Research Pipelines
My research examines how public and nonprofit organizations adapt to rapidly changing institutional and financial environments. Across contexts of fiscal stress, government retrenchment, commercialization, and shrinking civil society space, I investigate the consequences of these pressures for organizational performance, accountability, and equity of access. This agenda is motivated by a central concern: as the boundaries between the public, nonprofit, and market sectors blur, how can organizations preserve their social missions while meeting rising demands with constrained resources?
Methodologically, I draw on quasi-experimental designs, large-scale panel data analysis, mixed methods, and survey experiments. My work offers insights for policymakers and nonprofit leaders navigating the future of public service delivery, while contributing to theory in publicness, nonprofit accountability, and cross-sector relationships.
Pipeline 1
Nonprofit Commercialization and Performance Outcomes
Dissertation: Nonprofit Commercialization – Three Essays on Its Implications for Social Mission, Access Disparities, and Public Perceptions
1. How Does Commercialization Impact Nonprofit Performance and Service Accessibility? Differentiating Mission-Related and Unrelated Earned Income
Selected for 2025 NML-ESS Nonprofit Early Scholars Fellowship, preparing for submission, single author
- Abstract: While nonprofit commercialization has been widely discussed in recent decades, a large chunk of the research focuses on its causes or financial implications. The paper advances the largely normative existing scholarly work on the impact of commercialization on nonprofits’ social functions by empirically analyzing a large panel data set of Arts and Culture organizations from 2010 to 2021. Drawing from the contract failure theory, the resource dependence theory, and the voluntary failure theory, the study tests respectively how mission-related and mission-unrelated business income impact the performance and service accessibility of nonprofit organizations using the multi-level panel data regression method, while taking into account the heterogeneity of sub-fields of arts and culture organizations. The results show that both mission-related and unrelated business income positively impact the performance of nonprofits while having different effects on service accessibility. Mission-unrelated business income has a significant positive effect on nonprofit service accessibility, but mission-related business income has an insignificant negative effect on service accessibility to marginalized communities.
2. Nonprofit Commercialization in England’s Health and Social Care: Impact on Quality Rating, Access Disparity and the Mediating Effect of Deprivation
Selected for 2025 ARNOVA Doctoral Seminar, writing, single author
- Abstract: This paper studies nonprofit social care in England to examine how the funding structure, especially earned income (mission-related, mission-unrelated) impacts the quality rating performance of nonprofit care providers. It further examines whether and how the nonprofit commercialization’s impact on performance is mediated by the multiple deprivation levels of the community the care providers serve. It analyzes a panel data set of over 1,700 nonprofit providers from 2015-2023, combining the Care Quality Commission’s quality rating, the Charity Commission’s financial return, and the Deprivation Index data using the Bayesian hierarchical panel analysis. The study advances extant scholarship on revenue diversification and earned-income strategies in three folds. 1) It adds the dimension of the socioeconomic status or the deprivation level of the communities that nonprofits serve to understand how well nonprofits perform. 2) It extends the investigation of the implications of nonprofit commercialization from other income streams (crowd-in or crowd-out) and to the quality rating of their social services. 3) It employs a multi-dimensional conceptualization of earned-income strategies by differentiating mission-related and mission-unrelated earned income and testing the multidimensionality by empirically analyzing their respective impacts on nonprofit performance.
3. How Do Individual Donors Respond to Nonprofit Commercialization and Related Context and Framing: A Conjoint Survey Experiment Study
Writing, single author
Abstract: This study investigates how individuals respond to different nonprofit commercial revenue strategies—specifically, how charging fees for mission-related services and engaging in mission-unrelated side activities affect donors’ willingness to donate. Using a conjoint survey experiment of 1200 representative individuals based in the U.S., we examine the causal effects of different forms of commercial revenue on donation across various nonprofit work areas, and how different ways to frame the nonprofits’ financial situations and intended use moderate the relationship between commercialization and donors’ willingness to give. The conjoint experiment enables testing the causal effects of varied types of commercial revenue on fundraising, mimicking the complexity of real-world trade-offs. The marginal effects of different forms and contexts of nonprofit commercialization have significant theoretical and practical implications for scholars and nonprofit managers.
