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AbstractCommentators on the effectiveness of nonprofit boards of directors usually find them wanting in a number of ways and urge that they reform themselves. A study to ascertain how many boards actually accept this advice and intentionally attempt to change the way they operate also examines what changes boards attempt to make, what provokes their efforts, and what outcomes result.

Growing use of volunteers in public programs has outstripped our understanding of the behavioral, structural, and policy effects of citi zen inputs of time, fiscal resources, and influence. A reconsideration of the functional roles of volunteers and their linkages with public agencies is needed.

AbstractResearch on community‐engaged learning tends to view this activity primarily, if not exclusively, from the vantage point of its benefits and challenges for students and educational institutions. Nevertheless, at least one other major actor is involved in this activity: the community. Neglect of the community perspective diminishes the overall value of student engagement. In this article we address this oversight by presenting new methodologies for valuing student engagement that take into account the community perspective. We argue that these approaches, which have their roots in the valuation of volunteer contributions to work organizations, can be extended fruitfully to the valuation of community‐engaged learning projects in institutions of higher learning. We recommend that application of these methodologies become an accepted part of the duties of university offices responsible for student engagement, and that researchers and practitioners continue to investigate more fully the value of engaged learning projects for the community.

Nonprofit employees can make ideal volunteers for other organizations in the sector, and understanding their participation in volunteering is a timely task. Based on "spillover theory," this study tests how nonprofit employees' experience on the job may carry over into the nonwork arena. The study focuses on how nonprofit employees' satisfaction with the job and perception of the organization's mission achievement relate to their volunteering, controlling for the generally higher levels of prosocial motivation found in the sector. The findings suggest that the consequences of job satisfaction for this group extend beyond the workplace, contributing to societal benefits.

In this article, using multiple illustrative case examples, we demonstrate that philanthropic institutions are in the business of creating public value. In framing the work of philanthropy more broadly to include the process of public value creation, philanthropic institutions and leaders are challenged to be more strategic not only in their mission‐fulfillment grant‐making with nonprofit organizations but also in the way they stimulate and encourage collaboration, create the "third space" necessary to incubate ideas to transform society, and leverage resources to increase the return on their investments toward system‐wide change. The implications for philanthropic actors and institutions suggest that the strategic contributions they make toward creation of public value are those that go beyond transactional performance measures, such as number of dollars spent or clients receiving services, to include ways that their investments are amplified by meaningful partnerships with nonprofit and other organizations, changed behaviors of institutions and individuals, and transformative public policies.

AbstractThis study examines factors influencing "formal" volunteering (that is, to an organization) and "informal" volunteering (that is, volunteering carried out individually outside of an organizational context) and the relationship between these two activities. We hypothesize that formal and informal volunteering activities are positively interrelated but that they are shaped by different types of personal resources: involvement in social networks increases the likelihood of both types of volunteering, but human capital increases the likelihood of formal volunteering rather than informal. The bivariate probit regression results emanating from the Independent Sector's "Giving and Volunteering in the United States, 2001" survey are generally supportive of the hypotheses. The findings suggest that nonprofit and public organizations that involve volunteers consider the pool of informal volunteers as a fertile ground for recruitment and find ways to better utilize older Americans in formal volunteering. The results also suggest that volunteer recruitment through organizational membership may be an effective strategy.

AbstractThis article investigates the benefits and costs to nonprofit organizations emanating from the adoption of the Sarbanes‐Oxley Act (2002). The act was intended to stem financial malfeasance in the for‐profit sector; nevertheless the article finds that about half the surveyed nonprofits adopted provisions of the act and experienced effects in proportion to the level of adoption. About one in four of the nonprofits attributed benefits of better financial controls and reduced risk of accounting fraud to the adoption of the Sarbanes‐Oxley Act. More than one‐third of the nonprofit organizations reported increased fees for external audit, and about 15 percent cited "reallocation of resources from program to administrative expenses." This article discusses the unintended positive and negative effects of public policy on nonprofit organizations.