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Non-profit organizations constitute an important share of the U.S. economy, and recent audit failures and GAO findings highlight the importance of auditor reporting decisions in this sector. In this study, we examine going-concern modified audit opinions for non-profit organizations. Using audit opinion data for 3,567 non-profits exhibiting some signs of financial stress, we find that non-profits are more likely to receive a goingconcern modified opinion if they are smaller, are in worse financial condition, expend less on program-related activities, and have more internal control related audit findings. Our analysis of the subsequent resolution of the going-concern uncertainties suggest that only 27 percent of the non-profits receiving an initial going-concern modified audit opinion filed for dissolution in the subsequent four fiscal years. Our findings fill a gap in an important area that has received little research attention, and provide a useful benchmark for non-profits and their auditors.

This paper seeks to examine executive directors' perceptions of the relationship between access to funding and an organization's programmatic and advocacy activities.

This study is based on data from a national survey of executive directors of non‐profit advocacy organizations in the USA. The organizations were selected because they served minority and disadvantaged groups, and were heavily reliant on public funding.

The findings indicate that several factors are associated with how organizations balance their programmatic and advocacy activities. They include dependence on public funding, constituencies served, and perception of funders. Despite evidence for institutional pressures to reduce advocacy activities, the results indicate that such activities are sustainable in organizations with a strong individual donor base. In essence, a stable source of grassroots resources can counter institutional pressures to reduce advocacy.

This study focuses on a specific subgroup of advocacy organizations. Although it offers insights into their perceptions, the findings do not necessarily reflect more general perceptions.

The findings enhance understanding of impediments to non‐profit advocacy that stem from trends in public funding and regulations related to non‐profit lobbying and advocacy activities. The findings also enhance understanding of the extent to which the influences of the emerging non‐profit industrial complex are offset by traditional grassroots support for non‐profit advocacy.

This paper adds to the body of research on non‐profit decision making in relation to the balance between programmatic and advocacy work. It adds to the understanding of how organizations interface with larger institutions in society and the constraints that institutional ties entail.

The purpose of this paper is to offer a sustainability-based typology for non-profit organizations and corresponding strategies to sustain the mission and/or financial objectives of non-profit organizations. The balance of mission and money, known in the non-profit literature as the double bottom line, is a challenge for professional managers who run non-profits and scholars who study them.

Typologies are often used to classify phenomena to improve understanding and bring about clarity. In this paper, non-profit organizations are viewed from a social and fiscal viability perspective, developed from the long standing challenge of balancing mission and money.

The typology developed in this paper identifies several normative strategies that correspond to the social and fiscal viability of non-profit organizations. In fact, the strategies offered in this paper can help non-profit managers achieve organizational sustainability, thus enabling them to continue what they are meant to do – to provide greater social value to their constituents.

The typology presented is a classification system rather than a theoretical typology. Its purpose is to help managers of non-profits to recognize threats to their organizations’ long-term survival and offer strategies that if adopted can move the organizations to less vulnerable positions. However, the recommended strategies are by no means exhaustive. Furthermore, the focus of the paper is on non-profit organizations, not profit-driven or hybrid entities. The sustainability-based typology of non-profit organizations and the corresponding strategies have implications for practitioners and academics. The typology and its contents can help managers assess their non-profits, competitive environment and their current strategies, plan their double bottom line strategies and last but not the least, develop and implement strategies for social and fiscal sustainability. In addition, our paper provides great opportunities for future research to subject our typology and its contents to conceptual and empirical scrutiny.

The strategies described here are developed based on scholarly research and examples from successful non-profits. The typology and the related list of strategies provide a manager with the tools to accurately diagnose organizational challenges and adopt plans to improve the organization’s viability.

Non-profit organizations are an integral part of society that bolsters economic prosperity, environmental integrity and social justice. This paper may provide guidance for a number of non-profit managers to keep their organizations operating and serving important social missions.

In the context of organizations for social mission, several typologies exist that looked at firms from the perspectives of ownership versus profit objectives, entrepreneurship conceptualizations of economists and origins and development paths of social enterprises. While these typologies provided foundations for theoretical and empirical work into social enterprises, our typology offers strategies for the sustainability of mission and/or money objectives of non-profits. The value of this research lies in integrating virtuous and pragmatic objectives of non-profit sustainability that, in turn, can ensure the social mission of non-profits.

This longitudinal study aims to analyze the use of websites by a sample of 78 corporations and non‐profits five years apart. In particular, it studies organizational use of interactive and social media features and use of web sites for building relationships with six stakeholder publics.

