Lecy, Van Lyke and Yoon: “What Do We Know About Nonprofit Entrepreneurs?: Results from a Large-Scale Survey”

Jesse Lecy, David Van Slyke, and Nara Yoon (all affiliated with Syracuse University) recently posted to SSRN an article detailing the results of a survey of the motivations behind the creation of new tax-exempt organizations.  The SSRN abstract reads as follows:

While the academic fields of entrepreneurship and social entrepreneurship have grown rapidly, nonprofit entrepreneurship has remained a minor field of inquiry, even though 50,000 nonprofits are started each year. Using a survey of 7,000 nonprofit founders, we provide baseline data on key dimensions of nonprofit entrepreneurship. We find that typical nonprofit entrepreneurs are distinct from for-profit entrepreneurs in several ways; they have bigger founding teams, are wealthier, older, more educated, and are less driven by self-employment. These differences inform a research agenda for the field. This study represents the first large-scale empirical analysis of entrepreneurship in the nonprofit sector.

Suggested Citation: Lecy, Jesse D. and Van Slyke, David M. and Yoon, Nara, What Do We Know About Nonprofit Entrepreneurs?: Results from a Large-Scale Survey (December 01, 2016). Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=2890231

From a legal perspective, I found two items immediately interesting: (1) the high number of new organizations that were “spin-offs” of projects that were housed elsewhere or had been operating informally, and (2) the barriers to entry created by paperwork (and knowledge thereof).    It reinforces my personal concerns about the  “informal” charitable economy, which simultaneously accomplishes many great things off-the-grid, and yet raises issues for me of inefficiency and diversion in limited charitable resources.   An interesting read!

EWW