IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/bpj/nonpfo/v8y2017i2p165-181n2.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Two-Legged Stool: New Findings from California on Nonprofits and Overhead

Author

Listed:
  • Berlin Nancy
  • Masaoka Jan

    (California Association of Nonprofits, San Francisco, CA 94103, USA)

  • Schumann Mary Jo

    (Caster Family Center for Nonprofit and Philanthropic Research, University of San Diego, San Diego, CA 92110, USA)

Abstract

Nonprofit overhead is a prevalent and controversial topic in the nonprofit and philanthropic sector. Online raters (such as Charity Navigator) point to the overhead rate as a key indicator of nonprofit worthiness. Different government entities use wildly different indirect cost rates when contracting with nonprofits, which translate into billions of dollars of funding being gained or lost. Foundations rarely have explicit guidelines, but most have informal rules of thumb that affect how a nonprofit can use grant funds. Meanwhile, nonprofit executives struggle to make sense of it all as they manage their operations amidst the conflicting requirements of their funding sources. To gain insights into how overhead costs are handled in nonprofits, the California Association of Nonprofits (CalNonprofits) conducted a survey of 451 California nonprofit executives, as well as interviews with elected members of county boards of supervisors and their staff throughout California in the spring of 2016. This paper reports on both of these, which were part of a larger initiative of CalNonprofits called The Nonprofit Overhead Project.

Suggested Citation

  • Berlin Nancy & Masaoka Jan & Schumann Mary Jo, 2017. "Two-Legged Stool: New Findings from California on Nonprofits and Overhead," Nonprofit Policy Forum, De Gruyter, vol. 8(2), pages 165-181, September.
    • Handle: RePEc:bpj:nonpfo:v:8:y:2017:i:2:p:165-181:n:2
    DOI: 10.1515/npf-2017-0003
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://doi.org/10.1515/npf-2017-0003
    Download Restriction: For access to full text, subscription to the journal or payment for the individual article is required.
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1515/npf-2017-0003?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:bpj:nonpfo:v:8:y:2017:i:2:p:165-181:n:2. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Peter Golla (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://www.degruyter.com .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.