A recurring criticism of academic life is that it is too theoretical. The public tends to be impatient with basic research; we want instant gratification, and often the practical applications of scholarship do not become evident for decades. That’s why a project researching Indiana nonprofits underway at Indiana University is so exciting: the results of the work will be both important and almost immediately useful.
A recurring criticism of academic life is that it is too theoretical. The public tends to be impatient with basic research; we want instant gratification, and often the practical applications of scholarship do not become evident for decades. That’s why a project researching Indiana nonprofits underway at Indiana University is so exciting: the results of the work will be both important and almost immediately useful.
Most of us realize how significant nonprofit organizations have become to our communities. Nonprofits support the arts, they help the poor, they advocate for better government, they support education, religion, medicine, the environment. They are “mediating institutions”—that is, they provide a vital buffer between the individual and the state. Over the past quarter-century, especially, the nonprofit sector has grown into an essential element of our civic structure and our economy. But while the older sectors—business and government—have been studied for generations, the growth of the nonprofit sector is a relatively recent phenomenon, and there is much we need to know about it if we are to ensure its continued vitality.
Professor Kirsten Gronbjerg’s survey will be the first ever to collect data on all kinds of nonprofits—not just charities, congregations and civic organizations, but all other types of membership associations in Indiana. Once compiled, the survey data will make it possible to highlight the variety of ways in which Indiana nonprofits contribute to the state and to their local communities, and to determine what they need in order to continue making those contributions.
Even more important, however, is another goal of the research: to identify and document the challenges nonprofits face, and the ways successful nonprofits have faced them. Because the sample is large, it will be possible to determine whether some problems reflect a particular focus—for example, arts or advocacy or human services—or occur in a particular geographic location, or accompany a particular set of management decisions.
As someone who ran a nonprofit agency for six years, I can attest to the utility and importance of this information. Smaller nonprofits are notoriously strapped for cash; unlike business and government, they cannot afford management consultants or survey research, and few have access to the sort of information about their environment and prospects that businesses take for granted. Anyone who has served on the board of a nonprofit organization can confirm the value of the information being gathered.
While those who receive the questionnaires are the people most likely to benefit from the study’s results, there is a real danger that they will ignore or discard the survey instrument. It is tempting, when you are terribly busy and chronically understaffed, to toss requests for information in the “circular file” or to put them at the bottom of the “to do” pile. That would be more than unfortunate, because the usefulness of this study is dependent upon the size of the response. This is one survey where every single reply will count, and where the data collected will help those good institutional citizens who need it most.