Controlling for Corporate Governance in Nonprofit Research

• In Event: Nonprofit Governance

Abstract

Using a large sample of nonprofit organizations in the United States from 2009 to 2013, we develop and evaluate several different composite measures of nonprofit governance. These measures can be used to control for governance broadly in a variety of nonprofit research settings. Our evidence suggests that relatively basic indices perform as well as, and in some cases better, than more complex indices. In fact, when controlling for governance in the standard donations model, our results indicate that an index computed using the simple sum of five binary indicators (audit committee, majority independent board, no outsourcing, CEO salary review, and information available on website) performs best.

Authors

• Colleen M Boland, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee

• Erica Harris, Villanova University

• Christine Petrovits, College of William & Mary

• Michelle Higgins Yetman, University of California-Davis