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Official development assistance (ODA) education projects have played a crucial role in improving education and training fields in developing countries, but are often facing several considerable challenges (e.g. long implementation time). Thus, this study aims to identify critical success factors (CSFs) in ODA education projects and investigate the influences of CSFs on ODA project performance measured by 11 nonprofit outcomes (NPOs).

A comprehensive literature review and expert interviews were conducted to compile a list of 35 potential success factors for ODA education projects. Using a survey questionnaire, 143 valid responses were collected from practitioners joining ODA projects in Vietnam. Various statistical methods (e.g. mean score method, Spearman rank correlation test, analysis of variance test, factor analysis and regression analysis) were used to analyze the collected data.

This research identified seven CSFs for ODA education projects in Vietnam: comprehensive project management competency (C1), clarity and compliance in project execution (C2), transparency and committed funding (C3), external context conditions (C4), well-controlled design and project management procedures (C5), preparations in equipment and complexity insight (C6) and punctual site delivery (C7). Furthermore, the results of regression analysis indicated that comprehensive project management competency (C1) and transparency and committed funding (C3) could significantly affect various NPOs.

This study offers significant insights for practitioners (e.g. project managers) to improve ODA projects’ performance and effectiveness in the education and training sector of a developing country context (like Vietnam).

In the face of crises, nonprofit organizations (NPOs) have focused on their financial viability but there are other operational aspects to consider (e.g. activity or volunteer involvement). This study aims to investigate whether governance changes made by NPOs in times of crisis have enhanced organizational viability in a broader sense.

Through community-engaged research, the link between governance changes and organizational viability is examined. This study is based on a survey of 10,926 French NPOs and the conceptual framework of societal orientation.

They show that changing governance in the midst of a crisis can protect organizational viability, if the beneficiaries and members remain the core of the strategic target and if the content of volunteering remains stable.

This study, therefore, calls for a better study of the risks of governance changes for internal stakeholders, both at the level of scholars and within the organizations themselves. The results extend recent works on governance change and highlight the relevance of societal orientation in times of crisis.

This study helps to counter the criticisms regularly made about governance (particularly in France) and highlights the importance of maintaining the board of directors in NPOs. It invites NPOs to make decisions that protect their values, mission and beneficiaries at all times.

This study focuses on societal orientation in relation to stakeholder theory, as well as the nonfinancial aspects of viability.

The purpose of this paper is to examine US public relations professionals' perceptions of the benefits and challenges associated with the concept of moral entrepreneurship, defined as the purposeful process of changing or creating new institutionalized ethical norms. This study argues that the concept of moral entrepreneurship provides organizations with a potentially valuable framework to actively recognize societal pressures and problems and act accordingly to better the environment in which the organization resides and operates.

This exploratory study uses purposive in-depth interviews with 25 diverse public relations professionals, who represented communication firms, in-house public relations departments, higher education, nonprofits and government.

Respondents assigned a high value to the concept of moral entrepreneurship: In addition to its being viewed as the right thing to do, they recognized its practice as a way to help organizations recruit and retain employee talent and improve stakeholder trust. However, based on the interviews, organizational leadership is the primary initiator of ethical changes; therefore, without a seat at the management table, practitioners lack the influence to initiate such new organizational directions and take on the role of moral entrepreneurs only when directed to do so by their superiors. Barriers to adopting a moral entrepreneurship approach included a limited budget and shortage of staff, employees' resistance to change, fear of failure, poor leadership and a politically polarized workplace.

Practice implications include considerations for furthering moral entrepreneurship in organizations.

This study is the first to explore the applicability of the concept of moral entrepreneurship in public relations. The paper underscores the need for further discussion around novel approaches to ethics in public relations that go beyond simple compliance with professional codes and industry standards and that help organizations lead societal change.

This program evaluation aimed to investigate the benefits and challenges of an international, intercultural, e-community-engagement experience involving youth and higher education students. The authors sought to understand the meaning that participants would make of an international, intercultural, e-community-engagement experience.

The program evaluation component of this project was qualitative, participatory and action-oriented. It was composed of online reflection sessions with small, international groups of higher education students from Iraq, India, Morocco, South Africa and the USA immediately following each of five interactive exchange sessions with youth from South Africa. It also included one culminating reflection session to which all of the higher education student participants were invited and a written questionnaire that was completed by the youth participants at the conclusion of the project. The reflection sessions were recorded and transcribed. Transcripts and survey data were reviewed for emergent themes.

Cultural exposure emerged as the primary theme with participants valuing the opportunity to learn about different cultures and to connect with individuals from across the globe.