Experiment Pre-registration on OSF
Pipeline 2
Government Retrenchment and Cross-Sector Dynamics
1. Do Social Enterprises Fulfill their Social Mission? Comparing Quality across Ownership Models in Social Care
Forthcoming, Public Performance & Management Review, co-first author, with Janelle Kerlin and Kelly Hall
- Abstract: This paper tackles the question of what happens to performance when public services are transitioned to social enterprises that combine a public social value focus with private commercial revenue generation. We focus on the health and social care sector in England, which has seen the transition or ‘spin-out’ of some government-run services into social enterprises with the goal of combining high quality services with a business focus that would allow them to be more efficient, flexible, and innovative. Drawing on English Care Quality Commission (CQC) data, we use ordered logit multivariate regression methods to compare the quality ratings of adult care providers across government and social enterprise Community Interest Companies (CICs) while differentiating spin-out and non-spin-out CICs. Our study shows that services that were spun out into social enterprise CICs did better overall across all CQC quality ratings than those that were government-run; however, they did not perform as well as independently established CICs. We draw on and contribute to publicness theory as a framework to understand the divergent performance across these organizational models and in turn, provide important information for policymakers deciding where to direct limited public funds for health and social care.
2. Government versus Social Enterprise: Comparing the Quality of Government-Run and Social Enterprise Spin-Out Organizations in English Health and Social Care
Revise & Resubmit, Journal of Social Policy, co-author with Janelle Kerlin and Kelly Hall
- Abstract: This paper tackles the question of what happens to performance when public services are transitioned to social enterprises that combine a public social value focus with private commercial revenue generation. We focus on the health and social care sector in England, which has seen the transition or ‘spin-out’ of some government-run services into social enterprises with the goal of combining high quality services with a business focus that would allow them to be more efficient, flexible, and innovative. Drawing on English Care Quality Commission (CQC) data, we use ordered logit multivariate regression methods to compare the quality ratings of adult care providers across government and social enterprise Community Interest Companies (CICs) while differentiating spin-out and non-spin-out CICs. Our study shows that services that were spun out into social enterprise CICs did better overall across all CQC quality ratings than those that were government-run; however, they did not perform as well as independently established CICs. We draw on and contribute to publicness theory as a framework to understand the divergent performance across these organizational models and in turn, provide important information for policymakers deciding where to direct limited public funds for health and social care.
3. Joint Private Provision of Social Good: A Mixed-Method Study of Nonprofit-Business Collaboration
Preparing for Submission, single author
- Abstract: This study investigates the motivations behind cross-sector collaboration between the nonprofit and business sectors to provide social good jointly. We chose the empirical setting of Chinese charitable trusts, which emerged as a novel nonprofit avenue following the enactment of China’s first Charity Law in 2016. The law designated charities and for-profit trust companies as eligible trustees, creating the potential for collaboration. Drawing resource dependency, transaction cost, and institutional theories, we employed a mixed-method design to analyze both quantitative data from 1,227 charitable trust filing documents and qualitative data from 31 semi-structured interviews conducted with key stakeholders of charitable trust likelihood of forming formal collaborations increases with growing trust asset size, term, and a positive temporal trend. The thematic analysis of the qualitative data provides richer explanations for the motivations behind cross-sector collaboration between nonprofits and for-profit trust companies. While the findings deepen our understanding of the regression results, new themes emerged, such as cases of cost-ineffective collaboration due to innovation and policy advocacy considerations within the evolving institutional environment. These findings contribute to the literature on cross-sector collaboration, offering insights into the specific factors that drive joint private provision of public goods in a non-Western context.
