Nonprofit Administration and Management Commons^™

The Inaccessibility Of Nonprofit Organizations Data In Sub-Saharan Africa, Barnabas Suva, Robert Bhero

Journal of Nonprofit Innovation

This article presents initial findings from a research study on nonprofit data across countries, focusing on the accessibility of nonprofit organizations in 49 countries in Sub-Saharan Africa, following thorough research of accessibility data from nonprofit organizations, regulatory bodies, and nonprofit websites. Only 12% of countries maintain a functional public nonprofit organization database, and even fewer provide detailed, searchable registries. While 94% of countries legally grant nonprofit organizations tax exemption, mandatory reporting obligations are often not paired with public access, thereby weakening accountability. These findings situate data inaccessibility as an agency problem where principals (donors, policymakers, communities) lack sufficient information to …

Special Edition: Full Issue - Research For Practice, September 2025, Angie Holzer, Erica Bassett

Journal of Nonprofit Innovation

No abstract provided.

Transparency, Trust, And Partnerships: Strengthening Nonprofit Collaboration Through Data And Accountability, Sujeeth Reddy Sithagari, Angie Holzer

Journal of Nonprofit Innovation

This paper explores how transparency influences trust and strengthens partnerships within nonprofit and international development organizations. Drawing from a structured literature review of peer-reviewed articles, doctoral dissertations, and global initiatives such as the International Aid Transparency Initiative (IATI), this article highlights the critical role of transparent communication in building stakeholder confidence. The findings indicate that while many NGOs collect performance and financial data, few use it consistently to inform external reporting or internal learning. Trust is found to be highly context-specific, shaped not only by data sharing but also by leadership humility, community engagement, and ethical governance. The study …

Mapeo De La Accesibilidad De Datos De Organizaciones No Lucrativas En Países De América Latina: Primeras Perspectivas De Un Estudio Comparativo Exploratorio, Angie Holzer, Tania Hernandez, Ted Gray Barnes Jr, Noah Ellis, Sumasri Jasti, Hannah Chu, Evan Campione, Louis Ye, Nithin Kumar, Quoc Thai Dinh

Journal of Nonprofit Innovation

Este artículo presenta los hallazgos de un estudio global sobre la accesibilidad de datos de organizaciones no lucrativas, centrado en México y en otros países de América Latina. El análisis explora si existen bases de datos de organizaciones no lucrativas, quién las opera, qué barreras de accesibilidad están presentes, qué requisitos deben cumplir las organizaciones no lucrativas para registrarse, y qué costos de registro enfrentan. Utilizando un diseño comparativo exploratorio, el estudio destaca tanto las similitudes como las diferencias entre países, situando los sistemas de datos de organizaciones no lucrativas dentro de teorías más amplias de transparencia, rendición de cuentas …

Bridging Theory And Practice: The Vision And Action Plan Of The Istr Research For Practice Affinity Group, Angie Holzer, Christopher Dayson, Dana Doan, Patricia Quinn, Tayyeb Hadi, Michele Fugiel Gartner, Carissa Van Den Berk-Clark, Ana María Sánchez, Farouq Aliyu Muhammad, Romina Farías, Christopher Einolf

Journal of Nonprofit Innovation

This article presents the strategic vision and comprehensive action plan of the International Society for Third Sector Research (ISTR) Research for Practice (R4P) Affinity Group, established to address the persistent gap between academic research and nonprofit practice in the third sector. Recognizing that practitioners are primarily focused on action and problem-solving while academics concentrate on knowledge accumulation and theory building, the R4P initiative creates a systematic framework for enhanced collaboration to maximize societal impact and advance evidence-informed practice. The R4P model employs a multi-dimensional approach through seven specialized sub-committees—Advocacy, Education & Training, Practitioner Engagement & Matchmaking, Research Accessibility and Sharing, …

Revisiting Long Island-Based Nonprofit Organizations' Use Of Traditional And Digital Media For Public Relations Outreach, Jeffrey S. Morosoff, Marnique Olivieri-Panepento

Proceedings of the New York State Communication Association

Nonprofit organizations hold a pivotal role in society, catering to diverse communities and promoting social causes through strategic communication initiatives. Effective public relations (PR) serves as an indispensable tool for nonprofits, facilitating the development of awareness, stakeholder engagement, and the implementation of mission-driven initiatives. The integration of social and owned media has transformed how nonprofits engage with their audiences, providing new opportunities for interaction while creating unique challenges, particularly when nonprofits are dealing with the residual impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic, which exacerbated financial instability and complicated program delivery, membership retention, fundraising, and staffing. This study builds upon and compares …