This program evaluation was not designed as a generalizable study. This pilot initiative provides evidence of the potential value and importance of international, intercultural e-community-engagement experiences for youth and higher education students.

The potential value of technology to build exchange opportunities for young people is immense and largely untapped. International, intercultural e-community-engagement initiatives can be made available to students globally with relatively limited resources. A highly structured and focused plan provides clarity about expectations and requirements for students. A high level of commitment is required by all participants, including the faculty coordinators.

Although the project was brief, exposure to numerous countries and cultures allowed participants to challenge their assumptions about different peoples and places in the world. The potential benefits for greater compassion and understanding of communities and cultures in an international context are high.

This program evaluation contributes to and extends the literature on the possibilities and challenges of international e-community-engagement; it demonstrates the potential for e-community-engagement across multiple countries to broaden students' exposure to and interest in global perspectives.

College students who are interested in experiencing and learning about other cultures could be potential agents to ongoing social and policy initiatives in promoting societal changes. As universities intensify their efforts toward embracing cultural diversity, it is imperative to gauge how these diversity initiatives resonate with students' developmental stage and pursuits in diverse campus climates. However, what kinds of educational experiences/contexts students choose for enhancing cultural competence, and how seeking diversity experiences might benefit college students in emotional wellbeing and cognitive skills, are under-investigated.

This study explores the relationships among college students' diversity-seeking behaviors, cultural competence, perspective-taking, and flourishing. A total of 359 college students from a STEM-focused university participated in this study. Students were recruited from classes over four semesters, from 2021 to 2023.

Students exhibited moderate to high levels of interest in seeking diversity in their learning experiences. Results from the structural equation modeling showed that higher levels of diversity-seeking in learning were associated with higher levels of perceived cultural competence, as well as higher levels of perspective-taking and flourishing.

This research delves into experiential and extracurricular dimensions of learning diversity, bridging a significant gap in academic literature. This study also elucidates the links between aspects of diversity engagement, cultural competence, and positive outcomes for college students, which underscores the significance of diversity-focused educational opportunities in higher education. Such opportunities are instrumental in enhancing cultural proficiency and further implications on cognitive growth and emotional well-being.

The academic–practitioner gap has been a widely discussed and well-established issue. Despite numerous studies conducted in this area, empirical evidence reveals that the gap is widening and also emphasizes the exigency to bridge this gap. Hence, the purpose of this study is to propose an acceptable solution that will fill this lacuna.

The study adopts the qualitative research methodology and was based on the system theory (ST) and the institutional theory (IT). Interviews, based on a semi-structured questionnaire, were conducted, focusing on three categories, namely individuals with solely academic experience, individuals with both academic and industrial exposure and business leaders. The unit of analysis was the individual.

The study, which unearthed some rich and challenging evidence from the respondents, reveals that gaining industrial exposure and working on continuous professional development are vital for academics to narrow or even close this gap. In addition, serving as apex members at board level or in professional bodies, serving global organizations as lead consultants and working on research collaborations are other important dimensions for academics.

This study introduces an emerging model named the “Pentagon Model” and develops a corporate index (C-index) for academics to earn, similar to the h-index. The study also explains the operationalization of the C-index based on the proposed algorithm. Hence, it is the envisaged that this study will change the landscape of the academic sphere in practical terms.

This study was carried out with the sole intention of bridging the gap between academics and practitioners. The proposed model and the index, which were developed by the author purely based on the outcome of this study, pave the way for many future research studies, not only to further improve the C-index but also to minimize disparities in transdisciplinary work between academics and practitioners.

Within the context of the nonprofit resiliency framework, the authors use nonprofit functional expenses and contribution revenue to explore how the COVID-19 pandemic affected the ability of nonprofits in different subsectors to carry out their mission, as well as their ability to “pivot” fundraising strategies to integrate social media and digital engagement.

The authors use IRS form 990 return data for organizations with a year-end return that includes at least six months of COVID-19 impact (“Wave 1 Effects” period) and also have a prior-year return (“Business as Usual” period). The authors use Wilcoxon signed rank tests to examine whether there are differences in our variables of interest between the two periods.

While the majority of nonprofits in most subsectors experienced a significant decrease in program spending, fundraising spending and fundraising efficiency ratios between the two time periods, the authors found variation in the change in contribution revenue and fundraising ratio between the two periods between subsectors. The authors also find that the percentage of nonprofits able to “pivot” their fundraising strategies varies by subsector between 13.33 and 31.23%.

