Accountability, Ethics, Evaluation, and Governance in Nonprofit Management Education: Trends and Treatment

Abstract

As the scope and influence of nonprofit organizations (NPOs) have increased in recent decades, so has demand for the professional management of such organizations. Specialized, graduate-level education in nonprofit management is an outgrowth of this demand. With the environments, financial profiles, and intersectoral partnerships of NPOs becoming increasingly complex, nonprofit accountability, ethics, evaluation, and good governance have emerged as target areas for improving nonprofit management. Despite this targeted interest, how such topics are treated in the curricula of professional management training programs is virtually unexplored. Building on the work of O’Neill (1998), Mirabella and Wish (2001, 1999, 1998), and Wish and Mirabella (2000, 1998) on general trends in graduate nonprofit management education, this article explores the extent to which and how nonprofit accountability, ethics, evaluation, and governance are currently being addressed in U.S. nonprofit management education programs. The paper reports on findings from a survey of 153 colleges and universities and the analysis of documents including syllabi and course descriptions. Curricular inclusion of these topics is found to be associated with some institutional characteristics of the degree programs in which nonprofit management education is offered, including disciplinary setting and degree of specialization in nonprofit management.

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Notes on contributors

Angela L. Bies

Angela Bies is an assistant professor at the Bush School of Government and Public Service at Texas A&M University. She has a Ph.D. from the University of Minnesota. Her research interests include training and organizational development in nonprofit, nongovernmental, and educational contexts with particular emphases on accountability, evaluation, and policy development. Bies has held executive and consulting positions for a variety of nonprofit and public sector organizations including the U.S. Peace Corps, United Way of the Greater Minneapolis Area, the National Endowment for the Arts, the Council on Standards for International Education and Travel, and the National Charities Information Bureau/Rockefeller Brothers Fund national panel on nonprofit accountability. She is active in the Association for Research on Nonprofit and Voluntary Action, the International Society of Third Sector Research, and the Comparative International Education Society. She is also a visiting faculty member at the Catholic University of Lublin, Poland.

Amy S. Brimer Blackwood

Amy S. Brimer-Blackwood is a research associate at The Urban Institute, a Washington-D.C.-based, nonpartisan think tank that gathers and analyzes data, conducts policy research, evaluates programs and services, and educates Americans on critical issues and trends in order to promote sound social policy and public debate on national priorities.