Pipeline 3
Nonprofit Finance, Accountability, and Sustainability
1. How Does Reduced Reporting Burden in 990-EZ Impact Nonprofits’ Financial Health?
Data Analysis, co-author with Andrew Heiss
- Abstract: Given their public-oriented missions, nonprofit organizations exchange a degree of privacy for tax exemption. Nonprofits must file IRS Form 990 annually, disclosing detailed information about revenue, expenditures, executive compensation, and other information about organizational operations. These disclosures enhance public trust of the nonprofit sector and provide an accountability for potential donors. To reduce administrative burden, the IRS offers a simplified Form 990-EZ with minimal reporting requirements for nonprofits with less than $500,000 in assets and less than $200,000 in revenue. The much lightened reporting burden can save staffing or external consulting costs for nonprofits. This can be significant for the financial situations and sustainability of nonprofits which are mission-oriented and mostly operated with thin margins.In this paper we use the IRS Statistics of Income (SOI) 990 and 990-EZ data of the 501(c)(3) population from 2012-2023 to explore the causal effect of reduced reporting requirements on nonprofit survival and nonprofit financial health and. We employ a double regression discontinuity design based on IRS asset and revenue cutoffs and examine differences in outcomes for nonprofits near each cutoff, which provides us with plausible causal explanations.Our findings informs about the effectiveness of the policy of trading off accountability for reduced administrative burdens for nonprofits. The study has important implications for theories of nonprofit accountability and public disclosure, as well as practices like trust-based grant making and participatory philanthropy for smaller nonprofits.
2. Why Do Nonprofits Invest? Exploring Financial and Political Drivers in Chinese Foundations
Preparing for Submission, co-author with Jiahuan Lu, and Qiang Dong
- Abstract: Investment income offers nonprofits a flexible and sustainable revenue source, yet it remains underexamined, particularly outside Western contexts. This research note addresses that gap by analyzing panel data from Chinese foundations (2018–2022) to explore how financial and institutional factors shape investment participation and returns. We find that investment engagement is limited, and among participants, income levels are modest. Drawing on resource dependence and institutional theories, the analysis shows that investment behavior is influenced by internal factors such as financial leverage and flexibility, as well as external institutional conditions, including political connections. These findings contribute to a deeper understanding of nonprofit financial strategy and highlight the roles of both organizational capacity and institutional context in shaping investment practices, especially in state-regulated settings like China
3. Does Commercialization Improve Nonprofits’ Financial Health? A Quasi-Experimental Design
Writing, co-author with Laiyang Ke
- Abstract: In response to declining donations and government support, nonprofit organizations increasingly turn to commercialization. However, little empirical research tests whether commercialization truly enhances nonprofits’ financial health. Drawing on resource dependence theory, we argue that commercialization may strain nonprofits by shifting resources toward business activities misaligned with their social mission, potentially increasing costs and financial risks. Using panel data from 5,000 nonprofit arts and culture organizations (2009–2019), we employ instrumental variables based on local accommodation industry employment growth to estimate the effect of commercialization on financial health. We find that commercialization leads to worse financial health in the form of lower cash reserves and unrestricted net assets but does not increase debt burden. These findings offer insights for nonprofit leaders and policymakers navigating the pressures of commercialization while aiming to preserve organizational sustainability and mission integrity.
Pipeline 4
Policy, Regulation, and Global Civil Society
1. Enforcing Boundaries: China’s Overseas NGO Law and Operational Constraints for Global Civil Society
Preparing for Submission, co-author with Andrew Heiss
- Abstract: Overseas NGO (ONGO) Law is part of a larger global trend of increased legal restrictions on international nongovernmental organizations (INGOs). A growing body of research analyzes the broad effects of this crackdown on INGOs, finding a divergence in formal de jure laws and the de facto implementation of those laws. The causes and mechanisms of this divergence remain less explored. Why do authoritarian governments allow—and often collaborate—with some INGOs while harshly regulating or expelling others? What determines the openness of the practical legal operating environment for INGOs? In this paper, we use the case of China to explore how political demands to both restrict and embrace INGOs have shaped the international nonprofit sector in the five years since the ONGO Law came into effect. We argue that in an effort to bolster regime stability, governments use civil society laws as policy tools to influence INGO behavior. We find that INGO issue areas, missions, and pre-existing relationships with local government officials influence the degree of operating space available for INGOs. We test this argument with a mixed methods research design, combining Bayesian analysis of administrative data from all formally registered INGOs with a comparative case study of two environmental INGOs. Our findings offer insights into the practical effects of INGO restrictions and the dynamics of closing civic space worldwide
2. Building an Enabling Legal Environment: Laws and Policies on Social Enterprises in China
Published at Journal of Asian Public Policy, single author
- Abstract: This article discusses China’s most recent social enterprise-related laws and policies in a systematic fashion. It first introduces the concept of social enterprise under the Chinese context. Then it analyses national-level general laws applicable to social enterprises. At the local level, the article analyses three different models of social enterprise accreditation policies emerging in various regions of China. By comparing the accreditation systems with the UK’s SE Mark, the article also assesses how international experience was first assimilated and then tailored gradually to the Chinese context. Last, it identifies deficiencies in the current social enterprise legal system in China and the future directions for reform.
