Challenges in Implementing Evidence-Based Practices and Programs in Nonprofit Human Service Organizations

Abstract

Evidence-based practice (EBP) is an important, yet under-utilized strategy to improve social work practice. Nonprofit human service organizations (NPHSOs) are a common social work practice setting through which efforts to promote EBP ought to be better understood. NPHSOs experience capacity limitations, lack of access to research evidence, and funding difficulties which makes adopting, implementing, and sustaining EBP challenging, if not untenable. These challenges are more acute for NPHSOs in practice fields for which little top tier intervention research evidence, dissemination platforms, and funding programs exist. Recommendations for overcoming these challenges are discussed.

Keywords::

• Evidence-based practice
• nonprofits
• organizational capacity
• funding
• human services
• implementation

Acknowledgments

The author would like to acknowledge the efforts and support of past colleagues, supervisors, clients, and volunteers of the nonprofit human service organizations at which he was employed and the many nonprofit leaders with which he has and continues to work. These relationships and experiences were formative in the development of this manuscript. The author also would like to thank his dissertation committee comprised of Gina Chowa, Matthew Howard, Tom Kelley, Gary Nelson, and Kathleen Rounds for their comments and feedback on an earlier and related manuscript draft.

Notes

^1. NPHSOs are defined as organizations with 501c3 tax-exempt, public charity status with the Internal Revenue Service that seek to protect, maintain, and enhance the well-being of individuals and families through the provision of direct services (Hasenfeld, 2010).

^2. Public Charities under Section 501c3 of the Internal Revenue Code who filed a Form 990 report to the Internal Revenue Service (IRS); non-reporting Public Charities are those that have too little revenue to be required by the IRS to file.

^3. Public charities with total annual expenses of less than $1 million in 2012 (McKeever & Pettijohn, 2014).