Nonprofit Administration and Management Commons^™

An External Communication Audit Of The Kentucky Arts Council: An Analysis Of The Publications Distributed By A State Agency, Jess N. Kropczynski

MPA/MPP/MPFM Capstone Projects

Problem

The specific objective of the audit is to conduct a formal examination of how the Kentucky Arts Council (KAC) is communicating with target authorizing groups outside of KAC, such as artists, arts administrators, educators, media and legislators.

Research Strategy

The external communication audit is an instrument used to gauge authorizers’ feedback on the publications distributed regularly by the agency. This audit is designed to paint a picture of the current communication patterns, policies, practices, capabilities and needs in order to make informed recommendations for the improvement of communication. The specific research question guiding this audit is: How effective are …

Financial Efficiency In The Nonprofit Sector: An Analysis Of Factors Affecting Expense Ratios Of Kentucky Nonprofits, Emily A. Lane

MPA/MPP/MPFM Capstone Projects

Statement of Problem

Recent events in both the public and private sectors have lead to an environment of mistrust and caution surrounding the way organizations are managed and funds are handled. For the nonprofit sector, this has led to an emergence of charity rating or watchdog organizations and increased scrutiny of finances. Individual donors, charity rating agencies, and funding institutions have begun using expense ratios as a measure of financial efficiency. Decisions on the financial efficiency of organizations are being made without a good understanding of what factors affect these ratios.

Research Questions

The purpose of this paper is to …

Does The Voluntary Standards For Excellence Program Improve Reporting Qualities & Financial Ratios Of Nonprofit Organizations?, Harmony Little

MPA/MPP/MPFM Capstone Projects

Problem Statement

The issue of accountability in the nonprofit sector has increased over the past few years, and along with it, questions about the adequacy of information in the 990 forms filed annually by nonprofits to the IRS. The intent of the 990 form is to provide the public with necessary information to evaluate the performance of a nonprofit; however, a number of studies show that there are significant errors on the 990 returns. At the same time, there has been a rise in nonprofit watchdog groups who use the information available on the 990 forms to calculate nonprofits’ financial …

Improving Disaster Response Efforts With Decision Support Systems, Steven M. Thompson, Nezih Altay, Walter G. Green Iii, Joanne Lapetina

Management Faculty Publications

As evidenced by Hurricane Katrina in August, 2005, disaster response efforts are hindered by a lack of coordination, poor information flows, and the inability of disaster response managers to validate and process relevant information and make decisions in a timely fashion. A number of factors contribute to current lackluster response efforts. Some are inherent to the complex, rapidly changing decision-making environments that characterize most disaster response settings. Others reflect systematic flaws in how decisions are made within the organizational hierarchies of the many agencies involved in a disaster response. Slow, ineffective strategies for gathering, processing, and analyzing data can also …

Managerial Reforms Within The United States Government, Jacqueline Michelle Townsend

Theses Digitization Project

This research project examines Presidential and Congressional attempts to increase the efficiency and effectiveness of the United States government. It describes prior reform efforts and then focuses on President George W. Bush's management agenda.

Organizational Structures And State Departments Of Transportation, Candice Y. Wallace

MPA/MPP/MPFM Capstone Projects

No executive summary.

The Practice Of The Commons, Roger A. Lohmann

Faculty & Staff Scholarship

This paper

This paper lays out some of the basics of a language-based, person-centered, or agentic model of practice for nonprofit organizations, voluntary action and philanthropy within the emerging domain of commons theory. Six principles are identified for the practice of commons. Two threats to the production of common goods - bureaucratization and colonization of the life world - are discussed and evaluated as limitations of the practice of commons.

National Security, Suburbanization, Technology, And The Prospect Of Renewing Civic Participation, Roger A. Lohmann

Faculty & Staff Scholarship

In a series of books and articles, Robert Putnam outlined his famous "bowling alone" theses of declining civic participation, which he attributed in considerable part to television and other alternative leisure time pursuits. Putnam also acknowledged the possibility of other possible factors. This presentation identifies two such possibilities that coincide with the decline Putnam noted, - national security and suburbanization - as well as more recent and more ambiguous, technology-related factors contributing to declines in civic participation.

Multiple Roles Of A Rural Administrator, Roger A. Lohmann, Nancy Lohmann

Faculty & Staff Scholarship

Basic administrative procedures are similar in rural and urban areas. Even so, rural human service administrators are often not prepared for the many roles they must assume in small and underfunded rural agencies. The roles may include personnel director, budget officer, accountant, fundraiser, supervisor, building and maintenance supervisor, volunteer coordinator, group developer, community organizer, public educator, policy analyst, and director of public relations and marketing.

