Welcome to Research Friday! As part of a continuing series, we invite a nonprofit scholar, student, or professional to highlight current research reports or studies and discuss how they can inform and improve day-to-day nonprofit practice.

It is not often that public policy intended for the publicly traded-corporate world directly impacts the nonprofit corporate world. So … when the Sarbanes-Oxley Act (SOX) was adopted by Congress in 2002, there just wasn’t much history to help nonprofits understand its impact – on them. A decade has now gone by, and, according to research by Tamara G. Nezhina of DePaul University and Jeffrey L. Brudney of Cleveland State University, a base for the future has been identified from this short period of history. Their study reviewed literature about the effect of SOX on nonprofits as well as surveys and other basic research implemented by the authors. The result of their work? The identification of intended – and unintended – outcomes that had both positive and negative impacts on nonprofits.

The goal of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act was to curb financial abuses among publicly-traded corporations. Further, it was intended to enhance transparency, which, for the nonprofit sector, is an imperative. Are these goals being achieved? And, at what price?

Two of several requirements were binding upon most corporations and nonprofits. These require…

The ideology of being colorblind within youth service provisions suggests an agency, and by extension, the agency’s service providers, do not consider the color of a youth as a precursor to participation in any unique services or programs. It further suggests an agency which strictly adheres to colorblindness does not provide segregated services, which were in large part eliminated by the Civil Rights Act of 1964.

While the prevention of discrimination based on color may have been the initial intention of the concept of colorblindness, this concept has commonly been extended to include other physical and social characteristics such as ethnicity, culture, age, gender, religion, and sexual orientation. Within nonprofit agencies which provide youth services, there are, however, exceptions to the colorblindness rule. When a specific characteristic conflicts directly with the mission of the service provider, agencies have been allowed to use the respective characteristic as a criterion for participation in their programs and services.

In essence, the ideology of being colorblind is viewed as a critical practice when ensuring equality of both access and, ultimately, service outcomes for youth participants. Every youth is treated equally; everyone gets the same service, has the same access to services, and thus is expected to have the same outcomes from participating in the respective programs.

In principle, colorblindness is an…

Welcome to Research Friday! As part of a continuing series, we invite a nonprofit scholar, student, or professional to highlight current research reports or studies and discuss how they can inform and improve day-to-day nonprofit practice.

Models of Collaboration, by professor Mark Hager and Tyler Curry, identifies and describes types of nonprofit collaborations from an analysis of the 177 nominations submitted in 2009 for the prestigious Collaboration Prize. Recently, Professor Gordon Shockley and I reviewed and re-coded the nominations. We noticed that a great deal did not fit neatly into any one model outlined in Models of Collaboration. Instead, they were often blends that involved different levels of partnership and sharing. From this, we developed an alternative list of ten types of collaboration, organized by increasing levels of integration, and which can be combined to make hybrids.

PARTNERSHIPS

The left side of the spectrum represents partnerships. By definition, these are formal agreements between two or more organizations that wish to work together to achieve a goal. In their purest form, they involve little to no direct sharing of overhead, though some efficiencies might be seen in the long term. There are four types of partnerships, as originally laid out by Hager and…

Nonprofits love volunteers. After all, they are the lifeblood of many organizations. When budgets are tight— and they always are with nonprofits— volunteers take up the slack.

So, how do you recruit volunteers who will integrate well with your paid staff, perform the functions they are assigned, and stick around?

Recruiting those committed and talented volunteers does take time and a strategic approach.

An example from my past— I was a regular volunteer for my alumni organization and usually said, "Yes" when asked for anything. At one meeting, I was asked to run a particular volunteer effort and said, "Yes," without really thinking about it. As the officer who had asked me walked away, I suddenly realized that the volunteer position was going to take place during the time my son was scheduled for an extensive surgery and recovery period. Not a good time to volunteer.

So, I quickly found the officer and explained that I wouldn’t be available this time. She looked put out and walked away.

Did they ask me to volunteer again? No, they did not. I subsequently took my volunteer efforts elsewhere.

Best Recruiting Strategy
What works best? Honesty is number one!

How many times have you been told that "It will only take a little time" to do a particular volunteer effort? After you’ve been roped into it— and you feel like…

Welcome to Research Friday! As part of a continuing series, we invite a nonprofit scholar, student, or professional to highlight current research reports or studies and discuss how they can inform and improve day-to-day nonprofit practice.

Earlier this year, Nonprofit Finance Fund (NFF) received 4,600 responses to our annual 2012 State of the Sector Survey. Since then, we’ve been using these data to share key nonprofit sector trends on issues like the rising demand for services, shrinking government support, and the precarious financial health of organizations. This week’s installment of Research Friday looks at what the survey results tell us about nonprofit board engagement in tough times.

Since 2009, our survey has asked nonprofit leaders to indicate what management actions they are taking to cope with the recession. In both 2009 and 2010, nonprofit leaders told us that they were "engaging more closely with the board" by increasing the number of annual meetings, sharing new types of reports, or in other ways. In those years, nearly two thirds of respondents (59 percent and 60 percent, respectively) ramped up their communication with the board. So what happened in 2011, and what are respondents planning for 2012?…