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Purpose – During the last decade, several nonprofit governance codes have emerged in Germany and Switzerland. In contrast to the corporate sector, where one code exists in each country, the nonprofit sector has not unified its initiatives on governance guidelines. This research study searches for reasons of this heterogeneity by analyzing the content of the governance codes.Design/methodology/approach – Based on a comparative content analysis of 15 governance codes from Germany and Switzerland, this survey gives some insight about the different range of issues and levels of detail.Findings – The findings report a great variety among the nonprofit governance codes. Three different clusters are defined in order to classify the governance codes regarding their information detailedness. Some codes present the basic principles, others give detailed information on focused subjects, and some others function as soft law with a large scope. Additionally, the kind of the producers does have an influence on the content of nonprofit governance codes.Research limitations/implications – The survey is limited because of its geographically focus. However, several implications for further research can be drawn, that are of international relevance. Better knowledge is necessary about the implementation of the governance codes. Additionally, further influence factors on the content of governance besides the kind of the producers have to be analyzed. Finally, it would be interesting to test the acceptance of the codes and the participation process of development among a larger group of organizations that complies with a governance code.Originality/value – For the first time, a complete list of all nonprofit governance codes in the two countries was conducted as a basis for this study. Former studies used a smaller sample of governance codes without clarifying the reasons for the selection.

This study aims to use the original data collected from school board members representing nonprofit charter schools in the state of Minnesota to examine the relationship between the distribution of board-executive governance responsibilities and the performance of organizations operating as part of a New Public Management style macro-governance reform.

A combination of survey data collected from Minnesota charter school board members and hard performance data were utilized in two OLS regression models to predict the link between organizational governance and school performance.

The authors find that boards can improve hard measures of organizational performance by shifting responsibility of day-to-day operations closer to the executive, and public advocacy duties closer to the board. The results build on the existing literatures on school board governance and board-executive relations. Overall, the findings suggest the existence of an ideal balance between board-executive governance responsibilities in key functional areas on charter school boards.

Though a healthy literature exists regarding the value of charter schools, very few studies have actually explored the way in which these organizations are governed. This study is the first to link charter board governance responsibilities to performance.

This paper aims to contribute to the extant literature in this field by examining nonprofit organizations’ fraud reporting compliance using logistic regression and decision tree induction algorithms.

This study used the data from 428 nonprofit organizations during 2009-2015 period, and analyzed 21 individual measures (obtained from these organizations’ Internal Revenue Service Form990 filings) using logistic regression and decision tree induction algorithms, to study the governance characteristics and fraud reporting.

The study found evidence that compliance with the law, board of directors’ independence, federal audit and using independent accountants to compile and review financial statements are the most prevailing factors affecting the odds of nonprofit organizations experiencing fraud reported as an asset diversion.

The argument associated with using governance to reduce the chances of fraud has been a popular topic in industry and academia but unfortunately has limited empirical evidence in the literature, especially when it relates to nonprofits. This study contributes to the literature in this respect.

The purpose of this paper is to introduce the concept of organisational control and both its importance and utility for understanding nonprofit organisations.

This paper uses a critical realist (CR) methodology to discuss the concept of control and its utility to research on governance of nonprofit organisations.

The current study offers a conceptual framework that presents a holistic view of control, relevant for analysing nonprofit organisations, and a methodological lens (CR) through which this framework can be implemented.

This paper suggests that studies of governance should consider different levels of analysis, as suggested by examining the concept of control using a CR framework. This notion has yet to be tested empirically and a framework for examining governance from a CR perspective of control is suggested. Context is highly relevant to understanding control, and thus, this model requires testing in a wide diversity of nonprofit sectors, sizes of organisations and time periods.

The literature on organisational control provides useful insights to advance our understanding of nonprofit organisations beyond the notion of governance, and this paper proposes both conceptual and methodological underpinnings to facilitate future research.

The purpose of this paper is to evaluate the actual status of roles and responsibilities of boards in nonprofit organizations in China by comparative analysis and through setting the USA as a frame of reference.

Five roles and responsibilities are compared between Chinese and American nonprofits. Among Chinese nonprofits, foundations and associations are compared. Both primary and secondary data are used.

On the roles and responsibilities of nonprofit boards, developed countries such as the USA are more active than China. Within China, boards of foundations are more active than the boards of associations.

Small sampling limits universality and applicability of this paper's conclusions. Every sort of role and responsibility are not further divided.

This paper examines the extent to which boards fulfill roles and responsibilities, and provides reference effects for further researches and for improvement of board governance of nonprofits in China.

The literature considers three main models of nonprofit sector structure and development: liberal, welfare partnership, and social democratic. This study analyzes the cases of Italian and Canadian nonprofit organizations (NPOs) that operate in two third-sector contexts, widely known as “hybrids.” In particular, we aim to verify whether some features of governance, leadership, and volunteer participation have impacts on the financial performances of selected Italian and Canadian NPOs.

