Can Government Intervention Increase Volunteers and Donations? Analyzing the Influence of VISTA With a Matched Design

• Author: Andrew Messamore,Pamela Paxton,Kristopher Velasco
• DOI: 10.1177/00953997211009885
• Published date: 01 November 2021
• Date: 01 November 2021
• Subject Matter: Articles

https://doi.org/10.1177/00953997211009885

Administration & Society

2021, Vol. 53(10) 1547 –1579

© The Author(s) 2021

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DOI: 10.1177/00953997211009885

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Article

Can Government

Intervention Increase

Volunteers and

Donations? Analyzing

the Influence of VISTA

With a Matched Design

Andrew Messamore1, Pamela Paxton1,

and Kristopher Velasco1

Abstract

The United States has long relied on private organizations to provide public

services to poor communities. However, while the federal government’s

support of the civic sector through grants and contracts is well studied,

little research investigates how it subsidizes voluntary organizations through

national service programs, such as Volunteers in Service to America (VISTA).

In this article, we assess whether nonprofits that receive VISTA members

show higher levels of donations and volunteers than matched nonprofits that

did not receive VISTA members in the years following the Great Recession.

We find that nonprofits that participated in the VISTA program had higher

numbers of volunteers 2 years after participation, suggesting that national

service was effective at supporting local organizations and building local civic

infrastructure during an economic recovery. We also follow VISTA receiving

organizations from 2010 to 2016 in a longitudinal design, finding a robust

relationship of VISTA service and volunteering. These findings suggest

VISTA is a resource for organizations and invite further research on the

relationship between national service and anti-poverty work.

1The University of Texas at Austin, USA

Corresponding Author:

Andrew Messamore, The University of Texas at Austin, 305 E. 23rd Street, A1700, Austin,

TX 78712-1086, USA.

Email: andrew.messamore@gmail.com

1009885AAS0010.1177/00953997211009885Administration & SocietyMessamore et al.

research-article2021

1548 Administration & Society 53(10)

Keywords

nonprofits, VISTA, poverty, volunteering, donations

In the United States, the government relies heavily on private, voluntary, non-

profit organizations, in addition to its own agencies, to deliver publicly

financed services such as social and health services (Salamon, 1987).

Nonprofits provide job training, education, child care, social support, housing,

health care, disaster relief, and so on—delivering services to underserved pop-

ulations (Allard & Small, 2013; Berrone et al., 2016; Marquis et al., 2013;

Salamon, 1987; Weisbrod, 1988/1991). This partnership between government

and the nonprofit sector forms the backbone of the human service delivery

system in the United States, generally, and is a vital bulwark against poverty,

specifically (Polson, 2017; Powell & Steinberg, 2006). Anti-poverty nonprof-

its both directly influence the well-being of disadvantaged communities and

provide an important avenue for Americans to engage, volunteer, and donate

to their communities (Brooks, 2005; Day, 2000; Havens et al., 2006; Polson,

2017). From the latter 1990s until 2008, the number of anti-poverty nonprofits

grew by nearly 60% and came to comprise roughly a third of total nonprofits

(Wing et al., 2008). However, following the Great Recession, arguably a

period in which this sector becomes even more vital, donations dropped over

13% (Giving USA, 2018; Meer et al., 2017). This raises an important ques-

tion: How can these nonprofits attract the resources, for example, donations

and volunteers, necessary to conduct their anti-poverty work, especially fol-

lowing recessionary periods? Moreover, what role does government interven-

tion play, given that this sector is the backbone of federal anti-poverty work?

There are multiple ways researchers have evaluated the role of the govern-

ment in supporting the nonprofit sector, such as analyzing tax structures and

incentives (e.g., Reich, 2010), or understanding the role of government con-

tracts and grants (e.g., Andreoni & Payne, 2003; de Wit & Bekkers, 2017;

Jilke et al., 2019). However, there is another, less studied, option: the subsidi-

zation of employment through AmeriCorps VISTA. VISTA, or Volunteers in

Service to America, is designed to help nonprofits build capacity by placing

national service members into nonprofits to improve their functioning.

Modeled after the Peace Corps, Lyndon Johnson created VISTA, an anti-pov-

erty national service program, in 1964 as part of his War on Poverty. Unlike

the subsequent and related national service program AmeriCorps, VISTA

members do not engage in direct service provision. Instead, they are tasked

with building a nonprofit’s capacity by increasing volunteers, raising funds,

and other activities. Furthermore, VISTA is intended to reduce inequality by

prioritizing nonprofits working in high-poverty areas, which often have fewer

Messamore et al. 1549

donations and volunteers (Joassart-Marcelli & Wolch, 2003; Peck, 2008) and

where civic infrastructure may be lacking. In 2017, more than 8,000 members

served through VISTA, primarily working in anti-poverty fields like human

services, education, community improvement, and youth development

(Corporation for National and Community Service [CNCS], 2017).

In this article, we test whether nonprofits that receive a VISTA interven-

tion following the Great Recession, between 2010 and 2014, show higher

levels of donations and volunteers 2 years later. In other words, does this

program help nonprofit organizations following a recessionary period by

helping them attract the necessary resources to conduct their work? We make

use of newly released data on nonprofits from the U.S. Internal Revenue

Service (IRS) and couple it with data on VISTA placements from the CNCS.

Nonprofit selection into VISTA programs is a threat to inference, so we match

organizations that did receive VISTA service members with organizations

that did not receive VISTA service members using coarsened exact matching

(CEM; Iacus et al., 2012). We find that nonprofits that receive VISTA national

service members for the first time show higher levels of both volunteers and

donations 2 years later than matched nonprofits that did not receive VISTA

members. Furthermore, receipt of VISTA is associated with change in the

number of volunteers over the period. We then follow the trajectories of

VISTA receiving nonprofits, assessing donations and volunteers from 2010

to 2016 in a time-series, cross-sectional design. Results from these models

indicate a significant relationship between VISTA placements and contempo-

raneous volunteer capacity in organizations across the 6-year period.

Taken together, these findings suggest VISTA is capable of improving

internal capacity at nonprofit organizations via volunteering, contributing to

our understanding of how civic infrastructure grows in poor communities.

The findings demonstrate how government intervention following a reces-

sionary period can boost donations of time and money—perhaps helping

high-poverty communities better navigate challenging times. This research

also invites future work on the relationship between national service pro-

grams and community organizations, which has received little attention in

previous research on social policy or in nonprofit studies.

Theoretical Background

Importance of Donations of Time and Money for Anti-Poverty

Nonprofits

In addition to directly engaging in service provision, the U.S. government

relies heavily on the nonprofit sector to carry out important services