This study aims to present the progress and development in research carried out on the strategies put into practice at nonprofit organisations. To this end, we carried out a systematic review of the literature making recourse to the ISI Web of Knowledge platform for the data collection process that resulted in the 62 scientific articles (published between 1981 and 2016) analysed in this review. This analysis correspondingly sets out a description of the studies, a timeframe for their respective dates of publication and details about the research methods applied. The results convey how, over the last four decades, there have been a range of studies of nonprofit organisation strategy-related themes with the greatest incidence clustered around the terms strategic management, strategic planning, strategic typology (Miles and Snow 1978), innovation strategies and the strategic management of human resources. We found that the 1980s focused on the theoretical foundations of strategy in nonprofit organisations and the 1990s showed a theoretical consolidation of strategy in nonprofit organisations. The first decade of the twenty-first century shows a focus on improving the management of nonprofit organisations, and in the past decade there has been a diversification in the strategies adopted by these organisations. We furthermore set out suggestions for future research alongside the theoretical and practical implications of this study.

Research on the relationship between non-profit organizations (NPOs) and the public sector has been dominated by predictions of isomorphism where change and tensions in NPOs are attributed an imposing institutional setting. This article argues that research represents a selective perspective on organizational life due to its portrayal of organizational change as synonymous with an isomorphic, linear trajectory. The purpose of this article is to illustrate different sources and characteristics of change and tension. The article presents an analytical framework comprising of four components: evolving change, episodic change, inherent dilemmas, and conflicting logics, facilitating an understanding of the organization as movement. The analysis of a case study organization suggests that by identifying different dimensions of changes and tensions we can gain a richer understanding of the complexity of processes underpinning the organization as movement. The analysis reveals how multiple, parallel processes related to change and tensions generate reflections that drive integrity and identity formation at individual and organizational levels.

We examine how societal-level institutional logics impact the way in which hybridity develops in nonprofit organizations using international, comparative and qualitative case studies of community regeneration organizations in England and France. The research applies theoretically based conjectures about types of hybridity to empirical data generated from 20 interviews, document analysis and observation in five nonprofits in the city of Lyon and five in Sheffield. We find that the French nonprofits are ‘blended’ hybrids that integrate state and community institutional logics, while ‘assimilated’ hybrids combining state, community and market logics are found in the English cases. Undertaking contextually situated analysis of institutional logics generates new knowledge on the influences on nonprofits’ rules, practices and narratives, so improving the level of knowledge about, and capacity to manage, this sector.

With the rise of the global associational revolution and the expansion of neoliberalism across the world, nonprofit organizations (NPOs) have increasingly tended to adopt market values and approaches in many countries. A recent debate has concerned the impacts of nonprofit marketization on the civil society sector. A primary concern among Western scholars is the potential harm that marketization may cause to the traditional roles of NPOs, especially in their ability to create and maintain a strong civil society. This article joins the debate by engaging in a comparative analysis of China and the USA to answer the following question: Are the same concerns in the West applicable to non-Western countries, particularly those gradually liberalizing but still highly controlled authoritarian countries? By exploring the variations in objectives, models, and effects associated with the marketization taking place under different political–social systems, we find that unlike the nonprofit marketization in the USA, the similar yet distinct process in China is facilitating rather than inhibiting the development of civil society. On the other hand, our findings also provide nonprofit practitioners with a contextual guideline to help them devise more effective service strategies tailored to fit diverse sociocultural settings.

This study considers key value differences between leaders of two types of social ventures: for-profit social benefit corporations and nonprofit organizations. The research question asks to what degree the value sets of leaders of benefit corporations are congruent with those of similarly situated individuals in nonprofit organizations. The results show the values of leaders working in benefit corporations and nonprofit organizations are in many ways aligned, but there are notable statistical differences. A sectoral association of values is also present with employees in both types of organization, especially when the previous work experience of employees is considered.

Fundraising is a crucial activity for many nonprofit organizations. However, scant research has examined how the strategic priority of fundraising activities may vary across organizations and over time. This study addresses this gap in knowledge by examining how economic and organization-specific financial conditions predict the priority of fundraising in a nonprofit organization. In particular, this study examines the changes in the ratio of art, culture and humanities organizations’ fundraising expenses to their total expenditure during the period of 2005–2012, which includes the great recession of 2007–2009. The findings reveal that, when facing an economic crisis, the ratio of fundraising expense to total expenditure increases, suggesting that fundraising becomes a higher priority under a hostile economic condition. The analysis also reveals differences in nonprofits’ reaction to recession depending on their revenue mix, with donative nonprofits reacting more sensitively than commercial nonprofits.

