A Survey of Middleware Adoption in Nonprofit Sectors: A Sustainable Development Perspective

Basem Almadani, Sarah Alissa, Reem Alshareef, Farouq Aliyu () and Esam Al-Nahari
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Basem Almadani: College of Computing and Mathematics, King Fahd University of Petroleum & Minerals, Dhahran 31261, Saudi Arabia
Sarah Alissa: College of Computing and Mathematics, King Fahd University of Petroleum & Minerals, Dhahran 31261, Saudi Arabia
Reem Alshareef: College of Computing and Mathematics, King Fahd University of Petroleum & Minerals, Dhahran 31261, Saudi Arabia
Farouq Aliyu: Center of Excellence in Development of Nonprofit Organizations, King Fahd University of Petroleum & Minerals, Dhahran 31261, Saudi Arabia
Esam Al-Nahari: Center of Excellence in Development of Nonprofit Organizations, King Fahd University of Petroleum & Minerals, Dhahran 31261, Saudi Arabia

Sustainability, 2024, vol. 16, issue 20, 1-38

Abstract: Nonprofit Organizations (NPOs) are adopting technology to improve their quality of services, scale up, or reduce operation costs. However, due to the heterogeneity of systems they use, NPOs face system-integration challenges when collaborating with other organizations. Middleware is an intermediary software that assists dissimilar systems in working together. This paper explores middleware applications, opportunities, and challenges within the sector. It extensively reviewed the current state of research on middleware usage in the nonprofit sector for all papers published in Scopus and Web of Science (WoS) until 2023. Out of 127 papers returned, only 31 remained after removing duplicates, invalid entries, and out-of-scope publications. Then, we synthesized insights from a thorough survey of these selected papers. In light of the survey results, we observed that NPOs primarily use middleware in a few of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), namely, health (SDG 3), NPO operations (SDG 8 and 9), NPO collaborations (SDG 17), development of sustainable cities (SDG 11), security and disaster management (SDG 16), and education (SDG 4). We also identified several challenges related to using middleware in the nonprofit sector, which include privacy, security, system development and performance, data processing and transfer, and volunteer attrition.

Keywords: middleware; Non-Governmental Organizations; nonprofit organizations; civic sector; technology adoption; humanitarian engineering; Sustainable Development Goals (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O13 Q Q0 Q2 Q3 Q5 Q56 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2024
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