Enhancing Client Intake Efficiency In The Removal Defense Program: A Nursing-Led Quality Improvement Initiative, Johnny Linares, Julia Tran Ngo, Daniel Orea, Atheana Yadira Lopez

Master's Projects and Capstones

This quality improvement project focuses on optimizing the intake process for the Removal Defense Program at a nonprofit immigration legal office serving asylum-seeking clients. The existing intake relied on unstructured, phone-call-based intake interviews that gathered incomplete information, leading to inconsistent documentation, reduced efficiency, and significant client processing delays. A structured, multilingual, and multiplatform new-client admission protocol coupled with the implementation of a client-facing resource guide for waitlist clients were co-developed and implemented using the Lippitt Change Theory framework. Utilizing a mixed methods approach, the study involved staff interviews and observational assessments with staff members from the program. Baseline intake process …

Examining Nonprofit Social Service Sector Burnout And Turnover: Trait Mindfulness As A Moderator Of Work-Life Balance And Compassion Fatigue, Melissa L. Brown

Dissertations

Nonprofit burnout and turnover surpass all national industries, specifically in the social services subsector. In contrast to their for-profit counterparts, nonprofit turnover rates remain on the rise. While literature indicates that one of the primary drivers of nonprofit turnover is burnout, more granular research proposes that nonprofit social service employees encounter a distinct form of burnout generated by the exposure to secondary traumatic distress known as compassion fatigue. This study investigated the antecedents of this phenomenon by examining trait mindfulness as a moderator of work-life balance and compassion fatigue among nonprofit social service providers. To sustain a workforce that provides …

Centering Community Voice In Strategic Design: The Build Health Challenge Model, Melissa Monbouquette, Jessica Mulcahy

The Foundation Review

It is commonplace today for philanthropies to require grantee partners to have a community engagement strategy to ensure that the institution reflects the community that it serves. It is also incumbent on foundations to embrace the same intent. Alongside participatory practices, listening is an opportunity to level the power dynamics inherent to philanthropic practice.

The BUILD Health Challenge® (BUILD) is an innovative funder collaborative designed to support local cross-sector action to address the root cause of health inequities. Established in 2015, BUILD supports participants from across the U.S. to engage in partnerships including residents, community-based organizations, health departments, and health …

Leaning Into The Messiness Of Authentic Engagement: Fostering Reciprocity In Foundation Strategy, Learning, And Evaluation, Sonia Taddy-Sandino, Jennifer Ho, Kim Ammann Howard, Clare Nolan

The Foundation Review

Over the last several years, numerous foundations have endeavored to forge deeper relationships with grantees and challenge the status quo in strategy development and evaluation design. Encouraged by efforts such as the Trust-Based Philanthropy Project and the Equitable Evaluation Initiative, some funders are seeking to redefine how they engage grantees and field partners by navigating the nuances of power dynamics, mutual interests, and genuine collaboration. While there are encouraging signs of progress, there are also plenty of examples of foundation and nonprofit leaders getting stuck or reverting to the modus operandi. Competing agendas, the lack of sustained political will, and …

Front And Back Matter

The Foundation Review

No abstract provided.

Listening As An Adaptive Practice To Transform Philanthropy, Nitya Venkateswaran, Kate Szczerbacki, Jay Feldman

The Foundation Review

A growing number of grantmaking institutions (GMIs) recognize that listening to communities in which they invest—especially those to, and most affected by, the challenges being addressed—is crucial to achieve their equity goals. Despite investments and intent to listen, there is a gap in implementation.

Genuine listening for equity requires that foundation leaders view the shift as adaptive and not merely technical. A technical change entails adoption of specified methods whereas adaptive changes require a fundamental shift in values and beliefs. Solely implementing new “listening” techniques without shifting values and beliefs could leave gaps between intention and action. But current resources …

The Trouble With Community Engagement: From Power Sharing To Power Shifting Through The Community Bill Of Rights, Jessica Lee, Patrick Mcneal, Malikah Garner, Katya Fels Smyth, Tanya Tucker, Shemekka Stewart Isaacs, Jasmaine Shaphon Henry, Miranda Rabuck

The Foundation Review

Reflecting a growing consensus that meaningful change doesn’t come without the involvement of those most impacted, funders have signed on to efforts to “listen,” “get proximate,” and “empower.”

