Human Resources in Nonprofits: An Indicator of Managerial Preparedness or Program Needs?

Abstract

This article examines whether a nonprofit’s reliance on staff and volunteers is associated with its program needs or its managerial preparedness to manage these human resources, or some combination thereof. Using the Statistics of Income (SOI) data sets provided by the National Center for Charitable Statistics (NCCS), we find that both a nonprofit’s purpose to deliver services and managerial preparedness within a nonprofit to be significantly associated with an increase in number of staff and volunteers; in addition, the association between the surge in program needs and the increase in number of staff and volunteers can be conditioned by the managerial preparedness of an organization. The findings underscore the need for nonprofit organizations and their donors, especially governments and foundations, to make deliberate efforts to ensure organizational readiness and the ability to manage and sustain the supply of human resources.

Keywords:

• Human resources
• managerial preparedness
• nonprofits

Notes

1 2012 is the most recent available SOI dataset (https://nccs-data.urban.org/data.php?ds=soi).

2 The data include all organizations with $30 million or more in total assets, as well as a random sample of smaller organizations. In addition, the sample was weighted by asset level to ensure representativeness. For more detailed information: http://nccs-data.urban.org/NCCS-data-guide.pdf . While this can be a shortcoming, many nonprofit studies have used the dataset widely (Child, 2010); Froelich et al.’s (2000) analysis of IRS data reveals a consistency between SOI data and nonprofits’ audited financial statements.

3 “Key personnel” measure includes different categories such as officers, highly compensated employees, and key employees. We excluded highly compensated employees and key employees from the number of staff (one of the dependent variables) to ensure no duplication between our independent and dependent variables. We needed the number of people in each category of key personnel, which was not available in 2008 and 2011 data.

4 This measure is from nonprofits’ self-reporting on their number of volunteers on the 990, which is often an estimate. Therefore, this may not accurately reflect the actual number of volunteers.

5 As a robustness check, we also ran models using the total compensation of key personnel; the results hold almost the same.

6 As a robustness check, we have also run models controlling for total revenue, as another proxy for organizational size. The results hold the same.

7 As a robustness check, we have run models controlling for government grants and donation revenue only (without fundraising revenue). The results hold the same.

8 All the sector dummies in all the models are statistically significant, which indicates that there are normative preferences for staff and volunteers across different sectors. Detailed explanations on why certain sectors prefer staff (or volunteers) are beyond the scope of this paper.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Khaldoun AbouAssi

Khaldoun AbouAssi is Associate Professor of Public Administration and Policy in the Department of Public Administration and Policy at American University. He holds a Ph.D. in public administration from the Maxwell School at Syracuse University. His research focuses on public and non-profit management, examining organizational capacity, resources, and inter-organizational relations.

Suyeon Jo

Suyeon Jo is an Assistant Professor of Public Management in the School of Government and Public Policy at the University of Arizona. She has a Ph.D. in Public Administration from Syracuse University. Her research include public and nonprofit management, public participation, volunteerism, collaborative governance, co-production, and democratic public administration.

Angela Bies

Angela Bies is endowed associate professor of global philanthropy and nonprofit leadership at the School of Public Policy at the University of Maryland. Her research interests include comparative nonprofit and NGO regulation, accountability and governance; the emerging role of philanthropy in China; nonprofit capacity-building; and nonprofits and disasters.