A168.
Fuller,
R. P., Rice, R. E., & Pyle, A.
(2024). US Nonprofit organizations respond to the Covid-19 crisis: The
influence of communication, crisis experiences, crisis management, and
organizational characteristics. American Behavioral Scientist, 68(9),
1108-1138. https://doi.org/10.1177/00027642231155380
Nonprofit
organizations
(NPOs) are significant contributors culturally, socially, and
economically, but
little research has focused on their management of organizational
crises.
Research has been quickly documenting impacts of the COVID-19 crisis on
different sectors, but again less so for NPOs. This is significant
because
research and recommendations developed in one sector (such as
for-profit
corporations) may not translate to others (such as NPOs). NPOs are
particularly
vulnerable due to their dependence on public financial support and
demands on
their resource during crises. We report on a unique and unfortunate
opportunity
to assess response dynamics from a half year before (2019) and a half
year after
(2020) the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic in the United States. We
draw on
a unique dataset (combining surveys at two points in time, Twitter use
data,
and financial information, from 578 NPOs) to develop a general model
(grounded
in the discourse of renewal theory) of five sources of influence
(communication, organizational resources, crisis experience, crisis
management,
crisis impacts) on three types of strategic responses by nonprofits
(retrenchment, persevering, and innovating) to COVID-19. Higher levels
of
communication, crisis experience, and crisis management all predicted
greater
tendencies for persevering and innovating in response to COVID-19. The
implications for research and practice include extending crisis
communication
research to the nonprofit sector and demonstrating how NPOs can
strengthen
themselves to recover from COVID-19 or the next crisis.
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