The State of Nonprofit Finance Research across Disciplines

• Author: Tammy R. Waymire,Alicia M. Schatteman
• Date: 01 September 2017
• Published date: 01 September 2017
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1002/nml.21269

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N M  L, vol. 28, no. 1, Fall 2017 © 2017 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

Published online in Wiley Online Library (wileyonlinelibrary.com) DOI: 10.1002/nml.21269

Journal sponsored by the Jack, Joseph and Morton Mandel School of Applied Social Sciences, Case Western Reserve University.

Correspondence to: Alicia M. Schatteman, Northern Illinois University, School of Public and Global Aff airs, DeKalb, IL

20115. E-mail: aschatteman@niu.edu.

 e State of Nonprofi t Finance Research

across Disciplines

Alicia M. Schatteman 1 Tammy R. Waymire 2

1 Northern Illinois University , 2 Middle Tennessee State University

The single largest determinant of nonprofit organization success is financial sustainability.

Yet the study of nonprofit finance spans multiple disciplines, creating barriers for new

researchers to the field. To address this challenge, this study addresses three primary ques-

tions across disciplines: How much nonprofit finance research has been conducted, what

is the content of this research, and what is the impact of this research? This systematic

literature search revealed 619 nonprofit finance research articles in twenty-seven journals

published in the disciplines of nonprofit management, public administration, accounting,

and economics and finance between 1970 and 2014. The vast majority (415 of the 619

identified articles) were published in nonprofit management journals (either Nonprofit

and Voluntary Sector Quarterly or Nonprofit Management & Leadership ). Across

disciplines, there is an emphasis on determinants of giving, but we note some variation; for

example, there is more emphasis on government funding in journals outside of nonprofit

management. The impact of this research is significant, with more than 32,630 citations,

or an average of 52.71 times per article. The resulting bibliography may be helpful to

researchers seeking to discern the status of extant nonprofit finance research across multiple

disciplines.

Keywords: finance , financial management , nonprofit , economics , accounting

BECAUSE THE NONPROFIT sector is characterized by significant growth, having

increased from approximately 1.33 million to 1.44 million organizations registered with

the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) from 2002 to 2012 (McKeever and Pettijohn 2014 ),

the importance of financial sustainability in this growing sector cannot be overstated

(Young 2007 ). In its 2015 Annual State of the Nonprofit Sector Survey , the Nonprofit

Finance Fund reported encouraging improvement in fi nancial performance since its fi rst

survey in 2009, when economic challenges in the United States threatened the finan-

cial well-being of the nonprofi t sector. However, despite 76 percent of its respondents

reporting ending 2014 at a break-even or surplus position, more than half still report

an inability to meet the increased demand for services (Nonprofi t Finance Fund 2015 ).

 e authors are grateful for the helpful comments of Woods Bowman (1942–2015) on early versions of this article.

Research Note