Contracting With Nonprofit Organizations: A Model For Local Governments, Renee Jackson

MPA/MPP/MPFM Capstone Projects

A number of factors have contributed to the rise in nonprofit organizations during the last three decades. No matter the reasons one significant consequence has been an intensification of competition for available funding. With the increasing competition for funding there is growing concern that there may not be an equitable and efficient method in place for many funders to base their allocation decisions on. These concerns arise from the issues that occur during funding processes such as: how open and competitive is the request for proposal process; is there duplication of the same service; can the organization adequately provide the …

Neighborhood Associations: The Foundation Of Community Development, Roger A. Lohmann

Faculty & Staff Scholarship

Neighborhood associations are one of the most ubiquitous types of voluntary organization. This paper reviews a variety of theoretical and practical perspectives on the concept of neighborhood and the various organized expressions of neighborhood organizing in rural and urban communities.

Community Foundations In West Virginia, Roger A. Lohmann

Faculty & Staff Scholarship

This report is part of an ongoing investigation of the support of neighborhood associations by community foundations in three states – Michigan, New Mexico and West Virginia. The findings are primarily negative: There is no evidence that the 22 community foundations of West Virginia have provided support for the development or continuation of neighborhood associations in the state.

Community Practice And The Internet, Roger A. Lohmann, John Mcnutt

Faculty & Staff Scholarship

This article examines several developments in electronic technology which appear to hold great potential for advancing human well-being and community organization and have already manifested some important portion of that potential in recent years. They are, in order of presentation, electronic communication and networking, electronic advocacy, fund raising support, geographic information systems and data base management. We conclude this brief article with a brief discussion of information poverty and the growing disparity of information haves and have-nots.

Kesan Penubuhan Pusat Zakat Ke Atas Pentadbiran Zakat Di Negeri Pahang, Wahairi Mahmud

Student Works (2000-2009)

In Pahang, the zakat collection system was privatized in January 1996 where the responsibility was given to the Pusat Kutipan Zakat Pahang (PKZP). The company is owned by the Majlis Ugama Islam Dan Adat Resam Melayu Pahang (MUIP) which controls 51 percent of the major shares and the remaining is owned by AI-Zakat Sdn. Bhd. (49 percent). Hence, this dissertation aims to study the impact of the establishment of PKZP on the management of zakat in the state. This six chapters dissertation discusses the professionalism aspects of zakat management since the early days of the Islamic era in comparison to …

Charismatic Authority And The Board Of The Hull House Association, 1895-1935, Roger A. Lohmann

Faculty & Staff Scholarship

Discussions of boards in the third sector literature usually proceed from assumptions grounded in Weber’s rational-legal authority and international management principles like those of Henri Fayol. The generalizations made about boards are based on rational-legal views of the board as the principal governing body of a nonprofit organization. Much less frequently examined are the roles and functions of boards in organizations grounded in other forms of authority. In particular, the relationship between charismatic authority and boards has seldom been studied. This paper will examine the role of one such board, the Board of Trustees of the Hull House Association through …

Pembayaran Zakat Padi Di Daerah Pendang, Kedah Darulaman, Mohamad Azam Hussain

Student Works (2000-2009)

Government and general conception on the zakat management in Malaysia has been that unsatisfactory. Many factors can be pointed as the cause of the present state of affairs. Based on the past research, most of the problems were qualitatively analysed from empirical data. This research uses quantitative data in analysing the problems arising from the management of zakat through case study on the payment of zakat paddy in District of Pendang, Kedah. The data shows that the total amount of zakat paddy collected by the administrators is much lower than the amount collected from total crop collection from farmers. This …

Has The Time Come To Evaluate Evaluation? (Or Who Will Be Accountable For Accountability?), Roger A. Lohmann

Faculty & Staff Scholarship

A review essay of six recent books represents an occasion to examine the very idea of accountability, and to examine what the effects of several decades of emphasis on evaluation have been.

The Future Of The Third Sector, Roger A. Lohmann

Faculty & Staff Scholarship

The U.S. "nonprofit sector" and other forms of contemporary national third sectors which are currently spreading around the world arose in a unique historical moment and for distinct historical reasons and are unlikely to outlast that moment in history. Voluntary action on the other hand has deep roots reaching far back in human history and is likely to be around far into the future.

Managed Care: The Questionable Triumph Of Financial Management, Roger A. Lohmann

Faculty & Staff Scholarship

Managed Care is a generic term for a broad and constantly changing mix of health insurance, assistance and payment programs which seek to retain quality and access while controlling the cost of physical and mental health services. The introduction of managed care fundamentally transforms the traditional “agency” relationships on which modern social work was built. Little research on its impact on social services is currently available. The managed care model, with its distinctive external patterns of accountability, raises serious questions about the continuing viability of the “social agency” model of practice to which social work has been committed for most …

After The Third Sector: Emerging And Disappearing Commons, Roger A. Lohmann

Faculty & Staff Scholarship

The third sector is currently the most popular categorical label as a summary term for capturing the activities of a highly diverse set of tax-exempt corporations and nonprofit organizations. I draw a sharper-than-usual distinction here between a third sector composed of a million or more social entrepreneurial nonprofit firms and and the voluntary associations, clubs, groups and diverse uncountable volunteer and philanthropic efforts, projects, causes, which I label as commons and which have in recent years been increasingly subsumed under the general heading of civil society. While the voluntary action of commons is a more or less permanent feature of …

Justice, Citizenship, Social Cohesion And The Commons, Roger A. Lohmann

Faculty & Staff Scholarship

There is great ferment in political and social theory today due to a number of major changes are taking place in the larger social world and our understandings of it including the crisis of the welfare state; the emergence of more open societies in Russia, Central Europe, Latin America and many of the countries of the Pacific Rim; general movement away from class/stratification and toward group membership as central themes for national politics in many countries; a major crisis of the modernization paradigm; the emergence of a truly-global economy; and the emergence of the internet as a global communications medium. …

Auditing Troubled Employees In The Public Sector, Lila Mehdiyar

Theses Digitization Project

No abstract provided.

