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.

Kelly Ann Krawczyk, Auburn University

Visit to Liberia

Kelly Ann Krawczyk
Associate Professor
Program Director, PhD in Public Administration & Public Policy
Program Director, Political Science
Auburn University

Women’s Contributions to Development in West Africa: Ordinary Women, Extraordinary Lives
Palgrave Macmillan Singapore, 2023

“This edited volume zooms-in on the human-centric aspects of sustainable development, illuminating the various barriers that women in West African countries face in social, economic, and political spheres … The many lessons drawn from this work offer practical insights and ideas for future research that are applicable to a variety of developing democracy contexts beyond the African continent.”

—Alisa Moldavanova, University of Delaware, USA

Women’s Contributions to Development in West Africa, edited by Kelly Ann Krawczyk and Bridgett A. King (Auburn University), examines women’s participation in social, economic, and political development in West Africa. The book looks at women from the premise of being active agents in the development processes within their communities, thereby subverting the dominate narrative of women as passive recipients of development.

The volume features all women contributors from the global North and South. It illuminates women’s significant contributions to development in West Africa and provides insights for the future. The book offers a valuable resource for students, academics, practitioners, and policymakers.

Kelly Ann Krawczyk’s research investigates the potential role of civil society in promoting democracy and development. She examines how civil society can foster sustainable development in local communities, and the role of civil society in strengthening democracy and increasing civic engagement. She is specifically interested in how civil society impacts political behavior. Her research has been published in journals of public administration, civil society, and local governance, including Nonprofit & Voluntary Sector Quarterly, Voluntas: International Journal of Voluntary and Nonprofit Organizations, and the Journal of Civil Society. Her co-edited volume, Ordinary Women, Extraordinary Lives: The Contributions of Women to Development in West Africa (2023) is available from Palgrave Macmillan. She has also authored book chapters, as well as governmental and professional publications for the Governance Commission of Liberia and the World Bank.

Krawczyk teaches graduate and undergraduate courses at Auburn University on a wide range of nonprofit topics, including Nonprofit Law & Governance, Nonprofit Management, and International Nongovernmental Organizations. She also teaches graduate courses in public administration and nonprofit management in the MPA and Ph.D. programs. She is currently serving as the Ph.D. Program Director.

Krawczyk earned her Ph.D. in political science and a Masters in Public Administration from Wayne State University in Detroit, Michigan. Before beginning an academic career, Kelly worked with a wide range of nonprofit organizations, both domestic and international, and has applied experience in nonprofit management and leadership, governance, capacity building, fundraising and development, volunteer and event management, and proposal writing. She designs and delivers outreach initiatives in West Africa, including curricular design and implementation of training and professional development workshops, impact evaluations and assessments, policy analysis and recommendations. She served as an international election observer for multiple national elections in Liberia and Ghana. She has also worked with The World Bank Group in Liberia on projects related to decentralization and civil society. She is a Founding Committee Member of the Strengthening Research on Civil Society in West Africa project, an initiative of the Association for Research on Nonprofit Organizations and Voluntary Action (ARNOVA), funded by the Ford Foundation.

Latha Poonamallee, Milano School, The New School

Latha Poonamallee
Associate Professor of Management and Social Innovation
Chair of Management Programs
Milano School of Policy, Management, and Environment
The New School

Managing for Social Justice: Harnessing Management Theory and Practice for Collective Good
Palgrave Macmillan Cham, 2023

This book, edited by Latha Poonamallee, Anita D. Howard (Case Western Reserve University), and Simy Joy (Indian Institute of Management) introduces a preliminary, integrative conceptual framework on the intersections between management and social justice with a view that the quest for social justice is not an endpoint rather an ongoing journey. With contributions from management scholars and practitioners, it highlights, examines, and explores the continuities and discontinuities, gains and losses, and struggles and successes in this quest for reimagining organizations as sites and vehicles for advancing social justice in the world.

To nurture and facilitate flourishing individuals and collectives, we need bolder, more innovative, and more creative models of engagement. Further, we need models for speaking and learning from different perspectives and building common ground through shared values of equity, connectivity, and compassion and moral expansiveness while recognizing the complexities of the world we inhabit via our organizations and the need to develop nuanced understandings of the same.

Contributing authors address questions such as: Are social justice and management mutually exclusive concepts? How can we draw on effective management for advancing social justice aims? How do we bend the arc of organizational life towards more justice? What are the rights and obligations of organizations and their members to the world at large, and to their local communities and societies?

Through its re-imagining of organizations and management as vehicles for social justice instead of just as tools of oppression, injustice, or regressive organizing in an extractive economy, this book brings together critical and positive organizational approaches challenging fundamental assumptions about how our society, people’s collectives, and workplaces are organized with capacity building, incremental change, sustained change, institutionalized change, dynamic ongoing problem-solving/ assessment/ redesign, and more.

