Paarlberg, L., Ai J., LePere-Schloop, M., Walk, M. (2023). The Political Embeddedness of Voluntary Action: The Case of Local Philanthropic COVID-19 Relief Funds. Administration & Society. https://doi.org/10.1177/00953997231177217

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ABSTRACT: Scholars and policymakers have long been interested in the complex relationships between political institutions and voluntary collective action. However, the reciprocal nature of their relationships complicates empirical analysis: voluntary action supports democratic institutions and political institutions enable voluntary action. This article examines the relationship between political institutions and the activation of local voluntary action in the context of COVID-19 funds managed by community philanthropic organizations. We find that political engagement, policy signaling, and political competition all support the emergence of a COVID-19 fund. The findings advance our understanding of the significant role that political institutions play in activating voluntary action.

LePere-Schloop, M., Walk, M., Paarlberg, L. (2023). “We expected a revolution and got a slow burn”: Change in the community foundation field. Nonprofit & Voluntary Sector Quarterly. https://doi.org/10.1177/08997640231152240

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ABSTRACT: Demographic shifts, economic restructuring, online-giving platforms, and growing competition threaten traditional models of community philanthropy. Responding to these pressures, philanthropy thought leaders have supported “a new way forward” for community foundations—community leadership. However, change is difficult, and little research examines organizational processes of moving toward community leadership. This study uses a simultaneous qualitative mixed methods design to describe organizational paths to community leadership while considering field-level aspiration toward such change. To confirm previous research, we examine community foundation mission descriptions from 2011 to 2016, finding limited evidence that the field is aspiring toward the community leadership model. Using interviews with leaders of organizations that have begun to shift toward community leadership, we unpack how such transformation occurs. We find that change, even amid field-level pressures, unfolds through localized improvisation and bricolage as community foundations adapt their work to demands in their community.

LePere-Schloop, M., Nesbit, R. (2022). The Nexus of Public Administration, Public Policy, and Nonprofit Studies: An Empirical Mapping of Research Topics and Knowledge Integration. Public Administration Review, 83(1), 486-502. https://doi.org/10.1111/puar.13587

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ABSTRACT: The interdisciplinary fields of public administration (PA), public policy studies (PP), and nonprofit studies (nonprofit) all contribute to our understanding of public affairs, but the nature and extent of their knowledge integration are empirically unclear. The current study adapts Rafols and Meyer's framework for understanding interdisciplinary research integration and applies bibliometric and qualitative methods to analyze citation trends among PA, PP, and nonprofit journal articles published between 2009 and 2020. Our findings reveal that articles in PA and PP journals cite nonprofit journals at a low (but consistent) rate, while those in nonprofit journals cite their PA and PP counterparts more frequently. Using qualitative coding, we developed a taxonomy of 15 broad research categories at the nexus of the fields: three of these (collaboration, networks, and partnerships; public service provision; and financial management) were shown to integrate knowledge from PA/PP and nonprofits, while several others indicated the potential to do so.

LePere-Schloop, M., Nesbit, R. (2022). Disciplinary Contributions to Nonprofit Studies: A Twenty-Year Empirical Mapping of Journals Publishing Nonprofit Research and Journal Citations by Nonprofit Scholars. Nonprofit & Voluntary Sector Quarterly, 52(1_suppl), 68S-101S. https://doi.org/10.1177/08997640221119728

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ABSTRACT: In celebration of Nonprofit and Voluntary Sector Quarterly’s 50th anniversary, we present a bibliometric analysis of nonprofit research published between 1999 and 2019, within and outside of three core nonprofit journals—NVSQ, NML, and Voluntas. We seek to understand which journals, across scientific domains and social science disciplines, inform nonprofit research in one of three ways, by (a) publishing articles, (b) citing the three core journals, or being cited in these core journals. We found that nonprofit research published in economics and social sciences journals has kept pace with a large increase in indexed research. Meanwhile, though the core nonprofit journals robustly cite and are increasingly cited by business and management and public administration journals, they are less engaged with other social science disciplines. We discuss ways that the core journals could increase their visibility and penetration into these other disciplines and highlight perspectives potentially missing from the core journals.

