Sarah L. Young
Professor of Public Administration
Director of Research, KSU CARES
Kennesaw State University

Kimberly K. Wiley
Assistant Professor
University of Florida

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

This study empirically evaluates the relationships between the state and human service nonprofits’ human resources during a crisis. We employ qualitative content analysis to critically assess the experiences of 31 nonprofits that experienced the 2015 to 2017 Illinois Budget Impasse. We evaluated the nonprofits’ strategic human resource management implications through a resource dependency lens at three levels: micro-, meso-, and macro-. Human service nonprofits pull from a toolbox of strategies in surprising ways. Strategy choices were intrinsically linked to the impacts experienced by the individual workers (micro-) and organization (meso-). Micro-level impacts included additional emotional labor and reduced benefits, while meso-level impacts included loss of capacity and short-term planning changes. Finally, the sector-level impacts included a multipronged brain drain of the nonprofit human resource industry. The findings are helpful for nonprofit employees, managers, policymakers, and anyone concerned about the delivery of social services by nonprofits during crises.

Dr. Sarah L. Young, Professor of Public Administration at Kennesaw State University, serves as the Director of Research for CARE Services, a campus support program for students who have experienced foster care or unaccompanied homelessness. Her research uses systems-based approaches to study the intersection of nonprofit, public management, and equity, especially during periods of crisis. Dr. Young earned her Ph.D. from Florida State University’s Askew School of Public Administration and Policy and her M.B.A. in nonprofit management from the University of Tampa Sykes College of Business. She is the co-editor-in-chief of the Journal of Public Affairs Education and serves on the editorial board of Teaching Public Administration.

Dr. Kimberly Wiley researches the relationship between nonprofit organizations and their public funders as well as qualitative methodology. She is particularly interested in domestic violence advocacy organizations serving families and youth. Though, she also enjoys testing new qualitative methods on data like social media and television. She won several awards for her work on faculty sexual misconduct and nonprofits in crisis. Her scholarship has been published in Nonprofit Management & Leadership, Nonprofit & Voluntary Sector Quarterly, Public Administration, Affilia: Journal of Women and Social Work, and Public Policy & Administration.

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.