Nonprofit and Voluntary Sector Quarterly, Ahead of Print. This theoretical article summarizes the various psychological and motivational processes that underlie prosocial decision-making. To this aim, we propose a novel way to organize and synthesize research related to emotions, thoughts, and beliefs (i.e., psychological mechanisms) that motivate or demotivate human prosociality. This is done with a new typology including four overarching interrelated categories, each encompassing multiple subcategories: (a) emotions; (b) moral principles; (c) anticipated impact; and (d) anticipated personal consequences. We highlight differences and commonalities to other influential frameworks and showcase how the proposed typology can help researchers and practitioners better differentiate and understand the diverse psychological mechanisms that underlie human prosociality.

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Nonprofit and Voluntary Sector Quarterly, Ahead of Print. This study explores motivations and barriers to social action in children from economically disadvantaged communities, through the lens of Construal Level Theory. Results from a qualitative study involving 40 children in the United Kingdom (engaged and non-engaged in social action) suggest that a concrete, place-based understanding of social action (low-level construal) and intrinsic motives drives children to engage. An abstract and decontextualized understanding of social action (high-level construal) and concrete responsibilities such as caring for family (low-level construal) often hinders engagement. Contrary to expected trends, motivations to engage in social action are more associated with intrinsic benefits. Social identity needs act both as motivators (disproving negative views about children) and as barriers (maintaining a sense of “coolness”). Our study contributes to knowledge by suggesting that a place engagement approach, which embraces low-construal aspects and is “closer to home,” may help both motivating and overcoming barriers to child volunteering in economically disadvantaged communities.

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Nonprofit and Voluntary Sector Quarterly, Ahead of Print.

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Nonprofit and Voluntary Sector Quarterly, Ahead of Print. The growth of donor-advised funds provides an increasingly robust source of philanthropic capital for community foundations, but its impact on their leadership roles remains unknown. To what extent do community foundations maintain community leadership amid increasing pressure to accommodate donor wishes? Drawing on the institutional logics perspective and historical accounts, I theorize that community foundations are hybrids—they operate by combining the field-level logics of donor services and community leadership at varying degrees. Through an exploratory mixed-methods design, I analyzed the text data from annual reports and administrative data from the 990 forms of 482 community foundations. The findings reveal a positive association between the logic of donor services and leadership practices; specifically, foundations with a strong donor service logic, as indicated by the ratio of donor-advised fund (DAF)-funded grants, tend to exhibit a broader range of leadership activities. This study reveals that these logics not only coexist but may also mutually reinforce each other within the community foundation field.

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Nonprofit and Voluntary Sector Quarterly, Ahead of Print. While the unique socioeconomic conditions of the Global South have created opportunities for women to work in rural development nonprofits, obstacles exist in the form of gendered social expectations. This study examines the experiences of women professionals working in rural development nonprofits who live in the liminality between “ideal professional identity” and “traditional caregiving identity.” We conducted in-depth interviews with 21 women professionals working in nonprofits in seven states of India. Our findings suggest that women professionals experience constant guilt in the liminality due to the conflicting obligations of caregiving and professional worker identities and their inability to justify both. We discuss how they use various performative practices and identity work, and sometimes engage in patriarchal bargaining to resolve the struggles arising from the conflicting obligations. Our study adds to the scarce research on women in the Global South working in rural development nonprofits and also discusses its practical organizational implications.

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Nonprofit and Voluntary Sector Quarterly, Ahead of Print. This article intends to contribute to further research on cross-border phenomenon in nonprofit and philanthropic studies by developing a conceptual model for diaspora philanthropy, the transfer of resources such as money, time, labor, and knowledge to countries of origin for the public good. The interdisciplinary opportunities for the topic of diaspora philanthropy can be considered a strength, but at times, they result in disparate studies and minimal consideration for larger questions and theory development. In this article, we hope to aggregate relevant research in order to remedy some of these challenges. An interdisciplinary approach allows us to chart macro, meso, and micro theories and empirical work that help to explain diaspora philanthropy. We ask: What are the (global) drivers that influence diaspora philanthropy (macro level)? What are the channels that allow for, or challenge, diaspora philanthropy (meso level)? And what are the individual motives of diaspora philanthropists (micro level)?