The authors studied the websites of 78 for‐profit and not‐for‐profit organization seeking to learn how they used this new medium as a communication tool to build and maintain relationships with six key stakeholders: the mass media, consumers, investor/donors, employees, the government, and the community in 2004 and in 2009. They also explored for differences in the way for‐profit corporations and non‐profits used their web sites for relationship building given their different missions and cultures.

First, there was a marked difference in how corporations and non‐profit organizations used their websites. Second, a significant number of organizations used social media applications such as blogs, Twitter, Facebook, and Youtube through their websites in 2009. Third, aside from increased use of social media, in 2009 more organizations used feedback mechanisms such as e‐surveys and e‐polls embedded in their websites, enhancing interactions with a variety of stakeholders. Both corporations and non‐profit organizations generally utilized their websites as information‐dissemination tools, where the information flow is one‐way, although the percentage of both corporations and non profits that used interactive features offered by new media has increased slightly between 2004 and 2009.

This study is among the few that compare web page use by corporations vs non‐profits. A second unique feature of this study is that it is longitudinal in nature, studying web site use five years apart by the same organizations.

This paper explores the factors that are associated with a capacity of non-profits to develop social innovations (SIs). The purpose of this paper is to examine factors in the Russian national context with weak non-profit sector with an ambiguous governmental policy toward the sector.

The study is based on survey data (n=850 NPOs, 2015, Russia). The paper analyses the likelihood of a non-profit to introduce SIs due to external framework and organizational factors. Regression analysis was applied in the study. The study is based on a new sampling approach and examines non-profits as producers of SIs, but not cases of SIs per se.

The results demonstrate that the capacity of an NPO to develop SIs is explained by the following enabling factors: cross-boundary collaborative relations, volunteer involvement and diversity of the revenue structure. Composition of innovative sub-sector, opportunities and chances of getting into this group are explicitly determined and regulated by the current governmental policy toward the sector. That is that large and established non-profits are more likely to be innovative in Russia, unlike expected grass-roots.

The paper applies a theoretical framework to analyze the SI concept in a non-western context with weak civil society and an influential government. From this perspective, the results present empirical quantitative verification of the determinants of SI capacity of NPOs. The paper is among the first to apply a reverse sampling principle and examine SIs via NPOs as producers. The paper produced, for the first time, an empirical description of the nature of innovative activity by NPOs and an estimation of the extent of this activity in Russia.

This paper aims to describe how a social enterprise can use product innovation and management to succeed in its mission.

The case describes an approach to new product development and management that is of value to social enterprises. The Vehicles for Change organization exists and operates in the USA.

Provides information and action approaches to non‐profit organizations to increase their sustainability. Often non‐profits do not understand nor value business. Consequently, they elevate their mission to do good but sabotage their ability to succeed. Infusing business into non‐profits can lead to an entirely new organization, the social enterprise. Social enterprises use profit‐generating businesses to fund their charitable elements. This new form can be called a for benefits organization. That focus lends itself to using product development and management techniques to succeed. Their results offer implications for non‐profit organizations.

As in all case studies, the specific conditions found in one organization may not be found more generally in others. Readers are cautioned that the conclusions drawn in the case may have limited applicability.

The case depicts the process that one firm uses to innovate and succeed. It requires breaking existing perceptions, changing managerial attitudes, restructuring and adopting a consumer focus.

The case describes an evolutionary approach to social welfare in part based the benefits of a product. It illustrates the value that a product focused, profit seeking approach can yield in support of an organization that seeks to aid humanity.

This chapter seeks to contribute to a better understanding of Non-Profit Organizations (NPOs) use of practices for the purpose of organizational sustainability by highlighting the need for conducive performance measures and standards attached to NPO funding sources.

A review of literature for the UK Non-profit organization sector and NPO performance measures. The review structures literature as it relates to the non-profit sector and their relation to societal impact of human social service (HSS) non-profit organizations, non-profit performance measures, and processes of knowledge sharing in application of organizational evaluation.

This chapter provides a review of gaps in the literature referring suitable performance measurement and assessments suitable for the unique culture and approaches to performance measures of non-profit organizations. Future research implications suggest research in order to comprehend processes and procedures of performance measures inclusive of knowledge sharing and the processes of how non-profit learn, share, and evaluate internal and external to the NPO sector.

The value of this chapter is relevant for the public, government, and corporations to support efficient and effective ways in appropriating funds and defining successful NPO’s for external funders to invest.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the requirement that non-profit organizations recognize unconditional promises to give as assets and revenues in the year promises are received as mandated by Statement of Financial Accounting Standards (SFAS) No. 116.

