Association for Public Policy Analysis & Management

Research Aim: The aim of this study is an improved understanding of how nonprofit leaders balance client interests with: 1) the interests of their donors, and 2) the content of their programs. Our research questions are two-fold: To what extent do client interests influence fundraising strategy? and To what extent do client interests drive program delivery?

Literature: There is a well-established tradition of studying public and stakeholder involvement in public administration (Nabatchi 2010; Thomas 1995; Kweit and Kweit 1984), due in part to the democratic foundations of the U.S. system of government as well as federal and state regulations mandating citizen and stakeholder engagement. Yet, nonprofit leaders also rely on input and engagement of diverse stakeholders (Tschirhart and Bielefeld 2012), and there is less understanding of the mechanisms and means by which they select and engage their key constituencies. A chief concern is the threat of paternalism, or an excessive focus on some stakeholders (donors or experts) that diverts attention from others: the clients who are targeted in nonprofit programming. Salamon (1995) famously described the threat of paternalism in his typology of voluntary failure. There are inherent challenges in client engagement in respect to the priorities of donors (Benjamin 2012), given the pressures of performance reporting (Carman 2007), resource acquisition (Freiwirth 2013), and professionalism (Melnik et al. 2013).

Data: The data is derived from primary data collected in the spring of 2016 and the spring of 2017. 50 semi-structured interviews were conducted with leaders in eight human-service oriented nonprofit organizations located in El Paso, TX. More than 300 pages of single-spaced interview transcripts were reviewed and coded in respect to codes identified in advance and those that emerged from the analysis (Miles and Huberman 1984, Krippendorff 2002).

Results: The results generally indicate that client preferences play a central role in both fundraising strategy and program development within the sampled organizations. Contrary to research indicating the potential for paternalism to influence organizations that are more “mature” or “professional” than others, we find no influence of organizational age on client engagement priorities. The results also indicate that client surveys are generally the most commonly-adopted approach to client engagement, due to the potential for identifying and channeling a large number of client views on the organization’s programming. These results can inform client engagement for human service oriented nonprofits in related contexts.