This paper provides new information regarding the pandemic's initial effect on nonprofit program and fundraising spending, the related contribution revenue and the ability of nonprofits to “pivot” fundraising to remote strategies. The authors propose a more robust fundraising efficiency measure and a new measure indicating a nonprofit's “ability to pivot” their fundraising strategy. The authors encourage future researchers to conduct further longitudinal studies to understand how these effects may continue or change.

This study aims to measure social enterprises’ (SEs’) social objectives under the United Nation’s 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) framework, and explore the impact of SEs’ social objectives on their choices of legal forms.

This study used semi-structured questionnaires followed up by field interviews and observations of the sampled SEs. The survey sample includes 80 participants of Social Entrepreneurs Stars Competition in Zhejiang Province of China. The authors conduct content analysis to measure the objectives of SEs. The authors also perform descriptive analysis, chi-square test and regression analysis on the data.

The findings confirm the theoretical discussions that SEs’ choices of legal forms reflect SEs’ strategies toward achieving social objectives. Similar to certain countries, some SEs in China register as nonprofit entities to concentrate on nonprofitable sustainability objectives, while others register as commercial enterprises or hybrid organizations to generate profits. However, some SEs focus on profitable non-sustainability issues and fail to prioritize social objectives over economic objectives. There are positive effects of social entrepreneurs’ background similarity and negative effects of social entrepreneurs’ educational level on their SEs’ choices to register as commercial enterprises.

Due to the small size and nonrepresentative sample this study is based on, the findings need be further tested by a larger sample. SEs in different service domains rely on different types of financial resources (Mair et al., 2012; Doherty et al., 2014). In future research, the model can be expanded to test the effects of service domains and types of financial sources on SEs’ choices of legal forms.

To encourage more societal resources being allocated toward achieving the United Nations’ SDGs, policymakers and SE certification programs are recommended to explicitly incorporate sustainability objectives into the evaluation standards and supportive policies for SEs. Social entrepreneurs who aim to balance the social and economic objectives in their business are suggested to target the population with whom they share similar community background. Training or consulting programs for social entrepreneurs are suggested to provide advice tailored to their socio-economic background and personal experiences.

To the best of the authors’ this study is the first quantitative analysis to identify factors that associate with SEs’ choice of legal forms in China. The authors developed new instruments to measure SEs’ social objectives and service targets, access to financial resources and social entrepreneurs’ social-economic backgrounds.

This article asks how gender, ethnicity and other identities intersect and shape the employment experiences of social workers. During recent decades, governments have contracted social care to for-profit and nonprofit organizations (NPOs) globally as a part of the adaption of the neoliberal approach. Most employees in these organizations are women. However, there is a lack of knowledge about women working in social service NPOs and their unique working environments.

This article explores the experiences of women employed as social workers in social care NPOs in Israel regarding intersectionality. 27 in-depth interviews were conducted with women social workers working in social service NPOs. Participants reflected diversity in ethnicity, religion and full-time and part-time jobs. Thematic analysis was used.

The findings shed light on: (1) the contradiction social workers experienced between the stated values of the social care NPO and those values’ conduct, (2) intersectional discrimination among social workers from vulnerable populations and (3) the lack of gender-aware policies.

The need to raise awareness of the social care sector and governments to those contradictions and to promote diversity through gender-aware policies and practices.

The article suggests a conceptualization describing gender employment contradictions in social care NPOs, discusses how the angle of intersectionality expands the understanding of the complexities and pressures exerted on social workers from minority groups and emphasizes the need for social care NPOs to acknowledge and deal with these contradictions.

The study advances an enhanced model encompassing psychological involvement, denoted as the psychological continuum model (PCM) and perceived customer service quality as intermediaries in the association between subjective customer knowledge (SCK) and behavioral loyalty. The purpose of this study is to assess the mediating role of psychological engagement and consumers' perceived service quality in the relationship between SCK and behavioral loyalty among members of nonprofit sports service organizations. Additionally, the study aims to examine the impact of membership duration on the relationship between consumer knowledge and behavioral loyalty.

The study used a quantitative research design, and primary data were collected through a structured questionnaire from 527 members of nonprofit Chinese sports clubs who were selected using a simple random sampling technique. A 5-point Likert scale questionnaire was developed to measure all constructs in the intended research model. The suitability of the measurement model was analyzed by performing confirmatory factor analysis (CFA). Structural equation modeling (SEM) was used to analyze the data using AMOS-24.

The results of the overall direct effect indicate a significant influence of subjective knowledge on perceived service quality, perceived service quality significantly and positively influences psychological engagement; psychological engagement was found to be an important predictor of consumer behavioral loyalty.

The results offer information for nonprofit sports club (NPSC) managers who seek to increase the attractiveness and retention of their clubs' members by establishing the importance of subjective consumer knowledge.