Using the adoption of SFAS No. 116 and financial information reported on Internal Revenue Service Form 990, the study examines the requirement that non-profit organizations recognize unconditional promises to give as assets and revenues in the year promises are received. Combining insights derived from a model developed by Dechow, Kothari and Watts (1998) with the rationale applied by the Financial Accounting Standards Board (FASB) in mandating recognition treatment, it adopts the view that information about promises to give is relevant if it useful in assessing probable future cash inflows. The study also employs relative tests of predictive ability to assess competing specifications.

The study finds that recognizing unconditional promises to give as assets and as revenues in the year received improves predictions of next period’s cash inflows. It also finds that accrual-based contribution revenue consistently provides information content that is incremental to cash-based contribution revenue.

This paper has implications for several other lines of research as well. First, an ancillary concern expressed by many organizations in the non-profit sector was that the recognition of multi-year promises to give would adversely affect trends in long-term giving. In this regard, another promising line of inquiry would be to empirically test the Standard’s impact on the time-series properties of contributions and short- and long-term giving trends. Second, future research might consider conducting tests after partitioning by NTEE/NAICS classification, as well as substituting or supplementing the SOI data with financial statement data. Third, future research might consider applying the approach used in this study to other industries or groups for which market prices are not readily ascertainable. Data constraints, including the calculation of cash flow information indirectly from the balance sheet, impose limitations on this study.

This study documents that by recognizing unconditional promises to give as assets and revenues in the period received, donors, creditors and other users gain useful information about probable future cash inflows – a fundamental element of the accrual process and one of several important factors used to evaluate an organization’s ability to sustain future operations. This information is valuable to stakeholders and practitioners who rely on this information to make informed decisions. It is also helpful to standard setters in establishing guidelines that improve the usefulness of financial reporting for non-profits.

The paper contributes to existing literature by operationalizing, in a non-profit setting, a model that describes the relationship among revenues, accruals and cash flows. It fills a gap in the accrual literature regarding the relevance of non-profit revenue accruals. The study is the first to employ a relative information content approach to assess non-profit standards, which provides useful input to policy makers and end users. It affirms that many of the key conventions and elements embodied in the FASB Concepts Statements apply to non-profits as well, which heretofore has not been studied extensively. The results are also consistent with Accounting Standards Update 958, Not-for-Profit Entities, which requires that non-profits provide users with information about liquidity, including how they manage liquid resources needed to meet cash requirements for general expenditures within one year of the date of the statement of financial position.

The purpose of this paper is to tests three hypotheses: non‐profit organizations follow a customer‐centered approach to marketing; marketing is run by marketing‐trained staff; and cross‐continental differences in the adoption of marketing in the UK, the USA, and Australia exist due to differences in the operating environment.

A survey study was conducted with non‐profit managers. The sample contains 136 respondents; 36 from the UK, 33 from the USA and 67 from Australia.

Non‐profit managers indicated that the most important marketing activities are promotional in nature. The importance of market research and strategic marketing was acknowledged only by a small proportion of non‐profits, supporting Andreasen and Kotler's assertion that non‐profit organizations have an “organization‐centered” mindset. Only one fifth of marketing staff are trained in marketing. Non‐profit organizations in the UK, the USA, and Australia did not differ in their use of marketing and marketing operations, suggesting that the similarity of market pressures may be more influential than the differences in operating environments.

Shifting from an “organization‐centered” to a “customer‐centered” approach to marketing represents a key opportunity for non‐profit organizations to increase their competitive advantage and improve their outcomes in terms of the organizational mission. The primary strategy to achieve this aim is to make increased use of formally trained marketing staff.

To the authors' knowledge, this is the first study to assess the state of marketing practise in non‐profit organizations since Kotler, the first to test the organization‐centered hypothesis and the first to test differences across countries.

Aims to focus on non‐profit leadership and use information from advertised job announcements, in the USA, of non‐profit CEO positions to identify required competencies and job duties. The objective is to assess their relevancy and adequacy in dealing with the current challenges of the sector.

Uses content analysis to analyze CEO job advertisements that were posted in The Nonprofit Times during the 1999‐2004‐time period.

Among those who list educational requirement, a predominant majority requires degree in academic areas related to the non‐profit sector. The bias to emulate the private sector's competencies, a source of the identity crisis of this sector, is not found in the educational requirement. Fundraising experience is the most common area of requirement under experiences. Fundraising is also listed as the major job duty.

The sizes and life cycle stages of the non‐profit agencies are not incorporated. Future research could incorporate the above variables.

Design training using the findings to prepare future leaders. One of the findings suggests that non‐profits are not emphasizing the value of ethics in their search for executives. Considering the importance of this value in maintaining accountability, academicians could emphasize more of this as they design different non‐profit courses.

Assesses the adequacy of the currently emphasized competencies in leadership to deal with the current challenges of the sector (accountability, fiscal, competition, identity crisis etc.) and their implications.