Donations to Charitable Organizations: Bringing in Social Context

• In Event: 2451 - Section on Organizations, Occupations, and Work Refereed Roundtables (1 hour)
  In Refereed Roundtable 60min: Table 15. Public and Non-Profit Organizations and Social Enterprise

Abstract

The largely financial and administrative literature predicting the donations nonprofit organizations receive focuses exclusively on financial characteristics of these organizations and, therefore, largely ignores how a nonprofit is situated in donor networks of participation, within a local community, or in an institutional field. In this paper we highlight these social features of nonprofits, in particular the networks and institutional fields in which nonprofits are embedded, and examine how they shape the donations nonprofits receive. We use the new Internal Revenue Service (IRS) release of e-filed nonprofit reporting forms to consider 110,226 501(c)3 nonprofit organizations around 2015. We find that volunteers, organizational field, and self-identification of religiosity are all associated with donations, and that reference to a local place enhances the effect of several institutional fields.

Authors

• Robert Wayne Ressler, University of Texas at Austin

• Pamela M. Paxton, University of Texas

• Kristopher Velasco, University of Texas-Austin