Jayce Sudweeks, Georgia Southern University

Jayce Sudweeks, PhD
Assistant Professor
Department of Public and Nonprofit Studies
Georgia Southern University

Five Nonprofit Leadership Challenges: A Proposed Typology of Common Issues that Nonprofit Leaders Face
Journal of Nonprofit Education & Leadership, 2023 | Vol. 13 Issue 2, p31-58. 28p.

Nonprofit leaders face many challenges and would benefit from a typology that helps highlight the core issues organizations experience. The Nonprofit Studies Minor at North Carolina State University identified five nonprofit leadership challenges, through a combination of practitioner experience and academic research, that could serve as a typology. The challenges identified are earning the public trust; aligning mission, methods, and resources; capitalizing on issues associated with diversity; balancing individual interests and the common good; and moving beyond charity to systemic change.

This research, co-authored by Dr. Richard M. Clerkin (University of North Carolina Wilmington), Dr. Sapna Varkey (University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill School of Medicine), and Dr. Jayce Sudweeks, revisits the academic literature to assess whether these challenges encompass the research agenda of nonprofit and voluntary action academic studies. Using qualitative content analysis, we examined abstracts from three major nonprofit journals from 2005-2017. Results indicate that the five leadership challenges were present in the abstracts of all three journals. Chi-squared analysis showed statistically significant differences in the presence of leadership challenges based on journal, location of the study, and unit of analysis.

Both Dr. Clerkin and Dr. Sudweeks have successfully used this typology as a key framework in their undergraduate and graduate courses in nonprofit management. Students have found the typology very helpful in classifying and analyzing the myriad of issues facing nonprofit organizations. It allows students to quickly identify the issue and then begin to understand how to apply concepts taught in the courses to address the issue. Student feedback often includes comments about the power and usefulness of the Five Nonprofit Leadership Challenges.

Dr. Jayce Sudweeks joined the faculty of Georgia Southern University in the Fall 2019 as an assistant professor in the Department of Public and Nonprofit Studies. He received his Ph.D. in Public Administration from North Carolina State University in August 2019. His dissertation entitled, Should We Let Them Go: A Narrative Policy Framework Analysis of the Policy Narratives Surrounding the Release of Genetically Modified Mosquitos in Brazil and the Florida Keys, examines the role of policy narratives on the decisions to release genetically modified mosquitos in Brazil while releases in Florida were delayed.

His primary research interests are the management and leadership challenges faced by nonprofit organizations. Professor Sudweeks holds both Master of Science and Bachelor of Science degrees in Molecular Biology from Brigham Young University. He has presented his research at and is a member of the Association for Research on Nonprofits Organizations and Voluntary Action (ARNOVA), the Midwest Political Science Association (MPSA), and the Southeastern Conference of Public Administration (SECOPA). Dr. Sudweeks teaches graduate courses in nonprofit administration, strategic management, and foundations of public administration. He teaches undergraduate courses in nonprofit management, strategic management for nonprofits, international nongovernmental organizations, and social entrepreneurship and innovation.

Elizabeth Dale, Seattle University

Elizabeth Dale, PhD
PhD, Philanthropic Studies
Director and Associate Professor, Nonprofit Leadership
Seattle University

I was so pleased to be included in the new book, The Fundraising Reader, which is an excellent compilation of both classic and contemporary work on fundraising approaches, theory, research, and practice. Its diverse and interdisciplinary sources reveal both the art and science of fundraising, with attention to the philosophical, prosocial, and motivational components as well as the more technical and applied.

The foundation of fundraising is based on interpersonal relations, skillful communication, and managing emotions and motivations, in essence, a set of job functions that personify “traditional” female characteristics and traits. Fundraising work mirrors a number of these so-called female occupational characteristics including a caring, relational approach; an emphasis on communication; a need to put others before yourself; and the production of events that draw on hospitality and entertaining-type skills. Within fundraising, the most economically rewarded tasks are those directly related to securing gifts at the highest dollar amounts. Finally, a gender analysis cannot ignore the recent trends of both nonprofits and funders to place greater emphasis on adopting more business-like practices and the values of the private sector, which reflect the masculine bias of society at large. In addition to values, the language of fundraising is also male-oriented.

Elizabeth J. Dale, Ph.D. is program director and associate professor in Nonprofit Leadership at Seattle University. A former development director and Certified Fund Raising Executive (CFRE), her research interests include social justice philanthropy, giving among women and LGBTQ+ donors, and the intersection of gender and philanthropy. She has presented her research nationally and internationally and has provided commentary for The New York Times, Forbes, Bloomberg, The Chronicle of Philanthropy, and The Guardian. She completed her Ph.D. in Philanthropic Studies at the Indiana University Lilly Family School of Philanthropy. She also holds a bachelor’s degree in journalism and women’s and gender studies from Ohio Wesleyan University and a master’s degree in women’s studies from The Ohio State University.

Elise Lael Kieffer, Murray State University

Elise Lael Kieffer, PhD
Program Director and Assistant Professor
Nonprofit Leadership Studies, Organizational Communication and Leadership
Murray State University

The Benefits of Photo-Elicitation in Arts Administration Research
American Journal of Arts Management | Volume 11, Winter 2023

This article by Dr. Elise Lael Kieffer explores the benefits of incorporating the photo-elicitation method into interviews within arts and cultural administration, leadership, and management research. Photographs are often used to open communications when traditional verbal communication is less reliable, or hindered by cross-cultural interactions. Within the arts and culture, researchers often use different terminology than administrative practitioners, and administrators often use different terminology than art makers and creative practitioners. Photo-elicitation serves to bridge those gaps in communication and open participants up to opportunities for deeper reflection. This article gives examples from one narrative inquiry study that utilized both exclusively verbal questions and also photo-elicitation in order to provide guidance for the usefulness of photographs as an interview tool.