In this article, the authors draw on their lived expertise and research to describe how even well-intentioned community engagement efforts can become extractive, tokenizing, and undermine existing community assets. As a meaningful alternative, the authors suggest “centering community” as an orientation to all philanthropic work and the Community Bill of Rights (CBR) as a tool to guide the required change (Black et al., 2022).

Drawing on case examples from healthcare, urban planning, …

Funder Listening To Shift Power: Definitions And Context, Melinda Tuan, Rick Moyers, Gita Gulati-Partee

The Foundation Review

Listening in the context of philanthropy is a common colloquial term that can have many definitions, ranging from everyday conversations that inform foundation work to more formal opportunities for community engagement. Most foundations say they listen, but all forms of listening are not equally beneficial, and listening alone does not inherently advance equity. Listening, done poorly, can be performative and extractive. Listening well, in ways that advance equity, is done in partnership, requires a response from the listener to acknowledge what’s been heard and what will be done as a result, and ultimately shifts power to the community.

Fund for …

A New Opportunity For Funder-Nonprofit Partnership: Advancing Shared Listening Efforts To Learn From Community, Valerie Threlfall

The Foundation Review

Funders lack scalable tools and processes for advancing their community listening efforts. As foundations explore this work, there is an opportunity to leverage the nonprofit sector’s experience in listening and to partner more actively with grantees to learn from community.

Nonprofits have embraced community listening more rapidly than funders over the past 10 years. Over 40,000 organizations have affirmatively described their listening practices via How We Listen, a feedback self-assessment that is part of Candid and Charity Navigator’s nonprofit profiles, and approximately 1,400 organizations have participated in Listen4Good’s capacity-building programs. This momentum has enabled the development of tools such as …

Listening And Responding Lead To Better Outcomes: Building The Evidence Base For High-Quality Listening Practice, Penelope Huang

The Foundation Review

In 2019, Fund for Shared Insight made grants to six research teams to test the hypothesis that if direct-service organizations gain a deeper understanding of how well their programs are serving clients by listening and actively responding to client feedback, they can increase the likelihood of positive outcomes. This body of research explores the case for incorporating participant voice to improve program effectiveness.

As philanthropy seeks to become more responsive to the people and communities most impacted by their decisions, this research has important implications for philanthropic practice, including the selection of grantees, learning in partnership with grantees and community, …

Executive Summaries

The Foundation Review

No abstract provided.

Editorial, Julia Coffman

The Foundation Review

No abstract provided.

Tfr 17.2 Full Issue

The Foundation Review

No abstract provided.

Community Engagement: A Core Practice On The Journey To Power Sharing, Elizabeth Jordan, Tryphena A. Clarke, Raquel R. Robinson

The Foundation Review

In this article, the authors posit that equity and power-sharing are foundational considerations for responsible philanthropy given the inherently unequal balance of wealth. These considerations may be magnified for family and place-based foundations where philanthropy has an outsized impact within a particular community.

Community engagement is a core practice tied to equity and power-sharing that can bring philanthropy into closer alignment with democratic and social equity values. This article examines the 15-year journey of a place-based family foundation as a reflection on how grantmaking organizations may shift their governance, giving priorities, staffing model, and operating practices to support the tenets …

Listening And Participation Prime Funders To Honor And Build Community Ownership, Gita Gulati-Partee, Katy Love

The Foundation Review

Funder listening is an essential complement to community participation to disrupt white dominant culture habits that entrench the status quo of hierarchy and power. Community-centered listening, combined with participatory processes, offers funders an opportunity to shift in deep and sustainable ways from an individualistic, “power over” orientation to interdependent relationships with community partners.

In this article, two practitioners of equity and participatory philanthropy share how funder listening and community participation form a potent combination to help funders confront their own power and use it intentionally to honor and bolster community ownership and agency.

Drawing on the authors’ direct experience, this …

Evaluating Efforts To Shift Power Through Listening: Defining Power And Listening To All Sides, Sarah Stachowiak, Juan Clavijo

The Foundation Review

There are a variety of ways funders and nonprofits are trying to shift the power dynamics between those who typically have held it (i.e., funders and organizations) to those who have unique and important expertise: those most affected by the problems the social sector is trying to solve.

