(Illustration by Mitch Blunt)
In 1990, Peter Drucker asserted that “nonprofit institutions are central to American society and are indeed its most distinguishing feature.” Since then, as if to amplify Drucker’s point, the academic study of the nonprofit sector has grown at an impressive rate. When Drucker made his observation, there were an estimated 19 US-based programs that offered training related to the nonprofit sector. In 2012, by one count, the number of US colleges and universities that offered such training stood at 295.
A primary objective of these programs is to produce the next generation of nonprofit- sector leaders. But as the number of programs has grown and as the quality of their offerings has matured, they have also emerged as important centers of scholarship.
Over the past 20 years, I’ve come to know this field well through close involvement in academic research on the nonprofit sector— first as a student, then as a paid staff member at Case Western Reserve University, and now as the founding director of a nonprofit-studies research center at Cleveland State University. I was among the first scholars to pursue a doctoral degree in nonprofit management, and I have watched and participated in the process by which this field of inquiry has evolved and matured. Recently, I was named president-elect of the Nonprofit Academic Centers Council (NACC); my tenure in that post will begin this coming summer. In advance of taking on this new role, I have begun thinking about the place of nonprofit-sector studies in higher education.
Since its founding in 1991, NACC has expanded to include nearly 60 member institutions. The growth in the number of nonprofit-studies programs, as I’ve noted, is an important indicator of a transformation that is well under way. Even so, I see an opportunity to advance the frontier of nonprofit-sector knowledge creation still further.
Today, for instance, published scholarship on nonprofit organizations continues to cover primarily matters of interest to public management, business, social work, and other fields that each have their own research agenda. In my view, though, a leading-edge approach to nonprofit-sector scholarship should address all aspects of what is variously called the “nonprofit,” “independent,” “voluntary,” “charitable,” or “third” sector.
The academic study of the nonprofit sector began in earnest in the late 1970s. Four decades later, signs that nonprofit studies is approaching a tipping point—that it is ready to become an autonomous field of study—are plain to see. The Lilly Family School of Philanthropy at Indiana University, the Lodestar Center for Philanthropy & Nonprofit Innovation at Arizona State University, and other academic centers of this kind offer examples of a deepening commitment to nonprofit studies as a distinct field of knowledge. At the same time, students have shown an increasing interest in pursuing field placements and internships at nonprofit organizations, and university leaders have come to believe that practice-oriented learning of that kind not only provides a valuable classroom experience for students, but also serves the public service mission of their institution.
These developments have created the conditions to support two important innovations of this field. First, there is an opportunity to advance a nonprofit studies approach to learning that broadens its focus beyond nonprofit management. Second, there is an opportunity to develop a nonprofit-first perspective on research as well as pedagogy.
Nonprofit Management—and Beyond
Typically, educators in the more mature fields of business management, public administration, and social work view nonprofit management as a derivative subfield of their discipline. A sampling of nonprofit-oriented topics in business management programs, for example, would include budgeting and finance, social enterprise, evaluation of social outcomes, cause-related marketing, business ethics, and corporate social responsibility. Programs in public administration and public management, meanwhile, often include instruction in proposal development for subcontracted services, program assessment and performance evaluation, budget accountability, and human resources management. Social work programs also address nonprofit-oriented topics, particularly in the training that they offer for non-clinical degree specialties.
Scholars in these management-oriented fields, likewise, generally treat the study of nonprofits as a younger, dependent sibling of their particular discipline. A review of recent scholarly literature on the nonprofit sector would reflect an overwhelming emphasis on matters of narrow interest to public managers, business leaders, and the like: How can public managers modify the behavior of their nonprofit partners? What are the best strategies for holding nonprofits accountable to performance standards and operational efficiencies? What are the best models for drafting service contracts? And so forth.
This emphasis on the management of nonprofits in both education and research may have been necessary for the generation of nonprofit scholars who did pioneering work in the field during the late 1970s and 1980s. They, after all, had to invent ways to study nonprofits using the methodological tools available to them. Today, however, we can see that a management-focused model is too limiting as a means of understanding the inner workings and the defining characteristics of the modern nonprofit organization.
