Browsing by Author "Pollak, Thomas"

Now showing 1 - 5 of 5
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    Functional Expense Reporting for Nonprofits: The Accounting Profession's Next Scandal
    (2006-08) Wing, Kennard; Gordon, Teresa; Hager, Mark; Pollak, Thomas; Rooney, Patrick
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    How fundraising is carried out in US nonprofit organisations
    (8/21/2002) Hager, Mark; Rooney, Patrick; Pollak, Thomas
    A substantial number of nonprofit organisations in the USA report inflows of charitable contributions or grants without expenditures allocated to fundraising costs. This observation raises questions about how fundraising is carried out. Based on a survey of US charities, the paper observes that nonprofit organisations use a range of internal capacities and external relationships to conduct their fundraising. The use of staff members dedicated to fundraising is common, but much fundraising is still carried out by executive directors, volunteers and board members. Also, a substantial number of organisations engage external entities, including federated campaigns, support organisations and professional fundraising firms to generate contributions.
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    Response Rates for Mail Surveys of Nonprofit Organizations: A Review and Empirical Test
    (2003-06) Hager, Mark; Wilson, Sarah; Pollak, Thomas; Rooney, Patrick
    The failure of a substantial portion of mail survey recipients to respond to invitations to participate in research projects raises issues of nonresponse error. Because this error is difficult to quantify, survey researchers seek high rates of return to signal legitimacy and reduce questions regarding nonresponse bias. Research on survey method indicates that the design of the survey research process has a measurable influence on the rate of survey returns. This article focuses on three aspects of research design that are expected to influence mail survey returns in surveys of nonprofit organizations: questionnaire complexity, use of Federal Express versus standard mail, and the use of monetary incentives. Using an experimental design, the research concludes that questionnaire complexity and the use of monetary incentives generate no difference in returns, whereas the use of Federal Express to deliver the survey to nonprofit executives has a measurable positive effect.
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    Understanding Management and General Expenses in Nonprofits
    (2001) Pollak, Thomas; Rooney, Patrick; Hager, Mark
    There has been growing coverage by the press and the accounting profession about how nonprofits report their management and general costs. There has also been growing attention by some donors, perhaps made most famously by claims by some donors that nothing should go to administration. While this area of nonprofit management has caught the attention of the public, it has largely escaped the research lens of scholars. This paper is a first step to understanding and explaining what management and general costs look like in the nonprofit sector and whether or not various institutional characteristics such as mission, size, age, sources of revenues, and/or accounting practices can help explain some of the variation in management and general expenses. We find that these institutional characteristics do matter quite a bit in explaining differences in management and general costs in nonprofits.
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    Variations in Overhead and Fundraising Efficiency Measures
    (2002) Hager, Mark; Pollak, Thomas; Rooney, Patrick
    The desire of individual donors and institutional funders to know how their money is spent, along with the increasing availability of financial information on nonprofit organizations has increased the use and abuse of financial measures of nonprofit efficiency. We focus on two measures: the proportion of budget spent on non-program expenses and the ratio of fundraising expenses to contributions. We hypothesize variations in these measures by organizational size, age, and subsector, and we test these hypothesis with data reported by the organizations to the Internal Revenue Service. We conclude that the ratio measures vary by organizational characteristics, a factor both widely cited by watchdog groups and overlooked by agents that attempt to apply the measures to nonprofit organizations without regard for systematic variation. We also conclude that other basic factors besides size, age, and subsector are important in explaining the relative efficiencies of nonprofit organizations.