What do nonprofit organizations seek? (And why should policymakers care?)

Arthur C. Brooks
Additional contact information
Arthur C. Brooks: Syracuse University, Postal: Syracuse University

Journal of Policy Analysis and Management, 2005, vol. 24, issue 3, 543-558

Abstract: The objectives of nonprofit managers are not immediately apparent. Indeed, nonprofits may seek to maximize their level of service or their budgets, or they may have undefined or unstable objectives. This paper presents a theoretical model of managerial objectives that yields testable hypotheses, which I test using 2001 data on 190,000 American nonprofits. While there is substantial variation between different types of nonprofits, they generally approach a service maximization objective, but maintain fundraising budgets that are insufficient to meet this objective. These findings have significant implications for policy and nonprofit management. © 2005 by the Association for Public Policy Analysis and Management

Date: 2005
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (6)

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.1002/pam.20114 Link to full text; subscription required (text/html)

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:wly:jpamgt:v:24:y:2005:i:3:p:543-558

DOI: 10.1002/pam.20114

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in Journal of Policy Analysis and Management from John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Wiley Content Delivery ().