Implications of Welfare Reform: Do Nonprofit Survival Strategies Threaten Civil Society?

Abstract

Nonprofit organizations play a pivotal role in recent efforts

Nonprofit Advocacy Under a Third-Party Government Regime: Cooperation or Conflict?

“…It could be that NPO's that fulfill an advocacy role do not consider this role as something that yields a conflictual relationship with government. Resource dependence theory implicitly assumes conflict: 'don't bite the hand that feeds you', because that may result in NPO's losing an essential part of their financial resources (Smith and Lipsky 1993;Alexander, Nank et al 1999;Maddison and Denniss 2005;Child and Gronbjerg 2007;FuertesFuertes and Maset-Llaudes 2007;Schmid, Bar et al 2008;Guo and Saxton 2010). But in societies with a third-party government regime, as it is the case in Flanders, we can assume that government-nonprofit relations are based on cooperation rather than on conflict: NPO's that mainly deliver services, and still perform some advocacy functions, may consider advocacy as something that must improve the relationship with government.…”

“…This results in a rather conflictual situation between NPO's and governments because NPO's that wish to commit themselves to an advocacy role will fear punishment for certain levels of unwelcome political activity. Resource dependence hereby also operates in a more subtle way because government funding causes changes in nonprofit organizational structure and behavior by redirecting organizational attention and energy away from advocacy and toward administrative activities necessary to sustain the funding source on which they depend (Alexander, Nank et al 1999). But although both theory and research about nonprofit organizations imply that resource dependence is a relevant explanation, it could be argued that other mechanisms are at work as well.…”

Influences on the Architecture of Human Resource Management in Nonprofit Organizations

“…To deal with changing funding requirements and demands for professionalization, coping strategies in community-based and faith-based organizations include reducing staff and increasing workloads, followed by increasing their reliance on volunteers (Alexander, Nank, & Stivers, 1999). A study of a care services organization provides evidence that increasing pressures to provide more care, the greater emphasis on effectiveness and value for money, as well as increased performance monitoring have detrimental effects on the work orientations and commitments of the employees (Cunningham, 2005).…”

Nonprofit Collaboration and the Resurrection of Market Failure: How a Resource-Sharing Environment Can Suppress Social Objectives

“…The survival strategies used by nonprofits to seek and maintain such grants and contracts have been criticized as threatening the traditional role of nonprofits in civil society (Alexander et al 1999;Eikenberry and Kluver 2004). Among the most commonly cited pitfalls of collaboration is the tendency to drop social objectives in favor of those more conducive to collaboration or to alter the mission of the organization for the same purpose ("mission drift") (Vahon 2012;Nevile 2010;Jones 2007).…”