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Nonprofit and Voluntary Sector Quarterly, Ahead of Print. Nonprofit organizations contribute to society through service provision, advocacy, and community building. As they face the challenge of pursuing a social mission while operating in a market economy, many adopt businesslike practices in response. Nonprofits’ tendency to adopt such practices has become a contested scholarly topic, with, however, limited empirical evidence. Using survey data from nearly 600 nonprofits in the Vienna region, we examine how organizational practices—specifically businesslike managerial and democratic ones—relate to nonprofits’ emphasis on service provision, advocacy, and community building. Democratic and managerial practices follow institutional logics that may activate interpretation frame effects that influence organizational goals. Contrary to concerns in previous literature, we find that implementing managerial practices is harmonious not only with service delivery but also advocacy and, to some extent, community building. Democratic organizing, conversely, supports community building while reducing service delivery focus. Combining these practices can support a balanced societal role profile.

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Nonprofit and Voluntary Sector Quarterly, Ahead of Print.

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Nonprofit and Voluntary Sector Quarterly, Ahead of Print. As disparities in access to social services continue, nonprofit practitioners are reimagining mechanisms to support service provision through systems of care. Systems of care are interorganizational referral networks that assemble a cross-section of nonprofits to coordinate care. Care systems use human navigators to support clients connecting to services. Through semi-structured interviews with a community-driven care system in Chicago and a grounded approach, this work posits that human navigators embody two novel roles distinct from other care contexts: community resource advocate and consensus builder. Based on ecological systems theory, these roles emphasize connectivity and advocacy to increase access and use of services created through interpersonal and interorganizational relationships. This work highlights the transformative influence of human navigators in care systems, demonstrating how community resource advocates and consensus builders enhance care access and interorganizational response, creating more equitable service delivery. This work offers a typology for role design for local service delivery.

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Nonprofit and Voluntary Sector Quarterly, Ahead of Print. This article investigates the complex interactions between local and national economic contexts and volunteering behavior. We examine three dimensions of local economic context—economic disadvantage (e.g., the percentage of families living in poverty), income inequality, and economic growth (e.g., the change in median household income)—and the impact of a national/global economic jolt—the Great Recession. Analysis of data from the Current Population Survey’s (CPS) Volunteering Supplement (2002–2015) reveals that individuals who live in places characterized by economic disadvantage and economic inequality are less likely to volunteer than individuals in more advantaged, equitable communities. The recession had a dampening effect on volunteering overall, but it had the largest dampening effect on individual volunteering in communities with above-average rates of income equality and higher rates of economic growth. While individuals living in rural communities were more likely to volunteer than their urban counterparts before the recession, rural/urban differences disappeared after the recession.

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Nonprofit and Voluntary Sector Quarterly, Ahead of Print. Social enterprises (SEs), hybrid entities balancing revenue generation and social or environmental goals, often employ bricolage due to resource constraints. Interviews with 37 SE managers unveiled two pivotal bricolage strategies—utilizing SE status–related marketing resources and leveraging available technological resources—as well as how their interplay influences geographical expansion and the contingent roles of stakeholder participation in facilitating their impact. Quantitative studies of 778 U.K. SEs confirm that the predominant facilitator of geographic expansion is the utilization of status-related marketing resources, surpassing the impact of leveraging available technological resources. SEs’ efforts to utilize SE status–related marketing resources should be harmonized with community participation, whereas SEs aiming to leverage available technological resources should align their efforts with employee participation. We also underscore the substitution dynamic between these two bricolage strategies. However, SEs prioritizing employee participation are better positioned to mitigate the challenges arising from this substitution than those emphasizing community participation.

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Nonprofit and Voluntary Sector Quarterly, Ahead of Print. This study examines the implications of excess cash in nonprofit hospitals. Using a nationally representative sample of hospitals, I benchmark nonprofit cash holdings against for-profit cash holdings, and find that nonprofit hospitals hold significantly more cash. I consider three potential uses of excess cash in nonprofit hospitals: (a) investment in fixed assets, (b) increased charity care provision, and (c) higher executive compensation. I find that excess cash is associated with investments in fixed assets but not with increased charity care provision. Moreover, I find a positive relationship between excess cash and growth in CEO compensation. The results suggest that while nonprofit hospitals may accumulate cash to finance fixed assets, some of the accumulated cash may be diverted toward executive compensation. Overall, concerns regarding agency problems in nonprofit organizations may not be unfounded.

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Nonprofit and Voluntary Sector Quarterly, Ahead of Print.

