Thesis (M.S.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Architecture; and, (M.C.P.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Urban Studies and Planning, 1980. / MICROFICHE COPY AVAILABLE IN ARCHIVES AND ROTCH. / Includes bibliographical references. / by Frederick Luther Merrill, Jr. / M.S.

This work explores the effect of social media on expectations held by nonprofit publics as they seek to build and maintain relationships with nonprofit organizations (NPOs) in the context of expectancy violation theory, social capital, and the situational theory of publics. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with 14 individuals who follow a nonprofit on social media to understand the public perspective on nonprofit organizations' relationship building and maintaining behaviors on social media. The study found that nonprofit publics do have specific expectations for how NPOs should build and maintain relationships on social media (i.e., high-quality posts, level of interaction being limited to likes on social media and interpersonal interactions, high visibility to prove legitimacy, high transparency, and posts that are positive in tone). The study also found that nonprofit publics immediately end relationships when these expectations are violated, but tolerate relationships if these expectations are met. Finally, nonprofit publics expect to build relationships by interacting in a face-to-face or interpersonal setting, but also expect to maintain these relationships on social media, shedding light onto the importance of combining the use of interpersonal and computer-mediated communication.

Nonprofit leaders face challenges retaining volunteers to support their organizations' human resources. The shortage of volunteers threatens nonprofit sustainability with increasing personnel cost for maintaining quality services. Grounded by Burns's transformational leadership theory, the purpose of this multiple case study was to explore strategies nonprofit leaders from southeastern Michigan used to improve volunteer retention. Data were collected through face-to-face semistructured interviews with 3 nonprofit leaders and a review of organizational documents such as volunteer implementation plans, strategic plans, and volunteer committee notes. Data were analyzed using a methodological triangulation process of sorting comments, which involved a chronological review of the interview transcripts and a descriptive coding for emerging themes. Three distinct themes emerged from the data analysis: collaborative relationships improved volunteer retention, team motivations improved volunteer retention, and strategic communication improved volunteer retention. The findings from this study may contribute to positive social change by providing nonprofit leaders with a better understanding of the need to improve volunteer retention and leadership strategies as methods to continue building viable communities for those in need. Furthermore, the implications for positive social change could include the improvement of other nonprofit organizations and the well-being of the volunteers in the organization.

Social and economic challenges in one part of the world influence budgets, security, health, and well being of populations globally as was the case with the 2014 Ebola outbreak. Deficits in healthcare, education, governance, and the economy in African nations result in financial and social contributions from the diaspora residing in the United States. Many African-born immigrants to Florida came with useful knowledge and experience from their home nations that could be a valuable resource in carrying out effective development initiatives. However, accessing that knowledge is challenging. The purpose of this research was to explore the inclusion of members of the African diaspora community in Florida nonprofit development initiatives. The transnational theory of migration underpinned the following research question: What are barriers to, and opportunities for, including members of the African diaspora in Florida-based NPOs that carry out development programs in Africa? Semistructured interviews were conducted with Florida nonprofit leaders (N= 21) who have development projects in Africa. Manual and computer assisted methods using NVivo 11 were used to develop codes and themes for data analysis. Identified barriers to including African diaspora in NPOs included lack of established networks and organizational awareness as well as limited service areas, service locations, funding, and leadership roles. All respondents expressed interest in engaging with diaspora members and other nonprofit leaders via expat networks. Successful engagement with the African diaspora community could promote positive social change by improving program delivery, communication, and programmatic outcomes for a mutual impact in both African and Florida-based communities.

As a tool for rapid communication, social media (SM) have the potential to revolutionize the way in which nonprofit organizations and stakeholders communicate. Most nonprofit organizations in the United States use some form of SM to engage with stakeholders, however, there is an underutilization of SM used for board decision-making purposes. The purpose of this phenomenological study was to examine SM and its potential use for board decision-making in nonprofit organizations. The conceptual framework incorporated stakeholder theory, organizational ambidexterity, and an organizational media-user typology. The research question related to the experience of nonprofit board member use of SM for organizational decision-making and stakeholder engagement. Vagle's postintentional phenomenological research approach guided the study. Data collection involved interviewing a purposeful sample of 25 board members and leaders from 501(c)(3) nonpro�t organizations in Texas. Data analysis included combining coded data into categories and themes to determine underlying commonalities related to SM use and organizational decision-making. The primary finding was that nonprofit boards rarely use data generated from SM for decision-making purposes. Other findings from the study may improve board decision-making theory and practice and reveal how nonprofit organizations may leverage unfiltered, real-time SM feedback to benefit strategic organizational decision-making. The potential contribution to social change is to deepen the understanding of the effects of SM on nonprofit board decision-making so that boards may be more responsive to a broader range of stakeholder social interests.