Management scholars will learn the nuanced and complex intersections between management theories and practice and different types of justice/injustice in a global context both as antecedents to modern organizations and workplaces and the ways in which these intersectional actors advance and change the organizations and workplaces of the future.

Dr. Poonamallee is a tenured Associate Professor of Management & Social Innovation and Chair of the Faculty of Management at the Milano School of Policy, Management, and Environment & School of Undergraduate Studies, and University Fellow at The New School.

She works on two major research areas both focused on how management, organizations, and leadership can be vehicles to create a more sustainable, prosperous, just, and equitable world.

She serves as Editor in Chief of the Society of Advancement of Management Journal, a preeminent journal that has been published for over 75 years. She also received a Fulbright Scholarship to assist Botswana government, USAID, and Botswana Civil Society in developing a nation-wide social entrepreneurship ecosystem.

She is also the co-founder and Chairperson of In-Med Prognostics, a neuroscience firm that uses AI and Deep Tech to develop brain health predictive analytics. This firm has received accolades such as the Falling Walls Conference (Germany), BIRAC grant (Government of India grant), and GE Health Care’s Edison Startup Collaboration Venture.

Dr. Poonamallee received her Ph.D. in Organizational Behavior from Case Western Reserve University, M.B.A. from Pondicherry University, and B.A. and M.A. from University of Madras.

Dr. Robert L. Fischer, Case Western Reserve University

Dr. Robert L. Fischer
Associate Professor, Jack, Joseph, and Morton Mandel School of Applied Social Sciences; and Co-Director, Center on Urban Poverty and Community Development
Case Western Reserve University

Exploring Data Use in Nonprofit Organizations
Evaluation and Program Planning
Volume 97, April 2023, 102197

Organizations around the world have increasingly employed data for a variety of purposes, and nonprofit organizations are no exception. Exploring Data Use in Nonprofit Organizations, authored by Robert L. Fischer and Duncan J. Mayer, PhD candidate at the Mandel School, reviews the use of data in nonprofit organizations, including the types of data collected and accessed, the motivations for data capture, and the barriers to systematic use of data. The literature shows that nonprofit organizations capture a variety of data, including public and financial data, performance measures, program evaluation data, and volunteer information. Organizations use these with diverse motivations such as program or organizational improvement, marketing, and accountability. Prominent barriers faced by organizations include challenges in identifying meaningful information, lack of technical ability, inability to prioritize data work, as well as external influences.

The article highlights the challenges in synthesizing the available literature, with a high degree of fragmentation, including research from distinct intellectual traditions resulting in many disconnected constructs, measurements, and theories. Finally, the paper discusses challenges in the study of nonprofit data use and strives to provide guidance for future inquiry.

Robert L. Fischer is an Associate Professor at the Jack, Joseph, and Morton Mandel School of Applied Social Sciences of Case Western Reserve University, where he leads a range of evaluation research studies and teaches evaluation methods to graduate students in social work and nonprofit management. He is also Co-Director of The Center on Urban Poverty and Community Development. Since 2001, he has led the Center’s research on Invest in Children, a county-wide early childhood initiative that includes home visiting, children’s health, and childcare components. Dr. Fischer is also faculty director of the Master of Nonprofit Organizations (MNO) degree program.

Dr. Elizabeth Searing, University of Texas at Dallas

Dr. Elizabeth Searing
Assistant Professor of Public and Nonprofit Management
School of Economic, Political, and Policy Sciences
University of Texas at Dallas

Resilience and the Management of Nonprofit Organizations: A New Paradigm
Edward Elgar Publishing, 2022

‘This book provides valuable insight into how to integrate the concept of resilience into organizational culture and management practices. As we emerge from over two years of the pandemic, the need to lean into core strengths and develop greater expertise is invaluable.’
– Brian Schreiber, JCC of Greater Pittsburgh, US

Few books written for or about nonprofits explicitly target how to prepare for crises. Nonprofits are reliant on donors, regulators, government funders, and dedicated staff and volunteers; in crises, this reliance leaves nonprofits unprepared and vulnerable. This book, co-authored by Elizabeth Searing and NACC Founder Dennis R. Young, fills that gap by examining how nonprofits can prepare for and respond to both mundane and extraordinary threats: pandemics, economic recessions, terrorist attacks, and other potentially catastrophic events.

To manage these risks, Dennis Young and Elizabeth Searing develop multifaceted strategies involving balance sheets, cost and income structures, human resources, networks, technology, entrepreneurship, and information systems. Searing notes that, “in a way, this book captures what nonprofits do every day: make the most of difficult situations. But even when you’re awesome at what it is you do in the community, things can be overwhelming, so the book is designed to help you prepare for those storms ahead of time.”

