As collaborative partnerships become commonplace for Chinese nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) to address a variety of complex social problems and foster the development of the Chinese civil society, the question of how they can expand their partnerships emerges. A recent study by NNSI researchers, Sophia Fu and Michelle Shumate, highlight the significance of guanxi to help Chinese NGOs expand their collaboration networks and increase social impact. Fu and Shumate conducted an

by Sophia Fu While some scholars argue that the Internet is transforming China’s civil society landscape, a recent study by NNSI researchers challenges this claim. Sophia Fu and Michelle Shumate studied the websites of 410 Chinese nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) and how Chinese NGOs hyperlinked with each other in 2014. Their findings suggest that Chinese NGOs tend to hyperlink to similar NGOs. For example, government-organized NGOs (GONGOs) preferred to link with

by Katherine Cooper Here at NNSI, we hear a lot about collective impact – what is it? What role should nonprofits play in collective impact? Our researchers have been interested in this phenomenon for some time; this week, we provide an overview of what we know about collective impact – and our efforts to explore collective impact from a research standpoint. What is collective impact? The concept of collective impact

by: Michelle Shumate As nonprofits consider partnering with businesses in a variety of ways, including sponsorships, cause-marketing, or more integrative arrangements, two important questions emerge. First, which businesses should they partner with? Second, how many business partnerships do most nonprofits maintain and talk about? In other words, how many is too many? Shumate, Hsieh and O’Connor examine these questions in their 2016 study of 122 of the largest, most recognizable

Congratulations to Michelle Shumate and Sophia Fu, recipients of a School of Communication Innovations grant for their upcoming project, The Impact of Information Communication Technologies (ICTs) on Interorganizational Collaboration. NNSI will begin data collection in the summer of 2015.

We are looking for collective impact partners to join Collective Impact Engagement: Outcomes from Stakeholders to Systems.  This project is unlike any other in that it explores outcomes of collective impact projects across the country; if you participate, you will receive detailed reports that summarize our findings for your site and compares those findings to those of approximately 30 other comparable sites. Who can participate? This project is open to