Nonprofits in a Changing Community: A Case Study of Nonprofit Perceptions and Practices at the Neighborhood Level

Background and Purpose: Due to welfare reform policies and privatization of government-funded social services, nonprofits play a key role in delivering safety net services to low-income residents at the local level (Allard, 2009; Marwell, 2004). In addition, community development corporations are involved in development projects in low-income neighborhoods while other neighborhood-based organizations work with advocacy and community organizing. This paper describes a qualitative study of 13 nonprofits working in a gentrifying neighborhood. Drawing from institutional logics and resource dependency theories, I look at how a nonprofit’s practice philosophy, ideology, and mission influences the way a nonprofit perceives neighborhood change. Given the important role that nonprofits play in low-income neighborhoods, this case of nonprofits in a gentrifying neighborhood can have larger implications for how nonprofits view communities and work at the community level.

Methods: This study uses a bounded case of 13 nonprofits in one neighborhood currently undergoing changes due to gentrification. This neighborhood has a strong Latino and activist identity and several nonprofits grew out of this community activism. While these nonprofits focused on community organizing, other nonprofits were more involved with direct services, making this an ideal site to capture variation of nonprofits. All organizations in this sample have a mission that includes serving low-income community members, but I selected nonprofits with variation in missions, practice philosophies, and resources. As a case study, this project included multiple methods of data collection, including interviews of nonprofit staff and community stakeholders, observations of community events, and document review. I coded transcripts, field notes and documents using Atlas.ti. I used content analysis to identify meaning units related to gentrification and coded them through an inductive process. I then identified categories and looked for patterns between categories in order to develop working hypotheses and models on how nonprofits perceive changes and work at the community level.

Results: I identified aspects of an organization’s frame or practice philosophy, including a long term relationship with community members as opposed to short-term interactions, partnerships with other nonprofits, and their definition of target population, that not only helped explain behavior but also a nonprofit’s interpretation of community change. Nonprofits learned about their neighborhood through relationships with their target population and through partnerships, so nonprofits had different views of their community. A nonprofit’s definition of their target population provided a lens to interpret community change, with place-based nonprofits as more likely to see gentrification as a threat to their core population.

Conclusions and Implications: I focused on nonprofits in a neighborhood undergoing change, but this variation within the same community provides an example of the different ways that nonprofits work with communities. Instead of seeing community-based nonprofits as one category, this study shows different aspects of an organization’s frame or practice philosophy that could affect how a nonprofit views their community, which can have important implications for service delivery. To increase an understanding of service delivery, it is important to understand this variation among community-based nonprofits and the range of ways that nonprofits work in communities.