The benefits of nonprofit reputation: Government funding, nonprofit performance, and nonprofit reputational gains

Abstract

Reputation is a valuable intangible resource whose role in public–nonprofit collaborations remains unexplored. Does nonprofit reputation influence government funding and nonprofit performance? Does nonprofit performance enhance nonprofit reputational gains? Our identification strategy adopts panel regression methods to assess whether nonprofit reputation influences government funding and nonprofit performance in 675 collaborations between the Brazilian Ministry of Health (MoH) and 60 nonprofit hospitals from 2012 to 2019. Our results indicate that reputable nonprofit hospitals receive more government funding, hire more staff and achieve higher levels of production. This research also suggests a virtuous cycle: Better nonprofit performance leads to nonprofit reputational gains in official rankings. We thus contribute to reputation and public–nonprofit collaboration scholarship by empirically examining the role of nonprofit reputation in public–nonprofit collaborations and identifying mediators of the nonprofit reputation–performance link while responding to calls for more panel data analyses.