Welcome to Research Friday! As part of a continuing weekly series, each Friday we invite a nonprofit expert to highlight a research report or study and discuss how it can inform and improve day-to-day nonprofit practice. We welcome your comments and feedback.

To celebrate my very first blog post, I decided to be brave: I will introduce an emerging concept: “Attention Philanthropy” (AP). This concept is actually inspired by a branch of economics called “attention economics” (AE), an approach to the management of information that treats human attention as a scarce commodity. I define AP as philanthropy that is primarily concerned with getting donors and supporters to pay attention to a certain cause.

AP as a marketing strategy is not entirely new: many nonprofits have been using similar principles to further their philanthropic efforts. However, this practice is becoming increasingly prevalent as we enter the second decade of the 21st century. In our increasingly information-saturated world, people’s capacity for attention is overwhelmed by the 24-hour news cycle, countless social media outlets, and endless information at our fingertips.

As a result, they often fail to notice organizations or causes that are not constantly in their faces in a flashy and memorable way. Thus, philanthropy and charity work are driven by attention like never before. Nonprofit leaders and…

A few years ago, a nonprofit executive was bragging to me about a fundraising breakthrough he had when he had gotten a new $5,000 donation from a local foundation and how much effort he, his board, his development director, and others spent wooing and making their case for the contribution.

He thought he would get at least three or four years of funding in about the same range. In the same conversation he lamented to me how much government funding he was losing because of state budget cuts for his core mission and programs. He didn’t seem to see the irony — or the connections between his comments.

Government funding for many nonprofits, particularly health and human services nonprofits in Arizona, can be anywhere from 50% to 90% of the agency funding. Yet, nonprofits don’t see the connection to advocacy for the people they serve as their major fundraising activity. Nonprofits are the backbone of the health and human services community, and, when the government stops funding them, the whole community suffers in lost community capacity, lost jobs, lost economic activity, and lost community benefit. 

In the last three years in Arizona, many health and human services have lost over 25% or more of their state funding at least, depending upon area of concern. Childcare alone has lost all its general funding for low-income families. Funding for domestic violence, homelessness, aging, child welfare, and mental health services…

Welcome to Research Friday! As part of a continuing weekly series, each Friday we invite a nonprofit expert to highlight a research report or study and discuss how it can inform and improve day-to-day nonprofit practice. We welcome your comments and feedback.

Nonprofit boards have a wide array of functions and responsibilities, which begs the question, which are the most important? What functions are critical for success? In this study, Dr. Chao Guo and I researched what nonprofit executives describe as the most important roles of the board. Understanding what executives prioritize helps board members engage in practices that can help their organization succeed.

We surveyed 121 community foundation executives from across the United States. These individuals provided almost 400 comments, which were organized into 13 roles. This report summarizes the top seven activities that executives need from their board members.
 

Most Important Roles of the Board

Even in times of a weakened economy, the rate of nonprofit startups continues to grow. Currently there are over one million nonprofit organizations in the U.S.; their expansion has grown at twice the rate of for-profit organizations. Despite this rapid growth, many nonprofit organizations struggle to even open their doors.

A lack of research, understanding of legal requirements, and funding elements all play into the demise of a business before it begins. To ensure you’re prepared to open your doors, consider the following areas before you outline your business plan.

1) Know what’s out there.

Before starting any business, owners should be educated in regards to their competitors. The same is true for the nonprofit world — knowing what organizations are available and their services can be one of the easiest indicators of your success rate. As the amount of nonprofits grows exponentially, often times there are several organizations that currently fill the needs many start-up nonprofits are looking to provide. Understanding the nonprofits that currently exist in your market will help you determine how to set yourself apart from the pack and create a need for others to join in with your cause.

After performing this introductory competitor analysis, some find they would be more successful if they form a private business to help fulfill their charitable goals. New classes of businesses known as Benefit Corporations were established to…

Welcome to Research Friday! As part of a continuing weekly series, each Friday we invite a nonprofit expert from our academic faculty to highlight a research report or study and discuss how it can inform and improve day-to-day nonprofit practice. We welcome your comments and feedback.

Researchers at ASU (see Dr. Lili Wang’s post on Hispanic Volunteering), along with colleagues from across the country, are examining the impact of acculturation on the philanthropic behaviors of minorities and immigrants.

Research is limited, due to the differences between data sets, the variety of Asian American ethnic groups, and the lack of adequate conceptual models to examine ethnic sub-groups (Sundeen, Garcia, & Raskoff, 2009). Education, religion, age, and income are some variables that are typically studied in relationship to formal giving and volunteering, informal or personal giving and volunteering, and secular and religious volunteering (Sundeen, Garcia, and Wang, 2007). Acculturation is the process by which individuals change in adapting to demands of a new environment (Berry, 1997), including language, cultural identity and stress, and citizenship and generation status.

With some colleagues, I…