Eric C. Twombly

What Factors Affect the Entry and Exit of Nonprofit Human Service Organizations in Metropolitan Areas

The goal of this article is to advance the literature on nonprofit organizational adaptation by assessing the factors that significantly contribute to the entry and exit of human service organizations in metropolitan areas. More specifically, this study uses nonprofit, economic and demographic data and information on welfare reform implementation patterns to examine the causes of the formation and deaths of groups in the nonprofit human service sector from 1992 to 1996. This time frame marked the widespread implementation of welfare reform under the federal Aid to Families With Dependent Children (AFDC) waiver program. This study found that organizational size, age, and service activities are the key determinants in the failure of human service nonprofits, whereas environmental factors such as AFDC waiver implementation relate to the widespread formation of nonprofit providers.

Religious Versus Secular Human Service Organizations: Implications for Public Policy

Objective. Tied to the notion that faith–related organizations provide a fresh alternative to secular social service nonprofits, the Bush Administration has proposed several controversial initiatives to increase the involvement of faith–based groups in addressing poverty in the United States. However, there is little empirical evidence on how these religious organizations raise or expend their resources or on how they differ from secular providers. Methods. Using descriptive and multivariate statistics, this article aims to add clarity to the debate over faith–based involvement in social service provision by examining the organizational and financial characteristics of more than 2,000 large, religious and secular human service providers. Results. The chief finding is that while faith–related and secular human services group have nearly identical expenditure patterns, they rely on different types of revenue to fund their services. Faith–based groups are significantly more likely than secular nonprofits to depend on donor contributions, while secular groups are substantially more inclined to rely on government grants and contracts. Conclusions. Despite the strong fiscal health of faith–related providers, their heavy dependence on donor contributions raises important questions regarding the utility of faith–based policy initiatives.

Teens and the Misuse of Prescription Drugs: Evidence-Based Recommendations to Curb a Growing Societal Problem

The misuse of prescription drugs by teens in the United States is a growing public health problem. This article provides a systematic synthesis of multiple strands of literature to recommend effective prevention methods. Using a social-ecological framework, we review the scope of the problem of prescription drug use among teens. Then, we analyze the multiple factors that may influence teen knowledge and attitudes toward prescription drugs and discuss the important challenges related to the construction of effective prevention programs. Finally, we provide recommendations for practice that attempt to overcome these challenges.

The effects of expanded donor choice in United Way campaigns on nonprofit human service providers in the Washington, D.C., metropolitan area

In January 1994, the United Way of the National Capital Area announced significant changes in its methods of funds distribution. These structural shifts in the Washington, D.C.-area United Way campaign created an environment of increased fiscal and organizational pressure for nonprofits as many scrambled to make up lost ground. This article reports the findings of a survey sent to 258 D.C.-area nonprofit service providers. The survey was designed to determine how nonprofits adapted to changes in their funding environment associated with changes in the United Way campaign. Half of the groups surveyed experienced moderate or large cuts in the amount of funds they received through the United Way. Yet, a majority of the organizations that experienced cuts were able to adapt in ways that allowed them to maintain service levels. A number of these adaptations involved attempts to manage the environment in a manner consistent with resource dependency theory.

A Preliminary Evaluation of the Effects of a Science Education Curriculum on Changes in Knowledge of Drugs in Youth.

Drug and alcohol use among youth remains at pervasively high levels, but students are receiving less school-based prevention. Infusing health information into core curricula may be a valuable prevention approach. Therefore, behavior change theory was used to develop a science education curriculum on drugs for fourth- and fifth-grade students, which was then evaluated using a pretest/posttest quasi-experimental design. Exposure to the curriculum was associated with a change in knowledge; other characteristics like grade level also played a role. More positive attitudes toward science at pretest predicted greater knowledge change, and students who knew less at the start showed a greater change in knowledge. Results of this evaluation may support the efficacy of the curriculum and the utility of combining behavior change theory with educational approaches.

Using Promotores Programs to Improve Latino Health Outcomes: Implementation Challenges for Community-based Nonprofit Organizations

ABSTRACT Promotores are community lay health workers who provide outreach and services to Latinos. Little research on the promotores programs exists, and the focus of this article is to identify the challenges faced by community-based nonprofits when implementing promotores programs. To explore this type of program, telephone interviews were conducted with 10 promotores academic experts and nonprofit executives. The results suggest that implementation challenges fall into three major categories: the lack of standardized information on promotores programs, labor issues, and organizational costs. Future recommendations made in the article highlight promotores recruitment and retention strategies and the development of a clearinghouse of programmatic implementation information for community-based nonprofits.

Exploring the Use of the Internet by Caregivers of People with Autism Spectrum Disorders to Obtain Caregiving Information

This paper reports on data from a population of caregivers of people with Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASD) to examine the extent and motivations for their use of the Internet to obtain information on caregiving. The study found not only considerable interest for web-based information but also a strong bifurcation among respondents on the preferential type of information. The majority of respondents indicated that websites that provide factual information about caregiving are most important. Other respondents saw the Internet as a vehicle for social exchanges about ASD. Regardless of their preferred method to consume web-based information, all respondents reported using websites to obtain caregiving information.

Social Service Agencies and Program Change: Implications for Theory and Policy

Although the implementation of social welfare policies in the United States is predicated on the ability of nonprofit managers to innovate, adapt, and respond to changing government and community service priorities, there is little empirical information on the number and types of social service providers that actually alter their programming over time. This exploratory paper begins to fill that information gap by using data from the National Center for Charitable Statistics and descriptive and inferential statistics to analyze the proportion, types, and conditions under which nonprofits changed their programming between 1999 and 2001. The results show that programmatic shifts among social service agencies are uncommon, although they are more likely for family service providers and nonprofits with greater financial capacity.

Organizational Response in an Era of Welfare Reform: Exit and Entry Patterns of Human Service Providers Abstract

Predicated on the tenets of program devolution and privatization, welfare reform initiatives increasingly shift the responsibility for providing human services to the private sector. But they also implicitly rely on the effective adaptation of private organizations to new environmental conditions. To achieve the policy goals of welfare reform, nonprofit human service providers are expected to adjust to changing funding and service regimes. But nonprofit responses to welfare reform initiatives have largely escaped examination, even though reform plans raise important questions for the stability, capacity, and composition of the nonprofit human service sector. Given that human service nonprofits are vital in moving people from welfare to work, analyzing the responsiveness of the nonprofit human service sector to welfare policy shifts is critically important. This research advances the literature on organizational responsiveness by assessing the adaptive strategies of the nonprofit human service sector to welfare reform. More specifically, the study uses nonprofit, economic, and demographic data, along with information on welfare reform implementation patterns, to examine the entry and exit of organizations in the nonprofit human service sector from 1992 to 1996. This time frame marked the widespread implementation of welfare reforms under the federal Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC) waiver program. Using as the units of analysis large, intrastate metropolitan areas to study rates of nonprofit entry, and individual nonprofits to assess determinants of organizational exit, the research explores several key questions pertaining to the response of human service nonprofits to welfare reform experimentation. The research yields several important findings regarding the changing composition of nonprofit human service sectors in metropolitan areas. First, the nonprofit human service field grew dramatically between 1992 and 1996 and had a growth rate that substantially outpaced the expansion of the rest of