Searching For Solutions:
Reactions in the Irish Nonprofit Sector
to Financial Crisis and Altered
Conditions of Support
Gemma Donnelly-Cox
Centre for Nonprofit Management
School of Business
Trinity College Dublin
A Metaphor for the Crisis in Ireland?
Pre-Crisis: A Shifting Landscape
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What was happening anyway?
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Charities Act 2009
Increasing Heterogeneity
Role tensions
National Partnership
‘Value for Money’
Public sector promotion of and support
for philanthropy
What is the crisis? How are nonprofits affected?
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The simple answer
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It is all about money (there isn’t any)
Decline in public sector finance
 Fundraising challenges (2009 CNM
research)
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The complex answer
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Legitimacy (lack of it)
Information (lack of it)
Treatment of dissenters
Organisational Responses
What Are they doing?
What Should they be doing?
What are organisations doing?
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Nonprofit Organisation Responses
Economising
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Harmonising
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New strategies for bringing in resources
Operate in new geographic areas
Monopolising
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Align activities with unserved national priorities
Diversifying
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Doing more with less (but for how long?)
Expanding activities to control an organisational
field
Philanthropic Organisation Responses
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A limited number of targeted responses
What should organisations do?
What Funders want organisations to do
 Collaboration (do funders collaborate?)
 Specialisation
Calls from the sector for
 Strategic Leadership
But…challenges to all of these…
What does NPO theory tell us?
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Start with the distinctiveness of the nonprofit form:
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Values – deeply embedded religious, political, humanitarian, moral, artistic values
– create a more complex means-goal relationship between operational and
ultimate objectives
Politics – multiple stakeholders’ – trustees, staff, volunteers, users / clients, state
agencies, grantees - claims on the organisation make it ultimately political.
Management becomes a complex task of creating and coordinating coalitions
around a common purpose
Multiple revenue sources – contracts, donations, various forms of transfers from
the state, membership, market activities, sponsorship
Price mechanisms are frequently absent in fields where nonprofits operate, making
performance assessment .
The more similar to other organisations they become, the
more likely they can be substituted by or merged with
governmentt or business firms
But as value-based organisations with multiple support
streams under performance uncertainty, management is
challenging at the best of times
Source: Helmut K Anheier, 2009a 2009b
Short-term solutions
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If values are central to the organisation, make all
decisions explitly on values rather than econonic
rationality alone
Align stakeholders around mission-critical, resource
attractive programmes
Cooperate around mission central organisations
Consider merger, franchise models
Diversify earned income options
Run a public information campaign about
organisational plans are and how they will be achieved
Source: Anheier 2009a
Implications for disability organisations?
Implications in Disability Organisations
Some current concerns for disability
organisations:
 Impact of Charities legislation for
disability organisations?
 Impact of service delivery mandate
without secure funding of services?
 Implications for advocacy function?
What is the the Role of Academic Centres?
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Research and Education
‘Secretariat’ support
Provision of a safe space
‘Bringing the sector back in’
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Platform for development of policy
response
A final thought…
Historically in Ireland, industrial
domains without serious academic
attention have fared badly in times
of crisis.
Without adequate information,
analysis, development and support,
will this apply to the Irish nonprofit
sector?