LePere-Schloop, M., Appe, S., Bamfo, P. Zook, S., Bawole, J. (2022). Mapping Civil Society in the Digital Age: Critical Reflections from a Project based in the Global South. Nonprofit & Voluntary Sector Quarterly, 51(3), 587-605. https://doi/10.1177/08997640211057401

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ABSTRACT: Initiatives to map nonprofit organizations encompass efforts to define the boundaries of the sector and understand its scope and scale. As new technologies make it possible to digitize and analyze information in new ways, further questions about mapping civil society emerge. We integrate nonprofit scholarship, critical work on computational methods, and reflection on our experiences using machine learning to map nongovernmental organizations in Ghana, to develop a critical framework for mapping civil society in the digital age. The issues we raise about computational methods are embedded within greater concerns about the taken-for-granted assumptions in mapping civil society, and mapping as a tool to control, manage, and manipulate civil society. We are particularly attentive to the power within mapping as a mode of knowledge production.

LePere-Schloop, M. (2022). Nonprofit Role Classification using Mission Descriptions and Supervised Machine Learning. Nonprofit & Voluntary Sector Quarterly, 51(5), 1207-1222. https://doi.org/10.1177/08997640211057393

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ABSTRACT: Scholars have used both quantitative and qualitative approaches to empirically study nonprofit roles. Mission statements and program descriptions often reflect such roles, however, until recently collecting and classifying a large sample has been labor-intensive. This research note uses data on United Ways that e-filed their 990 forms and supervised machine learning to illustrate an approach for classifying a large set of mission descriptions by roles. Temporal and geographic variation in roles detected in mission statements suggests that such an approach may be fruitful in future research.

Beaton, E. LePere-Schloop, M. & Smith, R. (2022). A Review of Sexual Harassment Prevention Practices, Toward a Nonprofit Research Agenda. Nonprofit & Voluntary Sector Quarterly. https://doi.org/10.1177/08997640211008979

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ABSTRACT: Sexual harassment has garnered renewed attention with a wave of allegations against high profile men, including nonprofit executives. Given its legal, organizational, and ethical implications for nonprofit organizations and the sector, it is imperative that nonprofits take steps to prevent sexual harassment. Because there is limited research on sexual harassment in the nonprofit literature, we know little about what nonprofits are doing, or what they should be doing. This research note uses qualitative analysis to explore the anti-harassment practices recommended to nonprofit practitioners and compares these practices to academic research to develop a nonprofit scholarly research agenda. We identify a series of important questions nonprofit scholars could pursue to improve our knowledge of the issue and contribute to both research and practice.

Beaton, E. E., LePere-Schloop, M., & Smith, R. (2021). “Whatever it Takes”: Sexual Harassment in the Context of Resource Dependence.  Journal of Public Administration Research and Theory, 31(4), 617-633. https://doi.org/10.1177/0899764020968155

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ABSTRACT: Research suggests powerful resource dependencies are present in the public and nonprofit sectors. The individuals operating at the nexus between organizations and resource providers, and who mitigate dependencies, are referred to as boundary spanners. Research suggests that there may be both positive and negative personal repercussions for boundary spanners, but research has not sufficiently examined these unintended consequences through a gender lens. Bringing together research on resource dependence and sexual harassment, this study explores sexual harassment as an unintended consequence for boundary spanners of resource dependence mitigation strategies. Drawing on a feminist methodology and purposive sampling, we engaged in interviews with 36 professional fundraisers, a quintessential boundary spanning role, to examine the problem of sexual harassment by donors. These experiences leave fundraisers feeling harassed by donors and exploited by employers that pressure them to do “whatever it takes” to obtain donations. We contribute to research on resource dependence by surfacing sexual harassment and exploitation as unintended consequences for boundary spanners of strategies to mitigate organizational resource dependence. Our findings assist in reconsidering the assumptions that underly resource dependence theory and related research.

LePere-Schloop, M., Nesbit, R. (2021). Making Disciplinary-Based Theories of the Nonprofit Sector Accessible for Students: An Example Using a Theory from Political Science. Journal of Nonprofit Education and Leadership, 11(1). https://doi.org/10.18666/JNEL-2020-9653

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ABSTRACT: Scholars rely on a range of theories from a variety of disciplines to study the nonprofit sector in the United States. Students often struggle to make sense of these theories and understand what they contribute to the knowledge of the sector. We offer a novel pedagogical approach that involves (1) grounding theories within their home discipline and presenting underlying assumptions, providing a pedagogical framework that supports student learning by (2) identifying the levels of analysis relevant to particular theories and facilitating discussion around other theory characteristics, (3) detailing the specific contributions theories make to the field of nonprofit studies, and (4) connecting theories to persistent challenges facing practitioners. We illustrate this approach using Douglas’ market model of democracy, a theory of the sector from political science. Informal student feedback over 2 years of graduate-level instruction underscores the efficacy of this approach and its utility for future instruction.

