Nonprofit quality: What is it and why should nonprofits care?

Abstract

This manuscript examines a quality‐oriented philosophy in a nonprofit context utilizing semi‐structured interviews with nonprofit executive directors. The findings indicate that nonprofit organizations do seek continuous improvement and value a long‐term focus, consistent with for‐profit quality aspirations. However, factors unique to the structure of nonprofit organizations exist and contribute to organizational quality. The interviews converged to highlight five areas that relate to organizational quality in nonprofit organizations: donor relationships, organizational transparency, board member involvement, talent recruitment, and employee commitment. The findings indicate that a quality‐oriented approach to nonprofit governance affects an organization's ability to secure funding and address the mission of the respective organization more efficiently and effectively. Thus, it is suggested that incorporating a quality‐oriented philosophy creates a competitive advantage for nonprofit organizations in an increasingly saturated market.

Nonprofit Boards in Pursuit of Innovation for Growth: Views From the Frontline

“…Following the interviews, each meeting’s audio file was auto transcribed and then corrected manually via comparison to its videorecording. Based on grounded-theory procedures (Glaser & Strauss, 1967), we conducted manual thematic analysis of the transcripts via an open-coding process, iteratively cataloging the data into themes and factors/subfactors (Tacon et al, 2017; Woodroof et al, 2020) which we documented in a coding book (an Excel spreadsheet). We periodically adjusted and/or regrouped themes, factors, and associated content to develop our narrative’s basic outline.…”

Towards an open innovation ecosystem in the cultural industry: The bright side of trust and the dark side of measurement

“…In the cultural philanthropy literature, the ecosystem concept appears only sporadically, and no clearly‐defined ecosystem framework has been proposed for the analysis of philanthropically‐funded projects in the creative and cultural industries. However, related work on the non‐profit and cultural sector has served to highlight the importance for non‐profit organizations of donor relationships and quality‐oriented governance (Woodroof et al, 2020), the crucial role played by an institutions' key organizers in value creation in a service ecosystem (Brozovic & Tregua, 2020), as well as the dangers of mission drift faced by social enterprises as a result of pressure to secure funding (Jones et al, 2021). However, to the best of the authors' knowledge, no study has thus far considered the concept of open innovation ecosystems in the context of cultural industries and no scholarly contribution has yet been made to an understanding of philanthropically‐funded cultural initiatives in the context of open innovation ecosystem strategy.…”

State politics and gender diversity in sport governance

“…Generally, this two-tier system is more common in the corporate sector (Jungmann 2007). The distinction between paid staff and volunteers is not relevant to this study, since the quality of non-profit sport governance is related to the active participation of the voluntary board (Woodroof et al 2021). The paid directors are responsible for daily business, but are hired, controlled, and evaluated by the voluntary board.…”