Peter Frumkin

Strategic Positioning and the Financing of Nonprofit Organizations: Is Efficiency Rewarded in the Contributions Marketplace?

This article addresses the question of whether operational efficiency is recognized and rewarded by the private funders that support nonprofit organizations in fields ranging from education to social service to arts and beyond. Looking at the administrative efficiency and fundraising results of a large sample of nonprofit organizations over an 11 year period, we find that nonprofits that position themselves as cost efficient - reporting low administrative to total expense ratios - fared no better over time than less efficient appearing organizations in the market for individuals, foundations, and corporate contributions. From this analysis, we suggest that economizing may not always be the best strategy in the nonprofit sector.

When Missions, Markets, and Politics Collide: Values and Strategy in the Nonprofit Human Services:

This article explores the meaning of nonprofit strategy in the human services through an examination of the challenges facing nonprofit organizations working in the field of welfare-to-work transit...

Diversification Reconsidered: The Risks and Rewards of Revenue Concentration

Abstract In the search for sustainability and stability, a central tenet of social entrepreneurship holds that revenue diversification is desirable. Business and nonprofit researchers have long argued that by establishing and maintaining multiple streams of funding, including some combination of earned income, government contracts, foundation and corporate grants, and individual contributions, organizations are able to avoid excessive dependence on any single revenue source, stabilize their financial positions, and thereby reduce the risk of financial crises or interruptions in funding. By studying a large sample of nonprofit organizations in the US, this paper investigates whether this basic claim about the desirability of revenue diversification is both correct and complete. Against the dominant trend in the literature that focuses on the risks of revenue concentration, we find that nonprofit organizations that have highly concentrated and specialized forms of revenue actually experience some significant benefits, in the form of lower administrative and fund-raising expenses. However, these savings are associated with greater exposure to swings in an organizations financial position. Based on our study of the broader world of nonprofit organizations, we conclude that social entrepreneurs likely face a more complex set of choices about the composition of their revenue than previous research has suggested.

On Being Nonprofit

3 On Being Nonprofit: A Conceptual and Policy Primer (「非営利であるということ―概念および政策に関する入門書」) By Peter Frumkin Harvard University Press, 2002 社会イノベーション研究会事務局 東京工業大学ノンプロフィットマネジメントコース 露木真也子 著者について Peter Frumkin 著者は戦略的マネジメント論を専門とする組織社会学者であり、ハーバード大学ケネディス クールで博士課程を教えた際の経験から着想を得て、ノンプロフィット/ボランタリー・セ クターに関する本書を執筆した。現在は、テキサス大学オースティン校の Lyndon B. Johnson School of Public Affairs で公共政策に関して教鞭を執る傍ら、同校 RGK Center for Philanthropy and Community Service の理事を務める。

The Long Recoil from Regulation Private Philanthropic Foundations and the Tax Reform Act of 1969

The Tax Reform Act of 1969 (TRA 1969) imposed the first real set of regulations on private philanthropic foundations. The effect of these regulations has been profound, long lasting, and for the most part, entirely unintended. TRA 1969 ultimately pushed foundations to mount a strategic defense for the field, a strategy that has included professionalizing foundation staffs, changing grant making practices, and forming a powerful national association. Philanthropys ongoing quest for legitimacy and public acceptance following TRA 1969-not the provisions of the regulations themselves-has created a new set of pressing management challenges that the foundation field must now address.

Book Review: Civil Society: Measurement, Evaluation, Policy

laced with examples and case studies that illustrate how the principles and processes discussed in the first two sections of the book can be implemented to make the organization better able to compete in today’s environment. The education market, for example, is in a state of change. It is no longer sufficient to hold high the lamp of learning and expect students to flock to its light. The growth of part-time and adult education and the advent of for-profit higher education organizations such as the University of Phoenix and Trump University have forever changed the competitive nature of education. Marketing can help traditional institutions remain viable while emphasizing their core values. Overall, this is an exceptional textbook in an area that deserves much more attention. Its international perspective and the focus of the final section on specific segments of the nonprofit community are significant strengths. Having said that, the text also has one glaring weakness. As mentioned above, the education market is changing as the demographics of students change. Each chapter ends with a series of questions for discussion, as do most texts. The text, however, lacks experiential exercises and cases for student discussion that have become the hallmark of student-centered higher education, at least in the United States. Several of the cases included in the text as examples might be modified to provide practical work for students to use in applying the concepts in the text. Other cases and experiential exercises should be considered to give students more hands-on experience. Sources for additional cases include the CasePlace, and the Case Research Journal among others. I would strongly recommend this book for consideration by anyone teaching a class in nonprofit marketing.

Evaluation Research and Institutional Pressures: Challenges in Public-Nonprofit Contracting

This article examines the connection between program evaluation research and decision-making by public managers. Drawing on neo-institutional theory, a framework is presented for diagnosing the pressures and conditions that lead alternatively toward or away the rational use of evaluation research. Three cases of public-nonprofit contracting for the delivery of major programs are presented to clarify the way coercive, mimetic, and normative pressures interfere with a sound connection being made between research and implementation. The article concludes by considering how public managers can respond to the isomorphic pressures in their environment that make it hard to act on data relating to program performance.

The End of Public-Nonprofit Relations? A Comment on Plowden

to produce a framework agreement for localities to use, which preceded the 1998 compacts in each country. In England, too, some of the most successful compacts were born out of local government reorganization. However, if the introduction of local strategic partnerships is to provide a similar opportunity, much will depend on the significance of these new partnerships and the extent to which they—like compacts—are here to stay rather than a passing policy fashion.