3. Unlocking the Impact of Charity Law on Commercialization of Charitable Organizations: Evidence from a Quasi-Experiment Design
Under review, at Journal of Chinese Governance, co-author with Jingran Sun and Yu Shi
- Abstract: China implemented its Charity Law in 2016 to regulate the governance and operation of the nonprofit sector. Using a dataset of 29,599 annual reports of 6,264 charitable organizations from 2010 to 2020, this study employs the difference-in-differences (DIDs) method to examine the impact of policy flexibility introduced by the 2016 Charity Law on commercial revenues among Chinese public and non-public charitable organizations. Built upon the institutional theory and resource dependency theory, this study finds that both public and non-public charitable organizations have experienced reductions in commercial revenues after the implementation of the Charity Law, while public charities experience a greater decline in commercial revenue. Because the Charity law gives higher levels of flexibility on asset management for non-public charities than public charities, the study implies that greater policy flexibility in organizational operations leads to a higher level of commercialization. This study strengthens theoretical understanding of the influences of institutional factors on nonprofit commercialization and provides important practical implications regarding public policy, financial resources, and the institutional environment of the non-profit sector in China.
4. A Tax Credit Proposal for Profit Moderation and Social Mission Maximization in Long-Term Residential Care Businesses
Published at Nonprofit Policy Forum, co-author with Janelle Kerlin and Wendy Chen
- Abstract: This policy brief proposes a tax credit mechanism to address abuse and neglect in for-profit long-term residential care. The design introduces four components—social financing, a sliding dividend cap, employee ownership, and restrictions on complex corporate structures—tied to eligibility for the credit. By altering the incentive structure that currently prioritizes profit maximization over care quality, the proposal offers a path to better align financial practices with social mission. The article contributes to debates on regulating for-profit providers while safeguarding vulnerable populations dependent on Medicare and Medicaid funding.
Methods: Causal Inference
1. Clarifying Correlation and Causation: A Guide to Modern Quantitative Causal Inference in Nonprofit Studies
Writing, co-author with Andrew Heiss
- Abstract: Discovering causal relationships and testing theoretical mechanisms is a core endeavor of social science. Randomized experiments have long served as a gold standard for making valid causal inferences, but most of the data social scientists work with is observational and non-experimental. However, with newer methodological developments in economics, political science, epidemiology, and other disciplines, an increasing number of studies in social science make causal claims with observational data. As a newer interdisciplinary field, however, nonprofit studies has lagged behind other disciplines in its use of observational causal inference. In this paper, we present a hands-on introduction and guide to design-based observational causal inference methods. We first review and categorize all studies making causal claims in top nonprofit studies journals over the past decade to illustrate the field’s current of experimental and observational approaches to causal inference. We then introduce a framework for modeling and identifying causal processes using directed acyclic graphs (DAGs) and provide a walk-through of the assumptions and procedures for making inferences with a range of different methods, including matching, inverse probability weighting, difference-in-differences, regression discontinuity designs, and instrumental variables. We illustrate each approach with synthetic and empirical examples and provide sample R and Stata code for implementing these methods. We conclude by encouraging scholars and practitioners to make more careful and explicit causal claims in their observational empirical research, collectively developing and improving quantitative work in the broader field of nonprofit studies.