Nonprofit Organizational Effectiveness: Contrasts Between Especially Effective and Less Effective Organizations

Abstract

How do key stakeholders of nonprofit organizations (NPOs) judge the effectiveness of their organization? Are the judgments of stakeholders similar, and how are board effectiveness and the use of practitioner-identified correct management procedures related to judgments of effectiveness? This study focuses on a subset of especially effective and less effective NPOs from a larger sample and finds that the especially effective have more effective boards (as judged by various stakeholder groups), have boards with higher social prestige, use more practitioner-identified correct management procedures, and use more change management strategies. Practical implications discussed include adopting more correct management procedures and change management strategies.T he question of how to understand and assess the effectiveness of charitable nonprofit organizations (NPOs) continues to challenge practitioners and scholars alike. Is an NPO with rapidly growing revenues and an increasing surplus more effective than one We appreciate the support of the board and officers of the fund, and we acknowledge the generous cooperation of the chief executives, board presidents, board members, staff, and funders who participated. We also thank Dennis Young and three anonymous reviewers for the helpful comments on an earlier draft.

Market Orientation and Organizational Performance in the Nonprofit Context: Exploring Both Concepts and the Relationship Between Them

“…We made a wide review of theories, models, and frameworks used to measure organizational or program performance. In line with Herman & Renz (1998) and other authors we defined Nonprofit Organizational Performance (NPOP) as a social construction that takes into account stakeholders' expectations, organizational values and mission to define the bases or criteria that will guide organizational assessment. As Ritchie and Kolodinsky (2003) note, there is no agreement in the specific performance dimension or measures for nonprofit organizations.…”

“…Rojas (2000) explains that this CVM could be useful for comparing for-profit and nonprofits organizational performance. But for specific nonprofit performance analysis Herman & Renz (1998) point out the multiple constituencies model as the most useful, which should be combined with a social constructionism perspective. These authors conceive the multiple constituencies model as a modification of the goal model, recognizing that multiple stakeholders of an NPO are likely to use different criteria (rational goals) to evaluate its effectiveness.…”

Managing stakeholder relationships and nonprofit organization effectiveness

“…They assert that stakeholders judge organization effectiveness and that some stakeholders' judgments will have more credibility or influence than others. There is no widely agreed-on objective basis by which all stakeholders assess NPO effectiveness, although Herman and Renz (1998) found considerable agreement between evaluators in labeling particular organizations as highly effective; that is, there is agreement on what evaluators regard as high-performance NPOs. With less effective organizations, there was less interrater agreement.…”

Linkage Strategies, Resource Conditions and University Performance

“…Much attention has focused on the characteristics of advantage-creating resources which meet the conditions of value, inimitability, rareness and non-substitutability. In Kenya, the need to enhance linkages between universities and industry has often been cited in several Government Publications (Government of Kenya Development Plan 1994-1998; Report of the National Conference on Education, 2004;KESSP, 2005;Sessional Paper No.1 2005;Kenya Vision 2030, 2007. From the corporate sector, there are emerging strong calls for collaboration between the productive sector and higher learning institutions.…”

“…If it is small enough, it can be studied in its entirety. According to Herman and Renz (1998), all items in a population constitute population while sampling is a method of studying from a few selected and representative items, instead of the entire big number of units in order to infer and generalize the population characteristics. As at the time of this study, there were a total of sixty five (65) universities operating in Kenya (Commission for University Education, 2013).…”