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There is limited progress in solving the most pressing social problems and addressing fundamental needs despite the magnitude of resources in the hands of nonprofit organizations. Taking an organizational approach can help strengthen the nonprofit organizations that are central to social progress. The premise is that if when the leadership, management, and organizational capacity of the sector are improved, other factors will follow. The importance of leadership, management, and organizational capability are shown in this chapter. It is essential to avoid broad generalizations about the differences between the nonprofit organizations and businesses that mask or ignore fundamental similarities with respect to central management and leadership challenges. Determination of the features of individual organizations that influence the applicability of a particular conceptual framework is important. The three fundamental building blocks of organizational effectiveness, namely direction, motivation, and design, are described.

This chapter introduces the idea of mission and, in particular, the different functions of a mission, as well as its inherent limitations. In order to gain some insight into the notion of mission, one must think about what mission is not and what it should not be expected to do for an organization, as well as what mission is and what it should be expected to do. The mission is related to economic logic. The Collins and Porras' description of each of the components of mission and how they are manifested in the corporate sector is reviewed in this chapter. Then the chapter gives examples and applications from the nonprofit sector that illustrate ways in which the fundamental social purpose of nonprofit organizations can make this framework even more powerful than it is in the world of business. Furthermore, the four components identified by Collins and Porras are examined.

This chapter deals with the understanding and analyzing of the organization's competitive environment in which strategies are produced. It begins with an extensive description and explication of the ideas in the for-profit setting and with the ways the framework can be adapted for use in the nonprofit setting. The focus is placed on how industry analysis provides a systematic way of identifying the key external challenges that must be addressed in the development and evaluation of strategy. In addition, a framework for analyzing industry structure and thinking through the implications for strategy is illustrated. Porter's five forces framework highlight the fact that competitors are not the only actors whose behavior affects a firm's profitability; other players can also siphon off the value created by firms in an industry. Some of the practical issues in conducting an industry analysis in a real-world settings are addressed.

This chapter explores the purpose and importance of strategy for the nonprofit organization. It also examines a framework for developing, articulating, and evaluating strategy, and shows how to apply this framework in practice. The understanding on what it is and from where it came is described. The focus of this chapter is on the firm, where competitive advantage is the most central concept. The three elements of complete strategy, namely scope, competitive advantage, and logic, are discussed.

This chapter examines the role of leadership in formulating and then executing the mission and strategy of a nonprofit organization. In particular, these tasks are associated with the functional approach to leadership and the basic functions of direction, motivation, and design. The functional approach to leadership assumes that leadership cannot be disaggregated to atomistic behaviors, but rather that it is best defined in terms of the functions that must be fulfilled if the organization is to survive and thrive. Examples of how leaders fulfill the basic functions of direction, motivation, and design, drawn from both the nonprofit and for-profit world, are presented.

This chapter focuses on the concept of “politics and partnerships” in American history and political development. Given the prominence of nonprofit organizations and philanthropic endeavors in public affairs, the fragmented and confused understanding of the role of voluntary associations in American governance has become more difficult to ignore. The ramifying system of public–private partnerships in social provision demands systematic recognition in political analysis, but that recognition cannot begin with the premise that such arrangements are entirely novel. A sustained analysis of the reasons why such arrangements have succeeded and failed in the past can inform contemporary efforts to understand and transform contemporary systems of governance in the United States.

This chapter explains how NPower worked to institutionalize their entrepreneurial approach to nonprofit technology by expanding and replicating their model nationally. This chapter illustrates how organizations translate existing models to local environments while maintaining enough similarity to the original as to be recognizable as such. Here, I present data from a longitudinal organizational ethnography at the NPower office in New York, the first and arguably most successful affiliate of the NPower national expansion. This chapter explains moral ambivalence, the tension created by the entrepreneurial strategy of combining social and economic values. Moral ambivalence forces hybrid organizations, like social enterprises, to appeal to multiple stakeholders simultaneously expanding moral legitimacy. However, such a strategy also makes the organization vulnerable to moral legitimacy challenges from other actors, in this case members of the Circuit Rider movement.

This introductory chapter begins by with a simple model of the choices made by nonprofit organizations. It considers a model with four types of actors: a manager (meant to represent the CEO and the board), workers, donors, and customers. Each of these actors has different preferences about the nature of the organization's product. The model focuses on whose preferences come to dominate the firm's decision making. Does the firm ultimately hew toward the preferences of donors, customers, workers, or management? After presenting the model, the chapter discusses donor–worker–customer conflicts in four key nonprofit industries: academia (particularly the better-endowed universities), hospitals, art museums, and the Catholic Church. It argues that all four industries support the basic point of the model: weak incentives mean that workers come to greatly influence the practices of nonprofits. An overview of the subsequent chapters is also presented.

Voluntary service beyond minimum requirements is an important aspect of professionalism, yet it has received little attention in the study of professional ethics. The dominance of the consensus paradigm partly explains the neglect: if professional ethics is nothing but the duties incumbent on all members of a profession, together with resolving the dilemmas when duties conflict, then optional voluntary service is automatically excluded from consideration. A related reason for the neglect of voluntary service (or philanthropy) is the more general preoccupation of ethicists (over the last two hundred years) with universal duties, to the neglect of personal ideals of service. This chapter discusses three overlapping dimensions of voluntary service in the professions: pro bono service, work in nonprofit organizations, and supererogatory commitments. Each highlights personal commitments in professional ethics, but the last topic especially leads into wider issues in ethical theory. The chapter tries to make sense of how some courses of action can become responsibilities and yet remain supererogatory — how they can be supererogatory responsibilities.

