Barriers to Membership in Nonprofit Trade Associations

Clifford W. Frasier ()
Additional contact information
Clifford W. Frasier: New York University

Public Organization Review, 2025, vol. 25, issue 2, No 4, 465-482

Abstract: Abstract Organizational members are essential for nonprofit trade associations (TAs) to achieve their goals, but the literature provides limited exploration of barriers to joining TAs. This paper investigates such barriers from the point of view of managers of TAs in the American charter school sector. The analysis reveals multiple explanations for why schools may not join their associations, and four explanations are discussed in depth: policy disagreement, free riding, low nonprofit resources, and high nonprofit resources. Considering the mechanisms that underlie these explanations leads to the suggestion that three factors —free riding, policy disagreement, and high resources —act as barriers to engagement.

Keywords: Trade association; Membership; Free riding; Policy; Nonprofit organization (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2025
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://link.springer.com/10.1007/s11115-024-00806-9 Abstract (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:kap:porgrv:v:25:y:2025:i:2:d:10.1007_s11115-024-00806-9

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.springer. ... ce/journal/11115/PS2

DOI: 10.1007/s11115-024-00806-9

Access Statistics for this article

Public Organization Review is currently edited by Ali Farazmand

More articles in Public Organization Review from Springer
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().