French Nonprofit Organizations Facing COVID-19 and Lockdown: Maintaining a Sociopolitical Role in Spite of the Crisis of Resource Dependency

Abstract

COVID-19 became a global health crisis affecting all collective spheres. French nonprofit organizations (NPOs) are trying to participate in the crisis response, but they are suffering from the consequences of the crisis and a structural lack of re- sources. The aim of this article is to understand how they reacted to the crisis and how they coped with the associated lack. It is based on an extensive survey of French NPOs during the first lockdown. The results show that NPOs consider- ably reduced their activity while trying to maintain social links. Despite the reorganization of working arrangements during COVID-19, the economic impact of the crisis was very strong. RÉSUMÉ La crise sanitaire du Covid-19 devient une crise globale qui touche toutes les sphères collectives. Les associations fran- çaises tentent de participer à la réponse à la crise mais, en dépit de cet engagement, elles subissent de plein fouet les conséquences de la crise et souffrent du manque de ressources qui est déjà structurel chez elles. L’objectif est de com- prendre comment elles ont réagi à la crise en composant avec ce manque. L’article s’appuie sur une enquête de grande ampleur auprès des associations durant le premier confinement. Les résultats montrent que les associations ont consi- dérablement réduit leur activité, tout en essayant de maintenir des liens sociaux si possible. L’impact économique est cependant très fort, malgré la réorganisation des modalités de travail.

Resilience in Arts and Cultural Nonprofit Organizations: An Analysis of the Covid-19 Crisis in France

“…It’s true that NPOs in the arts and cultural sector have less power than those in the health and social sector, for example, in times of a pandemic. Nevertheless, maintaining links, even remotely, has been done by the other sectors (Plaisance, 2021a ).…”

“…One of the reasons why the reforms were implemented was that this sector has shown fewer economic problems in comparison with health or social NPOs, for instance (Plaisance, 2021a ). Recent studies have already noted too that the crisis impact on NPOs has been slightly minimized thanks to the action of private and public partners (Johnson et al, 2020 ).…”

“…NPOs in general have been studied in the context of the pandemic. Their activity has collapsed (Kim & Mason, 2020 ), especially in the sports, leisure, arts and cultural sectors (Plaisance, 2021a ). Their governance has sometimes been interrupted despite its crucial role in crises (McMullin & Raggo, 2020 ).…”

French non-profit organizations at the end of a lockdown: the relevance of differentiated policies

“…Only 4% of the NPOs in the sample were able to strengthen their ties with their partners and 3% gained new ones. The surge of solidarity that occurred in France during the first wave of Covid-19 did not affect NPOs as much as one might have imagined (Plaisance, 2021).…”

“…The absence of employees and the smallest budget are taken as reference. Regarding the sector, NPOs in the social sector will be in reference as they have been forced to maintain their activity during the crisis and have been less affected than other sectors (Plaisance, 2021).…”