Browsing by Author "Kuenzi, Kerry"

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    COVID-19 as a nonprofit workplace crisis: Seeking insights from the nonprofit workers’ perspective
    (Wiley, 2021-03-17) Kuenzi, Kerry; Stewart, Amanda J.; Walk, Marlene; School of Public and Environmental Affairs
    Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, nonprofit organizations face increased demands for services alongside decreased revenues and must make tough choices on how to weather these stressors. Alongside these organizational changes, COVID-19 impacts nonprofit workers and could be a career shock for these individuals, potentially altering how they think of their work and career intentions, even jeopardizing their commitment to the sector. Therefore, this paper outlines a research agenda to understand how the pandemic impacts nonprofit workers and their commitment to working in the sector. Several areas for future research are identified including human resource policy, leadership development, generational differences, gender effects, nonprofit graduate education, and mission-specific work effects.
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    How Are Nonprofit Workers Doing? Exploring the Personal and Professional Impact of COVID-19
    (University of Alberta LIbrary, 2022) Kuenzi, Kerry; Walk, Marlene; Stewart, Amanda; School of Public and Environmental Affairs
    COVID-19 has presented unprecedented challenges to the nonprofit sector, and while evidence is accruing about its impact on nonprofit finances and operations, less is known about how nonprofit workers are faring. With so many organizations in the increasingly professionalized nonprofit sector reliant upon their paid staff, this study assesses how COVID-19 has changed the way nonprofit workers think about their current and future work. We use a survey of nonprofit workers who have a nonprofit graduate degree to describe pandemic-related work changes and to explore the impact of these changes on their commitment to the sector. Our findings reveal that nonprofit workers are nuanced in how they approach their work and commitment to the sector. We distill our findings considerate of how future research should endeavor to unpack the degree to which workers’ personal and professional circumstances affect how they think about their work in the sector.
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    Pause But Not Panic: Exploring COVID-19 as a Critical Incident for Nonprofit Workers
    (Sage, 2023-01-16) Kuenzi, Kerry; Stewart, Amanda J.; Walk, Marlene; O'Neill School of Public and Environmental Affairs
    Critical incidents often have significant impacts on workers, sometimes causing disruptions to career pathways and a re-evaluation of past career decisions. This article seeks to explore the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on nonprofit workers and their commitment to the sector using a critical incidents lens. In-depth interviews with nonprofit workers provided insights on the pandemic’s impact on workers’ personal and professional lives and how they made sense of these. Changes to work including flexibility and work-from-home options were often viewed positively, yet workers expressed a loss of connection with their colleagues, mental health and well-being challenges, as well as challenges to adapt to new ways of working. In making sense of these changes, commitment to the sector was mostly sustained; however, respondents also noted a shift in priorities and expressed a desire for better balance between their personal and professional lives.
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    The Role of Financial Burden in Nonprofit Sector Commitment
    (2020-12-08) Kuenzi, Kerry; Walk, Marlene; Stewart, Amanda
    Evidence about millennial work motivations and the increasing importance of compensation questions the durability of the donative labor hypothesis in explaining nonprofit sector commitment. Nonprofit graduate education offers an employment pipeline into the sector, but what if the importance of compensation is partly driven by the financial burden accrued from education? Could it be that financial burden contributes to choices about work and commitment to the nonprofit sector? Using longitudinal data of nonprofit education alumni, we inquire about their sector commitment in light of the financial burden from their degree. Findings of this exploratory study offer a starting point for future research into how nonprofit education alumni view career opportunities in the nonprofit sector.
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    Should I stay or should I go? Investigating nonprofit sector commitment among nonprofit education alumni
    (Journal of Nonprofit Education and Leadership, 2019) Walk, Marlene; Stewart, Amanda; Kuenzi, Kerry
    Graduates of nonprofit education programs have seemingly opted in to the nonprofit sector by means of their field of education, but prior research on worker sorting depicts a complex rationale for sector selection. This research study uses a sample of 153 alumni of nonprofit education programs to sort among factors influencing sector commitment. Given that these alumni have seemingly indicated a sector commitment by way of their education field, this analysis investigates factors that may disrupt sector commitment, and finds that individuals who view their work as a calling or have a nonprofit identity were associated with a commitment to working in the nonprofit sector. This study adds to the growing body of sectoral differences literature and helps inform human resource management and leadership about employee characteristics that should be prioritized for development and promotion.
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    States of COVID-19: Synthesis of State-level Nonprofit Reports on the Impact of the COVID-19 Pandemic
    (2021-05-05) Stewart, Amanda J.; Kuenzi, Kerry; Walk, Marlene; Klippel, Abby