In this article, we share lessons from two evaluations that sought to understand how those who were being listened to experienced the listening process, exploring the degree to which people felt heard and their experiences of how, and in what ways, power shifted for them. One evaluation focused on the experiences of …

Advancing Diversity Training For Police Officers Through Community-Based Multicultural Immersion Practices: Recommendations For Law Enforcement Trainers And Managers, Chaunda L. Scott, Jeanetta D. Sims, Charles Wilson .

Journal of the North American Management Society

From 2014 to the present, police shootings with the use of deadly force among communities of color have become a matter of heightened national concern. This study draws on an extensive literature review gathered from open sources, academic journal articles in law enforcement, criminal justice and government documents as well as on key definitional foundations to explore the impact of cultural competence training activities for police officers. Through a case study of primary research, insights are offered from an adult education community-based multicultural immersion program. The authors of this paper argue for the integration of community-based multicultural immersion learning approaches …

Editorial Note, Heather S. Mcmillan

Journal of the North American Management Society

No abstract provided.

The Evolution Of Schooling: From Industrial Obedience To Techno-Autonomy, Seb Taylor, Ron Roberts Ii

Digital Laboratory: Publisher of Internet Journal

This paper examines the enduring architecture of the American education system as a mechanism designed for compliance, not creativity. Rooted in 19th-century industrial logic, the structure of schooling, its physical design, time constraints, and assessment methods, has remained largely static despite seismic cultural and technological shifts. Through historical analysis and contemporary critique, this work interrogates the persistence of standardized methods, institutional prestige, and top-down instruction as barriers to meaningful learning and value creation. Drawing from interdisciplinary research and live case studies, including Alpha School’s AI-powered, mastery-based model, the paper advances the concept of techno-education: a student-centered paradigm informed by feedback …

Fostering Innovation At Work: Leadership Strategies For Motivating Innovative Work Behavior Across Generations Within The Christian Higher Education Environment, Sarah Clark

Doctor of Strategic Leadership (DSL) Capstone Abstracts

Project Type

Organizational Consulting Project, Organizational Design or Change, Seminar or Workshop

Project Overview

This capstone project involved the design, facilitation, and evaluation of a strategic leadership workshop developed for mid to senior-level enrollment leaders at Southeastern University. Grounded in Self-Determination Theory (SDT), Innovative Work Behavior (IWB), and Transformational Leadership, the workshop offered a diagnostic and developmental experience designed to motivate innovation across generational teams within a Christian higher education setting. The workshop was structured to transition from research-based theory to data-informed strategy, helping leaders translate organizational insights into actionable plans.

Project Themes

Core themes included intrinsic and extrinsic motivation, …

From Awareness To Action: A Guide To Uphold Human Rights, Erica Jensen, Emma Indart, Emilyn Watkins

Journal of Nonprofit Innovation

No abstract provided.

Human Rights Violation - Full Issue June 2025, Angie Holzer

Journal of Nonprofit Innovation

No abstract provided.

Inadequate Healthcare For Women In The United States, Grace Loveless

Journal of Nonprofit Innovation

Barriers to adequate healthcare for women stem from a lack of research on their specific health needs, gender-based biases in healthcare, and harmful societal norms. One key aspect highlighting these disparities is the menstrual cycle—a topic unique to women. Menstrual health, defined as a state of complete physical, mental, and social well-being, illustrates the urgent need for greater focus on reproductive health. Despite its significance, the dialogue and knowledge about reproductive health remain limited; an issue which is exacerbated by societal attitudes of secrecy and shame. These attitudes create barriers that hinder many women in the United States from accessing …

Digital Infrastructure For The Regenerative Movement: A Case Study Of The Mycelium Learning Network, Abigail Karparis

Journal of Nonprofit Innovation

The regenerative movement is gaining momentum worldwide, driven by communities working to restore ecological and social systems through place-based, culturally rooted action. Yet many of the groups leading this work, especially in the Global South or in hyper-local contexts, remain digitally invisible due to structural barriers, including limited access to appropriate technology, funding constraints, and misalignment between available tools and local values. Conventional digital infrastructures often exclude or marginalize these efforts, leaving regenerative practitioners disconnected from each other and from potential sources of support.

This article explores these challenges and presents a case study response: the co-creation of accessible, relational …