The Global Emergence of NGO & Nonprofit Voluntary Regulation

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In this project the research team will examine how well an important institutional innovation -- voluntary regulation - addresses the information and reputation challenges faced by nonprofit organizations. Nonprofits are supposed to be trusted agents that serve the public interest. As a result, governments, international organizations, foundations, and citizens have channeled large amounts of funding to the nonprofit sector. Unfortunately, this funding, coupled with low entry barriers, has attracted some "bad apples" as well as legitimate organizations and the resulting public scandals have imposed negative reputational spillovers on all nonprofits. Voluntary regulation is one proposed mechanism to forestall this sort of problem. This project will provide the first comprehensive and systematic data on nonprofit voluntary regulation program emergence and structure across two domains, in developing and transition nations and also within several nonprofit sectors in the United States. The data will be used to investigate which countries' and sectors' nonprofit organizations establish and join voluntary regulatory programs, as well as factors that account for variations in the scope and stringency of obligations such programs impose on their participants. In terms of broader impacts, the systematic evidence and findings about the emergence, structure, and effectiveness of voluntary regulation programs that will be developed in this project can be used to build better public policy as well as to improve organizational governance.