Nonprofit organizational leaders (NOLs) face laws that require increased transparency and more oversight on funding allocations. Grounded by a conceptual framework of Hersey and Blanchard's situational leadership theory, Burns's transformational leadership theory, and Greenleaf's servant leadership theory, this multiple case study was developed to explore the leadership strategies of NOLs who implemented requirements of New York's Non-Profit Revitalization Act to increase funding allocations to support fulfillment of the organizational mission and achieve sustainability. The study population comprised NOLs from the Northeastern United States, who implemented requirements of the Non-Profit Revitalization Act requirements. Face-to-face semistructured interviews with 5 NOLs, a review of organizational documents, and member-checking were used to collect data for the study. Data were analyzed using a framework method to determine themes, visualization to code the data, and methodological triangulation to validate themes. Three main themes emerged from the data analysis: strategies for building and maintaining relationships increased funding allocations and sustainability, trust and accountability strategies improved organizational mission achievement and funding allocations, and strategies for higher standards and expectations improved sustainability. The findings from this study may contribute to positive social change by providing insight to NOLs about the need to create leadership strategies to build relationships and trust with stakeholders while operating a more responsible nonprofit organization, thereby creating a better connection between organizational systems and increasing service effectiveness.

Procuramos, neste estudo, investigar como se expressam os sentidos e as relações de comunicação e trabalho em organizações sem fins lucrativos que elencaram a comunicação como principal ferramenta de atuação em defesa de uma causa social. Para isso, selecionamos três organizações sociais nomeadas na pesquisa \"ONGs de comunicação\", localizadas no município de São Paulo e ativas durante o período de realização da pesquisa - 2016-2018, nas quais aprofundamo-nos em seus enunciados institucionais, como também na experiência dos trabalhadores a partir de relatos próprios. Sob a abordagem teórico-metodológica do binômio comunicação e trabalho, buscamos identificar em que medida as práticas discursivas e as relações de trabalho instituídas são atravessadas pelos sentidos hegemônicos vinculados à ideologia do \"terceiro setor\". Nas fases de observação, descrição e interpretação da etapa empírica, visitamos as sedes das organizações, realizamos coleta de dados nos websites, relatórios de atividades, vídeos e reportagens visando analisar os enunciados oficiais; e, para a análise dos discursos dos trabalhadores, priorizamos as entrevistas em profundidade. Dentre os resultados, atestamos a multiplicidade de discursos subsumidos, em maior ou menor grau, à lógica neoliberal de responsabilização do indivíduo. As retóricas do empreendedorismo, da criatividade, da autonomia e do protagonismo se evidenciam como elementos-chave ao serem representativas dos interesses dominantes, mas se revelarem mascaradas em enunciados supostamente emancipatórios. / In this study our aim is to investigate, in nonprofit organizations that elect the communication as their main tool in defense of a social cause, how the meanings and relations of communication and labor express themselves. For that, we selected three organizations, called in this research \"Communication NGOs\", situated in the city of São Paulo and active during the period of study - 2016-2018, in which we deepened in their institutional enunciations and dove into the workers\' experiences from their own point of views. Under the theoretical approach of the \'communication and labor\' binomial, we sought to identify in what measure the instituted discursive practices and working relations are crossed by the hegemonic logics linked to the \"third sector\" ideology. In the phases of observation, description and interpretation of the empirical search, we visited the organizations\' headquarters and collected data from their websites, activity reports, videos and news, aiming to analyze their official statements. For the discourse analysis of the workers, we prioritized in-depth interviews. Among the results, we attest to the multiplicity of discourses linked to the neoliberal logic that places responsibility on individuals. The rhetoric of entrepreneurship, creativity, autonomy and protagonism are evidenced as key elements by being representative of dominant interests but masked in supposedly emancipatory statements.

