Claim OwnershipThe Nonprofit Science Podcast
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Universities study the exact problems nonprofits face every day. Almost none of that research reaches you.
The Nonprofit Science Podcast brings the best academic research on nonprofits out of the journals and into your work. Every week, host Sheela Mahajan finds rigorous, peer-reviewed studies on the questions nonprofit leaders actually wrestle with, then translates them into plain language and practical steps you can use right away.
If you run, fund, or work inside a nonprofit, this show is built for you. Episodes dig into the challenges and questions you face every day. On the fundraising side, that means what the latest research says about individual giving, donor retention, major gifts, and building a revenue base that lasts. On leadership and management, it means research on motivating teams, board governance, staff retention, and steering an organization through change. And on programs and operations, it means findings on program design, impact measurement, and resource planning that keep your organization running efficiently without cutting corners on the mission.
The premise is simple. There is a mountain of research on what helps nonprofits raise more money, lead more effectively, and grow their impact, and far too little of it reaches the people doing the work. This podcast is the bridge between that research and the real world of running an organization.
If you're ready to make decisions backed by evidence instead of guesswork, follow or subscribe wherever you listen, and you'll never miss an episode.
The Nonprofit Science Podcast brings the best academic research on nonprofits out of the journals and into your work. Every week, host Sheela Mahajan finds rigorous, peer-reviewed studies on the questions nonprofit leaders actually wrestle with, then translates them into plain language and practical steps you can use right away.
If you run, fund, or work inside a nonprofit, this show is built for you. Episodes dig into the challenges and questions you face every day. On the fundraising side, that means what the latest research says about individual giving, donor retention, major gifts, and building a revenue base that lasts. On leadership and management, it means research on motivating teams, board governance, staff retention, and steering an organization through change. And on programs and operations, it means findings on program design, impact measurement, and resource planning that keep your organization running efficiently without cutting corners on the mission.
The premise is simple. There is a mountain of research on what helps nonprofits raise more money, lead more effectively, and grow their impact, and far too little of it reaches the people doing the work. This podcast is the bridge between that research and the real world of running an organization.
If you're ready to make decisions backed by evidence instead of guesswork, follow or subscribe wherever you listen, and you'll never miss an episode.
131 Episodes
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Nearly nine in ten nonprofit workers say they’re passionate about their job. So when almost everyone has it, what is that word actually telling you, and what should a leader watch for instead?
New research followed nonprofit employees across four surveys over two years, starting just before the pandemic, to track something snapshot surveys miss: how passion changes over time. The findings complicate a lot of conventional wisdom.
In this episode we get into how passion changes over time, what separates the passion that sustains people from the passion that burns them out, and why this matters for your mission.
What counts as a volunteer? Research into fifty years of Australian volunteering data shows the answer has been rewritten again and again, and that what gets counted tends to lag well behind what the sector says it values.
Think about the person who spent three hours organizing your storage closet. Or the community member who drove two hours to get discounted instruments for your program. Or the handful of people who share every post you publish. Most volunteer databases don't have a box to track any of them.
In this episode we trace how a definition gets built and what happens in our own organizations when what we say we value and what we actually count drift apart.
Your executive director comes back from a conference convinced the nonprofit should run more like a business. You roll your eyes and think “we’ve been down this road before.” We know the argument. Yes, nonprofits are technically businesses, but our bottom line is impact not profit. The current conversation pits these two standpoints against each other.
But, new research says the business-versus-mission framing is the wrong one. Nonprofits don’t run on two competing values, they run on several at once, from mission to money to professional standards to faith. It turns out, the organizations that thrive aren’t the ones that pick a winner. They’re the ones that integrate.
In this episode we dive into a study of six nonprofits, three that combined their competing values productively and three that didn’t. We discuss the four elements that separated them and what to do with all of this information in your own nonprofit.
Most board packets are full of numbers boards don't act on.
New research looked at a decade of financial data from the largest nonprofits in the country and asked a simple question: which financial signals do boards respond to? It turns out, many of the indicators we build our reporting around, including revenue, expenses, profit margin, and savings margin, show no measurable effect on board action.
There's one measure boards do respond to, but by the time it moves, the financial decline has usually been underway for years. Boards catch the problem late enough that fixing it means cutting programs instead of adjusting course.
In this episode we get into what board capture is, why it happens without anyone acting in bad faith, and what to do with all of it depending on which chair you're sitting in.
Is your organization as ethical on the inside as it is on the outside? Most nonprofit leaders answer yes without hesitating, and they're usually thinking about the mission. But a workplace isn't ethical just because the organization does good in the world. It's built or lost in the small moments like who gets interrupted, who gets the benefit of the doubt and how conflict gets handled.
In this episode, we dig into research that asked 74 nonprofit employees to describe a real moment when ethical values were at stake in their workplace. The patterns across those stories produced a framework built from four relationships.
You'll learn the four pillars of an ethical workplace climate, how to figure out where your own climate is thin, and what to do when you're the one living inside a workplace climate that isn't working.
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