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Nonprofit and Voluntary Sector Quarterly, Ahead of Print. Religion is a strong social identity cue that creates in-group and out-group identity. Yet individuals can harbor multiple identities, and a political ideology is another significant identity marker. Similarly, personal experiences with disease also create another social identity where individuals may feel part of the same social group as individuals who have experienced a similar adverse event. How do these identities intersect in an individual’s willingness to volunteer for individuals from and outside their faith during a crisis event? We attempted to answer this question using an original sample of Muslims and Christians and their willingness to volunteer for COVID-19-related causes. We find that stronger religiosity increases volunteering toward individuals in their faith group (in-group). However, conservative beliefs reduce volunteering toward causes outside of an individual’s faith community (out-group). We find that COVID-19 diagnosis increases volunteering, but only when an individual or their family member is hospitalized.

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Nonprofit and Voluntary Sector Quarterly, Ahead of Print. Few research has attempted to synthesize the effects of nudge tools in promoting prosocial behaviors through the lens of behavioral economics. This systematic review synthesizes empirical evidence of various types of nudges and their effectiveness in promoting charitable donations and volunteering. We identified 67 eligible studies with 117 experiments reporting eight nudge tools. We found that the studies focused mainly on three types of nudges (including reframing, referring to descriptive norms, and changing social consequences). We revealed that decreasing physical/cognitive effort, providing reminders, anchoring, and referring to descriptive norms effectively promote charitable donations; only reframing effectively promotes volunteering. Changing social consequences, connecting decisions to benefit or cost, and referring to descriptive norms are not effective in promoting volunteering. This review offers implications for practitioners implementing nudge tools in promoting charitable donations and volunteering. The data supporting the findings of this study are available in the Open Science Framework (https://osf.io/kg836).

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Nonprofit and Voluntary Sector Quarterly, Ahead of Print. Grassroots associations (GAs) are the “keepers” of collective local knowledge yet uncovering that local knowledge remains challenging for nonprofit researchers. In this study, we propose the utility of reflexivity for nonprofit scholars conducting research aimed at accessing local knowledge within GAs and illustrate its use in practice through collaborative autoethnography (CAE). From block clubs to mutual aid groups, grassroots associations provide a space for members to come together, share insights, build community, and are important repositories of local knowledge. However, GAs remain the “dark matter” of the nonprofit sector—understudied and undertheorized. We discuss the difficulties nonprofit researchers face in accessing the local knowledge of resident within grassroots associations. We then present our CAE methodology and conclude by recommending that scholars interested in accessing local knowledge engage in reflexive praxis attuned to power and positionality. This study contributes to expanding our work with and knowledge of grassroots associations within nonprofit studies.

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Nonprofit and Voluntary Sector Quarterly, Ahead of Print.

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Nonprofit and Voluntary Sector Quarterly, Ahead of Print.

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Nonprofit and Voluntary Sector Quarterly, Ahead of Print. Despite the abundance of literature related to nonprofit overhead, the following questions remain unclear: (a) How high is too high for individual donors when considering an organization’s overhead? (b) Is there a difference between nonprofit subsectors in individual donors’ aversion to nonprofit overhead? Moreover, (c) Does trust play a role in individual donors’ overhead aversion? This study used a survey experiment and randomly assigned participants to one of four overhead ratio conditions (5%, 20%, 35%, and 50%). We find that individuals’ donations to human service nonprofits substantially decrease when the overhead reaches 35%. In contrast, their donations to health care nonprofits do not decrease until the ratio reaches 50%. In addition, we find that donors lose trust in nonprofits when overhead costs are higher, leading to decreased donations. The findings contribute to the theoretical understanding of donors’ giving behavior, offering practical implications for promoting sustainable giving.

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Nonprofit and Voluntary Sector Quarterly, Ahead of Print. Volunteers are integral to civic and social life, and leadership is integral to keeping volunteers satisfied and committed. However, volunteer leadership research is hindered by the dispersion of leadership theories and the absence of a specialized leader behavior assessment tool. To address this, we developed and validated a four-dimensional scale for evaluating the behaviors of leaders of volunteers. Using confirmatory factor analyses, we confirmed a four-factor, hierarchical model in an Australian emergency volunteer sample. Concurrent validity was confirmed in relation to satisfaction with leadership, overall satisfaction with volunteering experience, and affective organizational commitment. Further details of quantitative studies for scale evaluation are provided. This study provides researchers and practitioners with a valid and reliable instrument to assess different aspects of effective leader behaviors within the volunteering context. Implications, limitations, and future research directions are discussed.

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