Thesis (Ph.D.)--Indiana University, Dept. of Folklore and Ethnomusicology, 2006. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 160-168).

Neoliberal restructuring of the state has had destructive effects on families and children living in urban poverty, compelling them to adapt to the loss of social welfare and demolition of the public sphere by submitting to new forms of surveillance and disciplining of their individual behavior. A carceral-welfare state apparatus now confines and controls the bodies of expendable laborers in urban spaces, containing their threat to the neoliberal socioeconomic order through criminalization and workfare assistance, resulting in a new symbiosis of prison and ghetto. The resulting structures of punishment, police surveillance, and criminalization primarily surround African Americans living in high poverty and low income urban neighborhoods. Criminalization intrudes into the everyday lives of African American youth as well, pushing them out of school and into the criminal (in)justice system at an early age. This process may appear natural and inevitable to those experiencing it, but it is really the result of political, economic, historical, and social forces, including institutional discourses, public policies, and investment in law enforcement at the expense of community development and social welfare. This dissertation presents the results of five years of engaged ethnographic collaborative research with African American youth while I was volunteer director of Moses House, a community youth arts organization based in Sulphur Springs, a high poverty neighborhood of Tampa, Florida. Grassroots nonprofit organizations such as Moses House are often created and guided by dedicated community leaders, but social marginalization can prevent them from securing resources and labor necessary to sustain an organization. Engaged anthropologists can use forms of community engagement to leverage university resources, social networks, and student service-learning to assist grassroots organizations, in the process learning firsthand about the political, economic, and social forces that produce and reproduce the injustices against which such organizations and their communities struggle. As a doctoral student in an applied anthropology graduate program, I was able to assist the organization in revitalizing itself and applying for IRS nonprofit status, as well as to advocate for the very existence and viability of the organization itself in opposition to a variety of antagonistic forces. Through the process of doing social activism on behalf of the organization, I was able to establish solidarity with people in the community who were socially networked through Moses House. As an outsider to a community rightfully suspicious of outsiders, especially ones who are white, gaining the confidence of residents was a prerequisite for doing engaged research that intended to explore how African American youth living in a high poverty neighborhood experience marginalization and criminalization, and how they can communicate their experiences through their own production of creative media. In a variety of mentoring, advocating, and parenting roles, I was able to build empathic, trustful relationships and observe how various policies, procedures, practices, and institutional discourses are criminalizing African American youth in nearly all aspects of their everyday lives. Accompanying Moses House youth through various educational, recreational, and governmental agencies and institutions, I learned with them not only how they were being seriously harmed by the policies of the carceral-assistential state, but also how they were able at times to resist or avoid the system to their own advantage. Using critical dialogue while in conversation with Moses House youth, I nurtured an ongoing analysis of their everyday reality in order to reveal what is criminalizing them and constraining their agency, in the process collaboratively constructing transformative activities, practices, and educational programs that were based on the youths' own aspirations toward social justice, personal success, and community betterment. In establishing social justice based approaches to improving community well-being, grassroots organizations such as Moses House can be understood as spaces that foster and support critical dialogue, social activism, and cultural production and as sites of collective struggle against racism, poverty, and criminalization. University-community engagement can shed light on these social problems, provide research and analysis that is not only rigorous but meaningful and relevant to the community, offer technical assistance for nonprofit leadership, management, and fund development, as well as assist in designing and implementing community-based alternatives and solutions to community-identified problems.

Social movement literature suggests that organizations espousing radical ideologies must develop bureaucratic structures in order to survive, changes which inevitably create an organization more concerned with self-maintenance than social transformation. In the Battered Women's Movement, some radical feminists argue that trends toward increased formalization and centralization in feminist collectives provide evidence that the movement has been coopted, and thus radical organizations seeking to challenge inequitable social structures have been transformed into more traditional social service agencies. This thesis examines one shelter for battered women which, due mainly to severe internal conflict, found it necessary to modify its structure from a collective to a hierarchy led by a coordinator. This change led neither to decreased radical ideology nor to an increased focus on organizational maintenance at the expense of socially transformative goals. However, due to a lack of formalized procedures, this outcome largely reflects the personal inclinations of the coordinator.