While this study focused on rural arts organizations, photo-elicitation, as a qualitative research method, is valuable in any work that reaches across borders, boundaries, cultures, and identities. Evoking responses through images breaks through colonial constructs by empowering participants to speak and represent themselves. This is work that is important across the nonprofit sector, as we research, educate, and work with diverse populations.

Dr. Kieffer’s first love was musical theatre. She earned a Bachelor of Fine Arts from Jacksonville University (Florida). After graduation, she began a successful career as a performing artist on the East Coast and Midwest. She left performance to return to school for her Master’s in Public Administration and Nonprofit Management from Tennessee State University. After earning that degree she moved to New York and worked for an international humanitarian aid organization, specializing in fundraising. While her primary assignment was growing the base of individual donors, she is also remembered for the dramatic growth in funding coming from foundations and corporations under her leadership.

The next chapter in her nonprofit sector journey combined her passion for the arts with her growing commitment to strengthening community engagement and building sustainable organizations. She moved to rural Cumberland County, Kentucky, at the foothills of the Appalachian Mountains to found the Burkesville Academy of Fine Arts (BAFA). This interdisciplinary arts education organization offering year-round arts education and performance opportunities for children was launched in rural South- Central Kentucky. BAFA found strong support through local youth serving organizations such as 4-H and the public schools, becoming an integrated part of youth development across the region.

With a long-time aspiration to play a role in the development of leadership and management capacity for those serving the community, in 2017 her family relocated to Tallahassee, Florida, for Dr. Kieffer to pursue her PhD at Florida State University. While studying arts administration, with a focus on nonprofit leadership and management, she focused her research on strengthening rural nonprofit arts organizations. During her academic journey, she has pursued scholarship and engaged in teaching across the leadership and management curriculum. Among her many professional awards, it is worth noting that she was recognized with the Emerging Scholar Award at the International Society on the Arts in Society in 2019, 2020, and 2021. In addition, she received the Emerging Scholars Award at the International Conference on Diversity in Organizations, Communities, and Nations in 2021.

Upon receiving her Ph.D., Dr. Kieffer joined Murray State University as Program Director and Assistant Professor of Nonprofit Leadership Studies and Director of the Murray State Nonprofit Resource Center. She is currently co-writing a textbook, “Rural Arts Management” for Routledge.

Christopher S. Galik, School of Public and International Affairs, North Carolina State University

Christopher S. Galik, PhD
Professor
Director, Sustainable Futures Initiative
Department of Public Administration
School of Public and International Affairs
North Carolina State University

Institutional Stability and Change in Environmental Governance
Policy & Politics | Policy Press, 2023 | Volume 51: Issue 3

Efforts to better understand what prevents institutions from changing to meet contemporary demands – or what facilitates the evolution of existing constructs to address new challenges – are of particular import and relevance to environmental governance. While the existing literature provides valuable conceptualisation and empirical evaluation of institutional stability and change, the lack of a consistent and holistic typology complicates the evaluation of institutions over time.

In this article, Christopher S. Galik, Yuhao Ba (Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy, National University of Singapore), and Christopher Bobbitt (North Carolina State University) use a combined stability–change typology to assess the dominant modes of institutional change and stability over a multi-decadal timespan across three environmental governance systems – air quality governance in the US and China, and climate governance in the European Union. Across cases, they find that these modes are not mutually exclusive but can occur simultaneously, in concert or in conflict. They also find that observed patterns of change and stability are reflective of the social and political context in which systems operate, as well as the focus of the system itself (for example, localised air quality versus global climate change).

Apart from providing a proof-of-concept analysis of institutional change and stability, their findings raise questions about the mechanisms underlying spatial and temporal patterns across identified modes. Indirectly, the findings also further highlight challenges to designing systems both resilient to exogenous stressors and capable of adapting to new situations. Their combined stability–change typology may help to advance understanding of whether and how such balancing has occurred in the past, thus facilitating future efforts to address contemporary challenges.

Christopher Galik joined NC State in August 2016 as a Chancellor’s Faculty Excellence Program cluster hire in Sustainable Energy Systems and Policy (SESP). Galik is a professor in the Department of Public Administration, and is primarily interested in the areas of institutions and the portability of governance systems. He brings an interdisciplinary perspective to his work, leveraging expertise in institutional theory, economics, and the natural sciences to address energy and environmental management and policy challenges. Recent research includes an evaluation of institutional stability in environmental governance, the influence of historical transitions on the adoption of sustainable practices at the local level, and the contribution of voluntary actions to climate change mitigation objectives.

Galik obtained a bachelor’s degree in biology from Vassar College, a master’s degree in resource economics and policy from Duke University, and a Ph.D. in forestry and environmental resources from North Carolina State University. Galik returns to NC State via Duke University’s Nicholas Institute for Environmental Policy Solutions, where he worked for a decade on a variety of environmental and energy policy research and outreach initiatives. He has published multiple whitepapers, briefs, and online discussion papers, as well as articles in journals such as Nature Climate Change, Global Environmental Change, Climate Policy, Applied Energy, Energy Policy, and others. Galik has also worked with private sector, NGO, academic, state government, and federal agency stakeholders to plan and convene multiple panels, workshops, and symposia on a wide variety of energy and environmental policy issues.