Nonprofit organizations in Russia are introducing for-profit activities as a means of gaining autonomy from external donors, and as instruments of strategic planning and sustainable development. This study focuses on organizations that work with welfare provision and explores how they reconcile entrepreneurial activities with their social mission. More specifically, we interrogate how two institutional logics, business and nonprofit, are defined and reconciled in organizational identities, structures and hierarchies. Socially oriented nonprofits define their mission through service to beneficiaries, through personal and professional dedication to beneficiaries’ well-being, and through making an impact on public policies and the society at large. They mimic a business approach in strategic planning and meticulous reporting, but subordinate profit-seeking to social mission by integrating entrepreneurial activities into already existing organizational structures, or by separating them into independent entities.

Change is frequently afoot in the nonprofit sector, both in the wider institutional environment in which nonprofits operate and within the organizations themselves. Environmental transformations—funding sources, supply and demand for collective goods, and administrative norms—create the circumstances in which organizations operate. Internally, change involves the alteration of goals, practices, and personnel. To explore how multiple aspects of change intersect across levels, we ask how organizations’ practices influence their experience of and reaction to changes in the environment. Turning open systems theories inside out, we argue that internal planning, routines, and missions give rise to organizational mindsets that imbue evolving environmental circumstances with meaning. We illustrate our argument using a unique longitudinal dataset of 196 representative 501(c)(3) public charities in the San Francisco Bay Area from 2005 to 2015 to assess both accelerators and obstacles of change. Empirically, we investigate predictors of organizational insolvency and the ability to serve constituents in the wake of the Great Recession. We find that strategic planning decreases the likelihood of insolvency whereas an orientation toward the needy increases spending. We conclude with our contributions to understanding of multi-level organizational change and nonprofit strategy.

Dynamic capability research increasingly seeks to identify mechanisms founding dynamic capabilities because this microfoundation provides options for influencing the application of dynamic capabilities. Dynamic capabilities in turn support organizations to achieve continuous organizational change. We pursue deeper insight into the microfounding mechanisms of dynamic capabilities with regard to management-related variables. Survey data from hot spots of refugee crisis 2016 all across Austria allow us to examine how managerial mechanisms on microlevel and dynamic capabilities on macro-level are linked and particularly how managers can influence the application of dynamic capabilities. Data evaluation is based on mediation analysis. Study reveals that participative leadership fosters dynamic capabilities of NPOs active in refugee aid. Further, we provide evidence that the manager´s perception, how self-determined he/she is and how impactful his/her actions are, enhances the application of dynamic capabilities.

The aim of this study is to understand how a new nationwide nonprofit organization, Victim Support Sweden (VSS), emerged in just a few years without public or political demand. In this qualitative study, we reconstruct and follow the first years of the organization. The study is based on a content analysis of VSS’s archival documents from 1988 to 1992 and retrospective interviews with key persons. The results acknowledge the power of entrepreneurs in establishing the organization. The entrepreneurs used their skills, engagement, and backgrounds to “make sense” of the organization, even though there were no crime victims calling for support. They combined logics from adjacent fields and created a specific new “victim support logic.” Thereafter, the logic spread quickly through the entrepreneurs’ lobbying of politicians and education of local victim support volunteers.

Despite policy calling for compulsory education in China, many children with autism are not in school. This article examines the establishment of autism-related non-governmental organizations (NGOs) in China to meet needs not being met by the state. We focus on the background and motivation in founding and running these NGOs, after first considering the broader context of state decentralization and NGOs roles in supplementing welfare needs in reforming societies, and the educational policy context of China. This study used mixed methods, including questionnaires with open-ended and limited choice questions, and follow-up discussion email. The goals of NGO leaders—more than 50% of whom are parents of children with autism—are to make up for where government implementation of educational policy is insufficient; help others and advocate for inclusion in society; and do meaningful work. Implications from these findings are discussed.

This article examines how a social venture transitions from nascent to formal status and argues that the transformation of the organization set in motion by establishing formal boundaries is a deeply profound one. Drawing from the nonprofit and social entrepreneurship literature on what prompts and energizes individuals to initiate new not-for-profit ventures, and linking it to a notion of revolutionary crisis as organizations emerge and develop, we seek to illuminate and explore the tension, and its consequences, between nonprofit entrepreneurs and the organization they create as the new venture transitions from nascent to formal. We do this by presenting the results from an in-depth case study examining the gestation and boundary-forming phases of Robert’s Place Cooperative, a plucky start-up cooperative in a midsize Midwestern city.