In the book, managers are offered practical recommendations based on research to assess risk and develop resilience strategies appropriate to their organizations. Plus, the authors elaborate resilience as a new management paradigm for building healthier and more effective nonprofit organizations that includes the use of templates for executive briefings, dashboards, and stress tests.

The subject material and approach fit multiple audiences. Nonprofit managers and trustees, foundations, and government funders can acquire insights and tools on how to develop and manage resilient organizations. Researchers, teachers, and students will gain a greater understanding of how current research drives the resiliency paradigm and how to move research on nonprofit resilience forward.

Dr. Elizabeth A. M. Searing is an Assistant Professor of Public and Nonprofit Management at the University of Texas at Dallas. Dr. Searing’s primary research focus is the financial management of nonprofit and social enterprise organizations, but she also conducts work on comparative social economy more broadly. She is an Associate Editor and editorial board member of Nonprofit Management & Leadership, and an editorial advisory board member at VOLUNTAS and the Journal of Public Budgeting, Accounting and Financial Management (JPBAFM). Her articles have been published in peer-reviewed journals such as the Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization, Nonprofit Management & Leadership, and Nonprofit and Voluntary Sector Quarterly.

Dr. Dennis R. Young is an Emeritus Professor at the Jack, Joseph and Morton Mandel School of Applied Social Sciences, Case Western Reserve University and an Emeritus Professor at the Andrew Young School of Policy Studies, Georgia State University.

Dr. Nathan Grasse, Carleton University

Dr. Nathan Grasse
Associate Professor
School of Public Policy & Administration
Carleton University

The Nonprofit Open Data Collective

The Nonprofit Open Data Collective is an evolving collaboration between academics, think tanks, and industry experts to promote open data in the sector, with members from sector leaders, including Cinthia Schuman of the Aspen Institute, and academic institutions, including Jesse Lecy of Arizona State University.

Members such as the Aspen Institute and Independent Sector have engaged to improve the data environment, including 990 data and the availability of electronically filed records, as well as working with administrators in the Internal Revenue Service and Bureau of Labor Statistics. They have also worked with institutions such as the Johnson Center to gather evidence on the impact of open data and useful data practices (e.g., electronic tax filing).

Globally there are dozens of administrative or research databases to track third-sector organizations. This data is sometimes released in formats that are not always easy to use – ASCII text, Javascript object notation (JSON), and extensible markup language (XML) files. This can be a barrier to those hoping to learn about the sector.

Academic members of the collective created a GitHub organization to make data more accessible to scholars and researchers. The website includes scripts to download, clean, and process data, research-ready datasets, tools for analysis, and links to other resources. These might be helpful to NACC members who wish to integrate sector data into their courses or those looking to utilize data in their research, and the collective would welcome contributions from NACC scholars.

Partner Organizations

Nathan Grasse is an Associate Professor of nonprofit finance and financial management, governance and leadership, and strategic management at Carleton University. His research focuses on the governance of public-serving organizations, including associations between governance and financial management. This includes the study of revenue structures, the potential conditioning effects of organizational and environmental factors, and the implications of strategic choices on financial health and other organizational outcomes.

Dr. Beth Breeze, Centre for Philanthropy, University of Kent

Dr. Beth Breeze
Director, Centre for Philanthropy
University of Kent

The Fundraising Reader (1st Edition)
Routledge, 2023

The Fundraising Reader, edited by Beth Breeze, Donna Day Lafferty, and Pamala Wiepking, draws together essential literature establishing a one-stop body of knowledge that explains what fundraising is, and covers key concepts, principles, and debates. The book shines a light on the experience of being a fundraiser and answers an urgent need to engage with the complexities of a facet of the nonprofit sector that is often neglected or not properly understood.

This international compilation features extracts from key writing on fundraising, with a comprehensive contextualizing introduction by the editors. Uniquely, this Reader shares conflicting positions relating to age-old and current debates on fundraising: Is fundraising marketing? Should donors or the community be front and center in fundraising? How can fundraisers deal with ethical dilemmas such as ‘tainted’ donors and money? Best practice and future trends are also covered, including the impact of new technologies and responding to demands for greater diversity, inclusion, and equity in fundraising teams.

This Reader is for those who seek to further develop their own understanding of fundraising, and it provides an invaluable resource for academic courses and professional training. “The NACC audience is central to our reasons for creating this Reader,” noted Dr. Breeze. “It should make teaching fundraising much more straightforward.”

This flyer provides additional information and a 20% discount. Two free online lecture videos by Dr. Breeze provide further insight into the subject.

Beth Breeze is Director of the Centre for Philanthropy, which she co-founded in 2008. Beth began her career as a fundraiser for a youth homelessness charity and spent a decade working in a variety of fundraising, research, and charity management roles, including as deputy director at the Institute for Philanthropy. Motivated by the lack of substantive research underpinning practice, Beth completed a PhD on contemporary philanthropy at Kent in 2011 and has remained at the University ever since.