Differences between the two studied nonprofit contexts influenced the sampling, the data collection, and the methods of analysis. Data on Italian and Canadian NPOs are analyzed both together and separately, using multiple regression models. Revenues, fund-raising and other grants from the general public, and program expenses are used as measurements of financial performance.

Our analysis demonstrates that some board characteristics, as well as volunteer participation and representation on the board, have impacts on the nonprofit financial performance. The characteristics of the CEO studied in this work are not significantly associated with the level of financial performance.

This study has several important implications for research on board characteristics, CEO characteristics and volunteer management and governance, as well as implications for practitioners. The limitations of this study are related mostly to the different methods used for sampling NPOs and collecting data in the two different country contexts due to the different level of availability of data.

The past literature has not adequately examined the relationships among the board and CEO characteristics, the role of volunteers in governance and financial performance.

The purpose of this paper is to test the association between various stakeholder groups and whether nonprofit organizations (NPOs) have obtained accountability accreditation. In particular, the study intends to answer the following research questions: Does the governance of an NPO have any impact on the likelihood that the organization obtains certification? Does an NPO’s investment in executives affect certification efforts? Does employing a professional fundraiser play a significant role in whether an organization seeks accreditation? and Are certification efforts influenced by the relative sophistication of donors of the NPO?

Data were analyzed by examining information provided in the Internal Revenue Service revised Form 990, Part VI specifically from organizations holding the Standards for Excellence® (SFX) certification. This study uses a size- and sector-matched sample of 228 NPOs (half of which with the SFX certification and half without) to examine the association between accountability and governance in NPOs in both univariate and multivariate contexts.

The findings of this study indicate that organizations with strong internal governance (indicated by their answers to the governance-related questions in Form 990) are more likely to have obtained certification when compared to a group of nonprofits that did not receive the certification. In addition, nonprofits that invest more in their executives are more likely to receive SFX certification. Interestingly, external stakeholders (donors making restricted gifts, and professional fundraisers) are not associated with the likelihood of holding the SFX certification.

Even though the study has attempted to control for factors that may have contributed to the findings (e.g. a size- and sector-matched peer for each NPO that secures the SFX seal in the final sample), it is not feasible to perfectly tease out all alternative explanations for the findings. Endogeneity issues may still be present given that the sample and comparison groups possess significantly different governance characteristics (i.e. governance scores, board independence, investments on executives).

The positive association between organization governance and investment in executives and the NPO’s certification credentials implies that certification may be used by these certified organizations as a signaling mechanism for strong governance. This would be consistent with the positive stakeholders’ reactions to NPOs’ accountability certifications that have been documented by Feng et al. (2016). The findings should help NPO board and staff members, researchers, and regulators to further understand the association between stakeholder groups and whether NPOs have obtained accreditation.

A thorough search of the relevant literature suggests that this study is the first one to link the association between stakeholder influence (proxied by the NPO’s governance strength, investments in executives, employing a professional fundraiser and donor sophistication) and an NPO’s decision to seek accountability accreditation. The findings should provide insights to stakeholders and researchers interested in examining the value of third-party accountability certifications and signaling mechanisms in NPOs and inform regulators regarding significant stakeholder influence on NPOs’ accreditation decision-making process. The results of this study also add to the body of literature on certification programs for NPOs.

Recent literature on nonprofit boards of directors has extensively investigated the composition, role, responsibilities, and characteristics of boards. Given the growing number of studies on nonprofit boards, which added new impulse to the debate on the role and characteristics of these players, it is time to analyze the state of the art and systematize the current knowledge. On the other hand, despite the presence of some literature reviews, a research comparing the debate among the nonprofit, private, and public sectors is still lacking. Using Gabrielsson and Huse’s (2004) framework, we wanted to identify factors that can influence research on nonprofit boards and compare our results with existing studies on private and public sector.

We conduct a systematic literature review, selecting empirical articles published in international scientific journals from 1992 to 2012.

We found similarities and differences in relation to research on boards among sectors. As a common result, we found that evolutionary studies still remains a neglected area in all of three realms. Finally, whereas input–output studies prevail in the private sector and contingency studies prevail in the public sector, behavioral studies prevail in the nonprofit sector, demonstrating, also, that the sector itself can make a difference in the board’s research.

This literature review provides some suggestion for further research on boards for all of three sectors. For example, we suggest complementing research on boards on all three sectors, especially in relation to evolutionary studies.

This paper fills the need to clarify the status of research on nonprofit boards, in order to address scholars in the understanding of the phenomenon.

Policy reforms to primary health care delivery in New Zealand required government-funded firms overseeing care delivery to be constituted as nonprofit entities with governance shared between consumers and producers. This paper examines the consumer and producer interests in these firmsʼ allocation of ownership and control utilising theories of competition. Consistent with pre-reform patterns of ownership and control, provider interests appear to have exerted effective control over these entitiesʼ formation and governance in all but a few cases where community (consumer) control pre-existed. Their ability to do so is implied from the absence of a defined ownership stake and the changes to incentives facing the different stakeholding groups. It appears that the pre-existing patterns will prevail and further intervention will be required if policy-makers are to achieve their underlying aims.