Those of us who closely watch this field have noted a call by experienced nonprofit and philanthropic leaders for a new approach to professional training. Recently, for a new research project, I spoke with a number of nonprofit executives. From those interviews, I took away one clear message: Leadership in the nonprofit organization of the 21st century requires a skill set that extends well beyond the management of transactional accountability.
To meet the needs of both current and future nonprofit leaders, we urgently need to develop a nonprofit studies pedagogy that encompasses a wide range of issues and challenges. Here are just a few nonmanagement topic areas that teaching about the nonprofit sector can and should cover: the study of civil society; the dynamics of advocacy, community organizing, and public policy development; the political nature of the social sector; and the role that nonprofits play as places of employment.
Sector-First Scholarship
Developing a truly autonomous field called nonprofit studies will lead to the adoption of a nonprofit-first approach to research. A nonprofit-first perspective is one in which the unique role and nature of the nonprofit sector and its institutions rise to the center of inquiry. It takes into account the professional conventions and behavioral nuances that are common to the nonprofit sector. And it opens the way to pursuing research on understudied aspects of nonprofit life—the importance of emotional intelligence for professionals who work regularly with volunteers, the role that nonprofits play as intermediaries and facilitators in public-private partnerships, and the challenges associated with public advocacy, to name a few. Equally important, nonprofit-first inquiry will advance our understanding of how nonprofits enable, nurture, and strengthen civil society, and how they empower people to build democratic institutions.
By way of example, consider a line of research that I am pursuing with Jeffrey L. Brudney, a professor at the University of North Carolina at Wilmington. We explore how nonprofit organizations that receive government contracts to deliver services must contend with the difficult and frequently uncompensated task of managing relationships with public-sector agencies. That’s an important perspective that is essentially absent from traditional public management studies. Other topics that I’ve covered in my own published research as a nonprofit studies scholar include the following: the relationship between philanthropy and the creation of public value, the role of cross-sector partnerships in the creation of public value, and the role of nonprofit organizations in public-private partnerships.
Today, a new generation of scholars is creating pressure for a shift toward nonprofit-centric research. These scholars have made a conscious decision to study nonprofit organizations as part of their doctoral-degree research, and their methods incorporate theory drawn from the social sciences and even the humanities. That development reinforces the need to break away from a research framework that embeds the study of nonprofits within traditional management-oriented disciplines.
A nonprofit-first approach to scholarship will provide a broad context for the study and teaching of best practices in nonprofit management. As Peter Drucker and others have observed, effective nonprofit leaders possess a deep understanding of the role that nonprofit organizations play in society, and of the context in which their own organization operates. By creating and promoting a distinct theory of the nonprofit sector, scholars will be able to offer students and professionals precisely that kind of deep understanding.
Changing the way that institutions of higher education treat the nonprofit sector is no small undertaking. But the rewards for doing so are worth the effort. A nonprofit-first perspective will have beneficial effects for multiple stakeholder groups. Educators, researchers, and thought leaders will deepen the base of knowledge that they convey to succeeding generations of scholars, policy makers, and nonprofit professionals. At a practical level, they will advance insight on how to turn a nonprofit organization into a strategic learning organization that also excels at fulfilling its mission. Leaders in philanthropy and public policy, for their part, will find new ways to form meaningful, transformative partnerships with nonprofit organizations. Rather than engaging in shallow collaborations that lead to short-term transactional gains, they will join with nonprofits to set goals and to achieve real social impact.
The time is right to move nonprofit-sector pedagogy toward a more holistic and comprehensive framework—and to shift scholarly research in this area toward a nonprofit-first framework. This new framework will change how people throughout the nonprofit sector teach, learn, and study. It will change how they develop new best practices and how they understand this field at a deep level.
Read more stories by Stuart C. Mendel.