The influence of nonprofit financing and operations on the acquisition of unrestricted and restricted donations

Abstract

Literature examining the impact of nonprofit financing and operational characteristics on donations is replete with studies that yield mixed and/or contradictory results. Contributing to this dearth of clarity are the limitations of relying on IRS Form 990 information as the primary data for this scholarship. Unlike audited financial statements or other types of financial reporting, Form 990 data do not discriminate between restricted and unrestricted donations. We address these limitations by exploring an underutilized database in the nonprofit literature that focuses on institutions of higher education to parse restricted and unrestricted donations. Results indicate that several financing and operational variables have disparate impacts on restricted and unrestricted donations, both absolutely and in relation to one another. Specifically, the proportion of revenue from government, leverage, age, and whether the university has a hospital or is a seminary show different relationships with total donations than they do with restricted and unrestricted donations separately. We also find that fundraising, program services revenue, prior year's donations, leverage, and whether the university has a hospital or is a seminary impacts the ratio of restricted to unrestricted donations. Literature that only looks at these factors on total donations is failing to capture whether nonprofit managers pursue different donative revenue streams and the extent to which donors reward them. This research note offers an initial examination of the nuance in the different types of donative returns in one dataset, and serves as a call to other scholars to look beyond Form 990 data for this scholarship.