Do Nonprofit Missions Vary by the Political Ideology of Supporting Communities? Some Preliminary Results

Abstract

Nonprofit missions reflect the values of those that create, manage, and support them. We know that the U.S. population has undergone a “big sort” that has resulted in increased community homogeneity along racial, economic, and political lines. We do not know, however, how this process has impacted the nonprofit sector, as there is little work looking at the geographic distribution of nonprofit missions as a function of the demographics of communities in which they operate. To identify the effects of community values on the nonprofit mission, we use landslide voting districts as a proxy for political ideology and propensity score matching to pair districts with statistically equivalent demographic characteristics. Nonprofits in matched voting districts are compared to identify differences in activities, mission, and funding. Missions shape how communities allocate resources to target populations and interest groups, so observed differences in mission may help explain variation in social outcomes across communities.