This introductory chapter sets out the objectives of this book as well as the theoretical approach it undertakes. Against the backdrop of the 2012 U.S. elections, the press and political pundits were right to frame the reelection of Barack Obama as president as a harbinger of the growing power of Hispanic and Asian American voters, but the media often overlook the variety of immigrant nonprofit organizations that have been working hard to energize these voters for decades. The chapter places the focus on these organizations as it lays down the key questions, scope, and methodology for this research. It also introduces two key case studies—Arab Community Center for Economic and Social Services (ACCESS) and New Immigrant Community Empowerment (NICE)—both of which demonstrate some of the diverse ways immigrants receive services, representation, and collectively express a political identity.

This chapter, which aims to explore the role and inclusivity of nonprofit organizations in the rise of voluntary regulation programs, compares and analyzes the nongovernment organizations (NGOs) voluntary programs and government-sponsored programs, matching their similarities in terms of efficacy and results. NGOs are seen to use voluntary program membership as a way to display their quality of service toward their donors and potential donors. The chapter gives suggestions for improving NGO voluntary programs, which, albeit that they have apparent weaknesses, should be viewed as serious attempts to create credible, private forms of regulation. Like government-sponsored programs, as well as the for-profit sector, non-profit voluntary programs also face obstacles to club formation. In conclusion, it is argued that the impact of nonprofit clubs helps raise a certain sense of monitoring and accountability among nonprofit organizations.

This chapter is an overview of “empowerment projects.” It shows how empowerment projects are supposed to blend different kinds of people and different kinds of organizations—civic association, state agency, nonprofit organization, family, and cultural tradition. Since funding is usually short-term, all of this blending has to happen flexibly, rapidly, and transparently, with documentation for multiple sources, each with a separate form. Organizers celebrate all this melting of stiff boundaries, finding it exciting and empowering. But the blending also produces tensions, as it is often hard to juggle this many different types of relationships all in one place, all at once.

This chapter studies nonprofit organizations as contemporary agents of the movement for immigrant rights and immigrant integration. Through cross-historical and cross-organizational comparisons with political parties, labor unions, and churches, the chapter draws on how the activism of immigrant-serving nonprofits can be distinguished from that of other types of civic organizations. Contemporary immigrant-serving nonprofits are set apart by the lack of political and financial resources with which they can influence the political process. These constraints, however, do not necessarily prevent immigrant-serving nonprofits from taking an active role in local political affairs. The chapter shows that these nonprofits' expertise on immigrant communities is their most valuable resource, and that city administrative officials are their most common advocacy targets and collaborators.

Nonprofit community-based organizations (CBOs) are key players in an expanding arena of public social provision: privately delivered direct services. Devolution has actually decreased the total public dollars being spent on these services, but privatization has rapidly increased the amounts being funneled through government service contracts to CBOs. Together, these two national policy shifts have greatly altered the face of social provision to the poor. Current sociological theories of public social provision, with their focus on income support, miss out on this important component of the social benefit package. More and more, the well-being of the poorest citizens depends on state- and local-level decisions about how to allocate public service contracts.

This book studies third sectors in different parts of the world. The third sector refers to various types of relief and welfare organizations, innovation organizations, public service organizations, economic development organizations, grassroots mobilization groups, advocacy groups, and social networks. These include civil society organizations, nonprofit organizations, nongovernmental organizations, and formal and informal associations. Building on recent work on the origins, dynamics, and effects of civil society across the globe, this book compares the functions, impacts, and composition of the nonprofit sector for six countries: United States, France, Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, and China. This introduction explains the book's approach of using institutional logics to study the third sector, offers new theoretical perspectives on how different types of participation can increase generalized trust and state legitimacy, and considers the impact of neoliberalism and the so-called “New Political Culture” on nonprofits. It also discusses the emergence of New Social Movements and how associational politics might fit into the large picture of political life.

This chapter examines the development and infrastructure of the third sector in Japan. The third sector in Japan can be classified into two different types of organizations: the first is heavily networked with the state and acts as mainstream social welfare service providers within an institutional logic of bureaucracy; the second is typically a product of local communities and engages in advocacy work rather than service provision. This chapter first provides a background on the Japanese third sector and its legal structure before discussing its sources of funding. It also describes changes over time in Japanese civil society and goes on to consider three unique opportunities and challenges faced by nonprofit organizations (NPOs): growing social heterogeneity among citizens; the Japanese state's perceived crisis of legitimacy; and increased desire for greater accountability of public services at the grassroots level. The chapter concludes with case studies of NPOs that attest to Japan's rapidly changing political culture.

This chapter examines how community nonprofit organizations are mobilizing substantial outside funding, including government support, to preserve and rebuild disadvantaged neighborhoods in greater Philadelphia. It shows that actors and institutions situated beyond the city limits play an important supporting role in the urban redevelopment work undertaken by community-based nonprofits. These outsiders exert influence through community development financial institutions whose resources are helping in the process of rebuilding neighborhoods. This chapter explains how neighborhood redevelopment became a nonprofit responsibility and how community organizations obtain investment capital. It considers “walking-around money” used by legislators in Pennsylvania to help community development corporations and other nonprofits carry out projects in their districts. It also asks whether community reinvestment has been effective in reshaping the city.