Mutuality, Locality And Communitarianism, Roger A. Lohmann

Faculty & Staff Scholarship

What is the nature of the bonds among participants in nonprofit organizations and voluntary action, and between philanthropic givers and recipients, and how do these affect the behavior of third sector actors and those in other sectors? Mutuality accounts for the intermediary bulwark which offers a primary protection of the individual from the state. Except through Tocqueville, mutuality has had very little impact on American legal and political philosophy until quite recently. Mutuality is a principal concern of some communitarians, particularly Taylor, Sandel and Bell. Communitarianism is one of the few instances of focus on this important problem. This paper …

Philanthropic Partnerships: The Theory Of The Commons, Roger A. Lohmann

Faculty & Staff Scholarship

In Anglo-American traditions, the concept of a commons has historically been most frequently attached to shared land in joint use by a village or community. The common theory of voluntary action presents organized collective action as consisting of shared purposes, shared resources and voluntary participation resulting in an evolving sense of mutuality, and moral order, consisting of shared norms of fairness and participation.

Nonprofit Community Service And The Hidden Cost Of Information Technology, Roger A. Lohmann, Nancy Lohmann

Faculty & Staff Scholarship

Will the information superhighway – like its concrete counterpart, the interstate highway system – turn out to be a good idea but too expensive to maintain properly? This paper will explore issues associated with the initial and ongoing costs of adopting information technology for nonprofit community service organizations, with particular attention to access and use of the information superhighway. Several possible explanations for the lag in adoption of internet technology will be explored. One of these will be the "null hypothesis" that resources and services currently available over the internet may still be insufficient to justify the costs involved for …

Hypertext And The Docuverse: A Research Memo, Roger A. Lohmann

Faculty & Staff Scholarship

The term docuverse was first developed by Apple Computer guru Allen Kay in the late 1960’s. The underlying idea can be traced back decades earlier, to the visionary Vannevar Bush and the Memex (Bush, 1945). According to Kay, a docuverse is a set of related documents together with the linkages between them. In this paper, a docuverse is conceived as a collection of related scholarly documents together with the links, ties and bonds that can bring them together into an integrated logical and conceptual whole. Kay who also coined the term hypertext, which refers to an electronic document with existing …

Escaping The Tragedy Of The Commons, Roger A. Lohmann

Faculty & Staff Scholarship

Is tragedy due to over harvesting an inevitable consequence of the voluntary action of cooperation in a commons? No. Actually, commons theory resolved this question several decades ago. Such common goods are those pursued jointly by pluralities less than the dominant majority controlling the state and its unique ability to define public goods. In an era when the state has proven relatively powerless to define unambiguous public goods and public policy making is largely circumscribed in terms of a competition among interest groups, the state itself has become a major producer of common, rather than genuinely public, goods.

American Peace Movement Organizations: The 1988 And 1992 Surveys, Mary Anna Culleton Colwell, Doug Bond

Institute for Nonprofit Organization Management

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY:

This is the definitive description of the 1988 Survey of Groups and Organizations Working for Peace and the 1992 follow-up of the peace movement organizations which responded in 1988. We discuss American peace movement organizations and the origins and history of the research effort in Part One along with a brief review of some of the theoretical considerations underlying this process.

In Part Two we explain the survey methods and procedures including details on the stratified sample selection, questionnaire development, survey procedures in 1988 and 1992 and response rates. The 1992 effort, especially, was the product of a …

The Internet As Commons: A Tale Of Enclosure, Roger A. Lohmann

Faculty & Staff Scholarship

The original model of the internet developed as an electronic commons for scientists and academics. It will be only a matter of time before the same rich and powerful information barons who already control such "fourth estate" communication industries as newspaper, magazine and book publishing, television networks and movie production facilities establish their toll-booths on the information superhighway as well. Fortunately, within this electronic ocean of corporate and proprietary feudalism, there may also be room for an archipelago of freistaaten; "free citystates" functioning as autonomous and self-governing islands for the arts, sciences, humanities, social service and community.

Patronage Bibliography (1993), Roger A. Lohmann

Faculty & Staff Scholarship

Patronage is one of the basic concepts in the commons theory of voluntary action; it refers to the giving or donating of resources – money, objects for collection, or repertories of knowledge, skills or ‘know-how’. Patrons – those who give – are one of the three fundamental roles in philanthropods, along with intermediaries or agents, and beneficiaries. Patronage is also a heavily studied subject, extensively written about in the humanities as the items in this bibliography attest.