(Illustration by Adam McCauley)
The neighborhood is one of society’s central organizing principles. Differences among neighborhoods shape the welfare of their residents, for better or worse. The factors that might influence outcomes are many, from the accessibility of education and jobs to the density of supermarkets with fresh produce.
David Clifford, a lecturer in demography at the University of Southampton, believes that one such factor could be the number and sustainability of charities located within neighborhoods. He decided to examine the density of charitable organizations among neighborhoods of varying degrees of poverty over a 25-year period, to see whether he could pinpoint any general patterns.
“One strand of theory about the importance of local area context suggests that different residential areas may differ in terms of organizational resources,” he says. “The focus on charitable organizations in particular reflects theory emphasizing that voluntary financial resources, and the enabling resources for voluntary participation, that support local charitable organizations may vary according to the characteristics of the people in the area.”
Clifford reviewed nonprofits in England localized by neighborhood: a total of 127,392 charities during a period that saw 38,504 creations and 36,992 dissolutions. The charities’ missions were diverse: Most worked with the young, while the rest focused on the elderly, the disabled, specific ethnic groups, or other populations.
Clifford believes that the longitudinal data offer a more complete picture than a snapshot of the relationship between neighborhood deprivation and the density of charitable organizations. “To be a salient feature of inequality in individuals’ residential environments, difference in the density of charitable organizations according to deprivation should endure over time even as neighborhoods experience organizational turnover,” he writes.
Using a UK government index to catalog some 32,000 poor neighborhoods, Clifford examined not just the presence or absence of organizations but the rates of charitable founding and dissolution through which any differences endured over time. Broadly, the data revealed that the poorest neighborhoods, those most in need of help, had the least success in sprouting and maintaining charitable organizations.
“The results suggest that, while encouraging the development of new organizations in deprived areas is important, there is also a real need to consider strategies to support the sustainability and survival of organizations already working in these areas,” Clifford said.
“The story of the stability and location of community-based charitable nonprofit service organizations in England mirrors what we find in the United States,” says Scott W. Allard, Daniel J. Evans Endowed Professor of Social Policy at the University of Washington’s Evans School of Public Policy and Governance. “There are too few nonprofits with too little capacity located in the neighborhoods and communities most in need.”
Clifford found that the socioeconomic status of neighborhoods affects local charities in several ways. For instance, although income from individuals’ donations and legacies is the largest source of funding for the UK’s charitable sector, a third is derived from fees they may charge for goods and services. Poorer areas are likely less able to provide the income needed to keep the charity afloat.
By calculating the relationships among neighborhood context, the type and density of charitable organizations per 1,000 people, and the rates of foundation and dissolution of the charities, Clifford showed a direct correlation between neighborhood context and the density of charities. Less deprived neighborhoods had a much higher density of charities than more deprived neighborhoods. And yet, the most deprived neighborhoods had slightly more charities than the only slightly less deprived. Clifford says that this discrepancy likely relates to how public funding was targeted to the most deprived areas.
The data showed that differences in the rates of foundation and dissolution mirrored the density patterns. The rate at which charities were founded was 0.82 times lower in the most deprived areas compared with the least deprived, and the rate at which they were dissolved in those areas was almost twice that in the least deprived neighborhoods. Organizational survival rates painted a similar picture. After 10 years, 68 percent of charities remained functional in the most deprived neighborhoods, compared with 82 percent in the least deprived; and after 25 years, the figures were 34 percent and 56 percent, respectively.
“There is a particular role for public funding in supporting the finances of organizations in the most deprived areas,” Clifford says. “However, the issues are wider than this: They also relate to how those with the ‘enabling resources’ for volunteering and for supporting these organizations often do not choose to live in more deprived areas.”
David Clifford, “Neighborhood Context and Enduring Differences in the Density of Charitable Organizations: Reinforcing Dynamics of Foundation and Dissolution,” American Journal of Sociology, vol. 123, no. 6, 2018.
Read more stories by Marilyn Harris.