By Katherine R. Cooper Not too long ago, I sat in on a meeting of local leaders as they wrestled with an education initiative that they were trying to implement in the community. Although the group’s goal sounded simple enough – introducing literacy programming into existing school and community projects – the conversation soon became complicated. There is a clear link between improving literacy and improving educational outcomes, but what

By NNSI Editorial Team 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

View the Resource By Sophia Fu, Michelle Shumate In recent years, the amount of research on digital inter-organizational networks among Chinese non-governmental organizations (NGOs) has increased greatly. However, few studies have examined the offline networks of Chinese NGOs. To fill this gap, the present study investigates the size and spread of offline Chinese NGO networks. In particular, we examine two competing hypotheses: the influence of organizational capacity and the influence

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

View the Resource By Donald Haider, Katherine R. Cooper, Reyhaneh Maktoufi This study analyzes the use of merger strategies and their impact and outcomes in order to provide nonprofits and their funders with the information they need to conduct, support, and promote mergers that advance mission goals. Major goals of the study are to educate nonprofits and funders about how mergers can be used to achieve mission and increase impact;

View the Resource By Michelle Shumate, Andrew Pilny, Katherine R. Cooper, Yannick Atouba Around the world, nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), grassroots movements, governments, cooperatives, and universities are discovering that the fight against issues such as poverty, hunger, disease, pandemics, disasters, and environmental degradation requires new forms of organizing, self-organizing networks (Contractor, 1994; Fukuyama, 1999). The networked form of governance represents an empowerment approach to issues of poverty and development (Melkote, 2002),