Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

With Heart-Strings Attached: Funding Decisions As Identity Work In Nonprofit Organizations, Jonathan L. Cole

Sociology Honors Projects

Resource dependency theory states that nonprofit organizations’ acceptance of public monies is acceptance of government control. Through detailed grants, government agencies can enact their priorities through willing or unwilling nonprofit organizations that need government grants to survive. To complicate the extant literature on nonprofit autonomy, this study uses an expansion of Viviana Zelizer’s connected lives theory (2005) to ask, How do nonprofits select sources of funding for specific services in reference to their relationship with granting agencies? Using qualitative interview methods the study concludes that nonprofits are agents in relationships with government grant agencies, and that nonprofits use funding decisions …