Collective Capacity Development for a Sustainable Nonprofit Sector: The Case of the Dream City

• In Event: Mismeasuring Nonprofit impact: What Goes Wrong and How to Do It Better

Abstract

Research on public organizations' sustainability has often neglected the importance of best practices to ensure the nonprofit sector sustains its collective capacity to serve communities. There are ongoing discrepancies in organizational capacity building approaches, and the critical roles of the nonprofit sector explicitly acknowledge the difficulties with sustaining organizational development strategies designed to address diverse community issues. Practical guidance is lacking, particularly for complex heterogeneous communities (Smoyer et al., 2021).

In collaboration with a local government and a public foundation, we ask how to address, implement, and maintain capacity building solutions that increase the sustainability of the nonprofit sector, using the context of Arlington, Texas. It is considered America's Dream City, with over 3500 nonprofits serving its diverse residents and their aspirations for a better future. By applying human resource management theories (e.g., Noon, 1992), we first assess the capacity needs of the nonprofit sector. Using triangulation research based on US Internal Revenue Service, GuideStar, and Phyton-based web scraping techniques, we assess intersections between nonprofits' human, financial, and internal governance capacities. Second, we utilize a comprehensive digital survey to empirically explore how nonprofit sector leaders collectively approach organizational performance and capacity building. Lastly, we develop a practical framework that can be replicated to inform the fields of public and nonprofit management to achieve equitable sustainability.

We identify 2,000 Arlington-based nonprofits that provide a variety of social services. The COVID-19 pandemic increased demand for nonprofit services to address pressing community needs for food, rental assistance, and physical and mental health support. We conclude that external partnerships are critical to building nonprofits' human, financial, and internal governance capacities and supporting an impactful nonprofit sector. Furthermore, our practical framework draws from human resource management theories and empirical data to address multiple stakeholders' interests, cross-sector governance demands, and the uncertainty associated with nonprofit capacity building. We contribute to public management and policy scholarship by identifying capacity building strategies to address the needs of the nonprofit sector in a manner that enriches collective capacity building processes, practices, and theory.

References:

Smoyer, C. B., Dwyer, R. J., Garfield, J. K., & Simmons, B. D. (2021). Developing workforce capability in nonprofits through effective leadership. International Journal of Applied Management and Technology, 20(1). https://doi.org/10.5590/ijamt.2021.20.1.09  

Noon, M. (1992). HRM: a map, model or theory?. In P. Blyton and P. Turnbull (Eds.), Reassessing human resource management (pp.16-32). Sage.

Author

• Emily Nwakpuda, University of Texas at Arlington
  Presenting Author