Browsing by Author "Paarlberg, Laurie"

Now showing 1 - 4 of 4
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    The Landscape of Community Philanthropy
    (2020-08) Paarlberg, Laurie; LePere-Schloop, Megan; Horning, Cherilyn
    Community philanthropic organizations, those organizations like United Ways and community foundations, have traditionally played important roles by raising and distribute resources within a specific geographic place, increasingly play important roles in planning for and funding local public service delivery. Over the last two decades, the field of community philanthropy has experienced many shifts. Changing donor expectations, increased competition from other nonprofits and commercial funds, economic restructuring and demographic shifts have all pushed local United Ways and community foundations to rethink their roles and their business models. These changes also affect relationships between organizations. This report summarizes the roles that United Ways and community foundations play in their local communities, their perceptions of the changes going on in the world around them and their perceptions of their relationships with each other.
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    Leading, Following or Complementing in Economic Crisis: A Conceptual Model Illustrating Nonprofit Relationships with Public Schools
    (MDPI, 2014) Paarlberg, Laurie; Nesbit, Rebecca; Clerkin, Richard; Christensen, Robert; Lilly Family School of Philanthropy
    Public and nonprofit organizations, entwined in the delivery of public goods and services, are in the midst of challenging economic times. In these circumstances, sound collaborative leadership may help bridge budget and program service delivery shortfalls. In this paper, we examine the administrative dynamics of mutual reliance between two prominent public and nonprofit organizations: public schools and parent-teacher groups (PTGs). We conclude that the partnership is changing as a result of external, economic forces. In essence, we are seeing a threat-rigidity response. The economic crisis may be responsible for causing PTGs to narrow their range of activities away from broader strategic issues that can be addressed through their confrontation activities and advocacy mission towards a narrower focus on classroom activities that protect core school operations, namely instruction.
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    The Path to Community Leadership
    (2021-01) Paarlberg, Laurie; Walk, Marlene; Horning, Cherilyn
    Since 2005, community foundations across the country have been encouraged to respond to changes in their local communities by taking on new roles—roles that encourage community foundations to be “leaders” on community issues. This project explores the process by which six community foundations moved down the path to community leadership. The community foundations we studied are in three states and range in size from less than $20 million in assets to $400 million in assets. While these organizations are not the largest community foundations in the country, they are well established. Through interviews with organizational leaders, we learned that each path to community leadership is unique and builds upon local resources and capacities.
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    Social Enterprises' Resource Acquisition: Bringing Signaling Theory into Focus
    (2023-09) Ji, Chen; Konrath, Sara; Andersson, Fredrik O.; Paarlberg, Laurie; Badertscher, Katherine
    Social entrepreneurship has been recognized by both scholars and practitioners as a powerful mechanism to address a variety of complex social issues, such as addressing poverty, reducing unemployment, and empowering women. With the rapid rise of social enterprise in the last two decades, most social enterprises still face many challenges in operation and development due to environmental uncertainty, the liability of newness, and tradeoffs in balancing financial and social objectives. Besides, social enterprises are expected to become financially self-sustainable so as to reduce their reliance on government funding. These financial and growth expectations require social enterprises to actively seek and acquire resources, especially financial resources, through diverse channels. The dissertation uses insights from entrepreneurship studies to explore the dynamics of social enterprises’ resource acquisition by examining an overarching question: what factors are associated with early-state social enterprises’ resource acquisition? Using a social entrepreneurship dataset collecting survey data from around the world, the first essay proposes two contrasting theories and tests whether the hybrid identity (e.g. with both social and financial motives) of social enterprise boosts or inhibits resource acquisition outcomes. The second essay follows up by focusing on nonprofit start-ups’ resource acquisition, and it further examines how founders’ experience, founding teams’ characteristics, and organizations’ innovativeness are associated with their acquisition of philanthropic grants. The third essay uses signaling theory to examine how human capital and social media signal a social enterprise’s venture quality, and how they could be associated with the social enterprise’s philanthropic donation and debt funding acquisition. In sum, this dissertation brings signaling theory into focus and specifically examines what signals through what signaling channels would be associated with social enterprises’ resource acquisition. It also advances knowledge in social enterprises’ sustainable development and cross-sector collaborations as well as offers actionable suggestions for practitioners in improving the strategy in communicating with external stakeholders.