources…

Nonprofit and Voluntary Sector Quarterly, Ahead of Print. Climate change is increasing the likelihood and magnitude of disaster impacts. The nonprofit sector’s ability to address disaster survivors’ needs will become an increasingly important aspect of adapting to a changing climate. Disaster recovery also provides time for nonprofits to affect community resilience to future disasters and…

Nonprofit and Voluntary Sector Quarterly, Ahead of Print. The impact of minimum wage increases on employment has been extensively examined with mixed results. We extend the literature by hypothesizing and showing a differential impact of state-level minimum wage increases on nonprofit organizations as opposed to for-profit organizations. While we find that increases in minimum wages…

Nonprofit and Voluntary Sector Quarterly, Ahead of Print. Some microfinance institutions (MFIs) can drift from their social mission, generating well-studied effects for their borrowers. We focus on the lesser-known effect of mission drift on the financial return to other stakeholders (employees, government, micro-savers, and banking creditors). Using a sample of 534 MFIs, we calculated the…

Nonprofit and Voluntary Sector Quarterly, Ahead of Print. Disparate research on overhead aversion and nonprofit starvation can benefit from a conceptual model that explains their relationships. Following resurrection of such a model, we focus on one important piece: the relationship between overhead spending and nonprofit donations. Studies on this topic have produced inconclusive results. Our…

Nonprofit and Voluntary Sector Quarterly, Ahead of Print. Voluntary participation in local groups or organizations varies by individual and across communities. Few studies examine the influence of structural resources on voluntary participation, with prior studies often considering it a single, binary action. Drawing from three data sources, we examined the extent to which individual-level and…