Foundations, technical assistance organizations, and government programs often claim to promote nonprofit capacity. But, many times, it’s not clear what they mean.  Merriam Webster defines capacity as “the facility or power to produce, perform, or deploy.” Nonprofit capacity is the facility of nonprofits to produce, perform, or deploy their resources. It’s not the same as effectiveness. Instead, it describes the ability of a nonprofit to accomplish its organizational goals and

Popular culture and management scholars argue that activists serve as the watchdog for corporations. In the absence of government regulation, activists supposedly hold corporations to account. Corporate activists are more informed and, therefore, more skeptical about corporate social responsibility messages than the general public. Activists, the theory goes, can sniff out greenwashing in ways that the average citizen cannot. But, no studies had empirically examined whether activists were more skeptical

By Anne-Marie Boyer Conversations around social issues are regularly punctuated with the term “systems change.” Systems change recognizes that problems are unconstrained, dynamic, and continually evolving. Education disparities, climate change, public health, women’s rights, and poverty are entwined; Addressing any one of these issues unravels moving parts in the other.  The Rockefeller Foundation states that systems change requires collaboration. Individuals and organizations, from across sectors and areas of expertise, collaborate

View the Resource By Reyhaneh Maktoufi, Amy O’Connor, Michelle Shumate This study unpacks the complex relationship between corporate–nonprofit partnerships, corporate social responsibility (CSR) communication, and stakeholder evaluations of fit. We move beyond the fundamental question of whether partner fit matters to questions about what types of messages matter, under what conditions, and to whom. We conducted an online experiment (N = 966) to test created fit messages’ ability to influence

View the Resource By Sophia Fu, Michelle Shumate Capacity-building initiatives are popular among nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) worldwide. In response to a lack of valid and reliable capacity measures for NGOs working on various social issues, Shumate and colleagues developed an 8-dimension, 45-item NGO capacities instrument, based on data from U.S. NGOs. However, the proliferation of international research on NGO capacity raises questions about the degree to which such an instrument

View the Resource By Katherine R. Cooper, Rong Wang, Anne-Marie Boyer, Jack L. Harris, Joshua-Paul Miles, Michelle Shumate Collaborative networks in response to social problems are a common area of research, but questions of who manages these networks and how they organize cross-sector partners represent new challenges for nonprofit organizations and their partners. This study draws upon interview data from 26 community-based education coalitions across the United States in which