This article examines foreign aid and government funding to NGOs as forms of patronage and explores the impact of such funding on the nature and role of civil society. Using qualitative research from Palestine and Morocco, we argue that patronage transforms NGOs into apparatuses of governing. NGOs become key sites for the exercise of productive power through the technologies of professionalization, bureaucratization, and upward accountability. The article explores how this transformation of NGOs depoliticizes their work while undermining their role as change agents within civil society. The findings have implications for understanding the transformation of NGOs, the relationship between patrons and their grantees, and, finally, for exploring the limitations of NGOs as vehicles for social change in sensitive political environments.

Nonprofits have unique strategic concerns, including their dependence on external resources, the management of multiple stakeholders, perceptions about their organizational legitimacy as well as their primary focus on the social value of their organizational mission (Stone and Brush 1996). For shared Jewish–Arab organizations in Israel that are seeking to promote a ‘shared society,’ the obstacles in navigating these various challenges are particularly pronounced and require a very unique kind of adaptive capacity (see Letts et al. 1999; Connolly and York 2003; Strichman et al. 2007). Often operating outside of the general consensus, these organizations are faced with the significant challenge of promoting values of partnership, equality and mutual interests among two populations that are often at odds. This research seeks to shed light on how shared Arab–Jewish nonprofits are continually working to strengthen organizational capacities to more effectively carry out their particular organizational mission, given the myriad of challenges they face.

As Tocqueville observed the emergence of democracy in the USA, he noted the central role religion played in undergirding democratic life. Nearly 200 years later, it is unclear whether religion continues to possess sufficient capacity to promote democratic engagement. This study links organizational theory with research on the structural and cultural characteristics of civil society organizations (CSOs) to assess the current impact of religion on democracy. It analyzes original data from a national study of politically oriented CSOs to determine whether drawing on structural characteristics of religious congregations and cultural elements of religion helps the organizations promote democratic engagement. The analysis finds a positive relationship between organizations that incorporate structural and cultural forms of religion and their organizing capacity, political access, and mobilizing capacity. These findings suggest that religion, mediated by congregations and religious culture, retains sufficient civic vitality to help politically oriented CSOs foster democratic engagement.

The organizational culture of nonprofit organizations is affected by the context in which they are embedded. Based on a qualitative study of local civic associations in Novosibirsk, Russia, this article illustrates how nonprofit organizational culture has been shaped by historical and contemporary social and cultural conditions. The fluid situation for civil society in Russia has generated varied organizational culture across nonprofits. Interview data reveal different value orientations, distinct group identities, and different images of the ideal civic association: as a social establishment, as an outlet for self-expression, as a network of experts, or as a social startup. This resulting diversity of organizational culture has implications for the potential for partnerships among nonprofits, between nonprofits and government, between nonprofits and businesses, and also for the organizational survival of nonprofits in this setting.

The purpose of this study was to explore the relationship between boards of directors and innovation in nonprofit organizations. The results showed that not only board attribute variables and board process variables were directly related to innovation, but they also had a potential to affect innovation and capacity for innovation indirectly—through board effectiveness. Board culture (critical questioning), social capital (structural and cognitive), human capital, and diversity in industrial background were significantly related to innovation, accounting for 29.8% of its variance. Board culture (decision-making process and critical questioning), social capital (structural and cognitive), cohesiveness, and human capital were significantly related to capacity for innovation, accounting for 49.8% of its variance. The mediating effect of board effectiveness was partially confirmed. The effects of board culture (critical questioning), cognitive social capital, and human capital on innovation and capacity for innovation were either partially or fully transmitted through board effectiveness. Based on the results of this study, practice implications are discussed. The author wants to thank three anonymous reviewers for their constructive feedback and suggestions for improving the manuscript and Jinn Jonp (JJ) Bau, Ph.D. from OIBR at the University of Georgia for helping with statistical analyses.

In this study, we analyse whether there are differences in attitudes towards nonprofit organizations (NPOs) between the generational cohorts of Baby Boomers, Generation X, and Millennials. We do so by analysing survey data from Switzerland in two steps, a Bayesian estimation as well as a cluster analysis. The overall results suggest that there are, at best, only few and small intergenerational differences: the only consistent effect we find are the more negative attitudes of the Baby Boomer cohort towards professional associations and towards sports NPOs, but those differences could be due to life cycle rather than intergenerational effects. Overall, our results suggest that the Millennial generational cohort is at least as interested in and willing to engage with NPOs as previous generational cohorts.