Paarlberg, L. E., LePere-Schloop, M., Walk, M., Ai, J., & Ming, Y. (2020). Activating Community Resilience: The Emergence of COVID-19 Funds Across the United States. Nonprofit and Voluntary Sector Quarterly, 49(6), 1119-1128. https://doi.org/10.1177/0899764020968155

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ABSTRACT: This article draws upon concepts of community resilience to explore the antecedents of community philanthropic organizations’ response to COVID-19. Although the pandemic is a global threat, responses have been local. We test a model of community resilience activation in the context of the emergence of local COVID-19 funds. We find that a philanthropic organization’s capacity to act in a crisis and respond to the needs of the community depends on the stock of community capitals and organizational capacity. The importance of economic, cultural, and political factors in predicting the emergence of a fund raises important questions about disparities in resilience along class and race lines and the role of political ideology in shaping perceptions of crises. Our research contributes to our understanding of community philanthropic organizations’ capacity to activate community resources during a crisis.

LePere-Schloop, M., Lumpkin, J. H. (2016). Learning from Trayvon: Lessons and Implications for Police Organizations and Leaders. Journal of Public Management & Social Policy, 23(1), 61. https://digitalscholarship.tsu.edu/jpmsp/vol23/iss1/5

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ABSTRACT: Critical incidents like the Martin-Zimmerman encounter prompt us to examine not only the specifics of a particular episode, but also broader questions that hopefully illuminate a path leading to meaningful change. This reflective piece draws on the professional experiences of a highly effective and respected African-American Police Chief to examine some of these broader questions. Chief Joseph H. Lumpkin is a 43-year law enforcement veteran who was recently appointed Chief of the Savannah-Chatham Metropolitan Police Department in Georgia. Before moving to Savannah he served as Chief of the Athens-Clarke County Police Department, an agency that solves violent crimes at a rate 15 to 20 percent higher than the national average. In 2014 the Georgia Association of Chiefs of Police named him Chief of the Year. Drawing from Chief Lumpkin’s extensive experience and connecting his reflections to the academic literature on community-oriented policing as well as that on representative bureaucracy, this article identifies important implications for practice and scholarship using the Martin-Zimmerman encounter as a critical incident for understanding.

Williams, B. N., LePere-Schloop, M., Silk, P. D., Hebdon, A. (2016). The co-production of campus safety and security: A case study at the University of Georgia. International Review of Administrative Sciences, 82(1), 110-130. https://doi.org/10.1177/0020852315573157

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ABSTRACT: Campus safety and security is a salient issue and an area of increasing concern facing educational institutions in the United States. Yet little is known regarding ongoing efforts and resulting difficulties to co-produce campus safety and security. This article contributes to the literature on co-production by examining student and campus police officer perceptions of the professional–service user relationship in the context of campus safety and security. Findings suggest that demographic and contextual factors shape user and professional perceptions of their relationship in different ways, and that these perceptual differences affect efforts to co-deliver services.

LePere-Schloop, M., Williams, B. N., Christensen, R. K., Silk, P. D. (2015). Appraising the appraisal process: Manager and patrol officer perspectives. The Police Journal, 88(3), 231-250. https://doi.org/10.1177/0032258X15601808

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ABSTRACT: While research shows that performance appraisals are important both as management tools and for their ability to shape organisational commitment and performance, researchers have also noted a ‘pervasive dissatisfaction’ (Coutts and Schneider, 2004: 68) with appraisals in policing. The standardisation of performance appraisal systems across local government departments in the United States may contribute to this dissatisfaction. Standardised forms may be difficult to adapt to diverse officer positions, and to the overall goals of police departments and agencies. This paper uses appraiser and appraisee survey data from a police department in a mid-sized southern city in the United States to examine whether standardised performance appraisal systems in local government meet the needs of local police departments and agencies. Findings suggest that it is important to tailor appraisal forms and systems by including officers and managers in the development of job-specific rubrics and training modules.