Doctoral Dissertation Research: Consulting Firms in the Nonprofit Sector

Princeton University, Princeton NJ

Investigators

Abstract

The use of consultants is widespread in the U.S. nonprofit sector. Little is known, however, about the day-to-day reality of consulting firms? work in the nonprofit sector, or the influence of their recommendations on nonprofit practice. This study will illuminate how the work and interaction of consulting firms, clients, and funders define and implement core concepts in nonprofit work such as "social good" and "strategic." It will accomplish this by providing an analysis of consulting firms' processes, their relationships with client nonprofits, and links to funding organizations. Findings will contribute to policymaking concerning nonprofits and benefit philanthropic foundations and nonprofits themselves by revealing some of the consequences, intended and unintended, of consultant involvement in nonprofit work. Situated as they are at the nexus of the nonprofit, for-profit, and philanthropic sectors, consulting firms working for nonprofits operate in a context in which goals, methods of measuring value, and accountability are unclear. This dissertation is motivated theoretically by the question of how organizations manage in the context of ambiguity and how their strategies to cope with ambiguity shape the nature of their work and the ideas they produce. To investigate these questions, this study will draw on 1) ethnographic data collected over 15 months at consulting firms located in Philadelphia, Chicago, and San Francisco (n=3 total firms), 2) more than 85 interviews with consultants and clients, and 3) a survey of foundations, which broker many consulting arrangements. The study will be among the first to investigate consulting firms? role in the generation and dissemination of assertions about nonprofit work, providing important insight about an understudied category of actors in the nonprofit sector. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.