Nonprofit Ecosystem
Please see below for a sample of ongoing and recently completed projects. Email us at csi@uncw.edu if you have any questions.
- Network Analysis and Asset Mapping
About the Study
Researchers and students from UNCW’s Center for Social Impact are collaborating with Cape Fear Collective to learn more about the nonprofit sector in Southeastern North Carolina. We’re hoping to gain participation from hundreds of local nonprofits and other organizations that provide them with financial support, programmatic resources, and volunteer labor. Our goal with this research is to help local nonprofits, for-profits, and government organizations create a shared understanding of the community’s assets and deficiencies, make collective decisions that produce mutual benefit, and align programming in pursuit of a healthier and more equitable community for all Cape Fear residents. Initiated at the request of community partners in our region, this project seeks information about nonprofit funding and communication flows, and collaborative programmatic engagements. We’re also learning what organizational outcomes they track and what type of support they require. Combining this information with publicly-available federal and state data will allow us to identify inefficiencies in the local service-delivery market, areas of duplication, gaps in service provision, and viable avenues for productive collaboration. Policymakers and nonprofit practitioners can also use these insights to inform their decision making and program design. FAQs
How do we conduct the interview? Interviews are conducted over Zoom and data will be collected via Qualtrics (a popular and secure survey tool). What kinds of questions do you ask in the interview? Are they sensitive in nature? The interview questions are general and we do not elicit any “sensitive” information. Given the nature of the analyses we’re doing it’s likely that every organization (whether or not they participate in the survey) will appear in the maps as a consequence of what others they interact with are telling us. No interviewee has declined to answer a question and participation in the survey is strong so far. How do you plan to secure and analyze the data? Interviews are being conducted by the research team and answers are concurrently keyed into Qualtrics. Once we have a sufficient number of responses, we plan to construct a series of social network maps containing interactions – communication, funding, and collaboration – among community organizations. We’re mapping our arts, health, education, human, social, and other service domains in an effort to understand how the ecosystem operates and ultimately produce insights that can help these nonprofits garner more resources/support. To do that, we need to know what nonprofits need and who’s doing what with whom. The underlying data will not be publicly available, but all of the maps will be made publicly available on UNCW’s Center for Social Impact website. Will you share your findings? This network analysis will be accessible to all nonprofit, education, and government agencies in the greater Cape Fear Region on UNCW’s Center for Social Impact website. Are you offering incentives to complete the survey? We are not offering compensation for completing the interview, but we do understand and appreciate how valuable your time is. We hope that you and others we’re contacting may be able to participate in the absence of an incentive. We ask for 30 minutes of your time, but interviews typically only run about 20 minutes. Insights gained through this project are motivated by a desire to support the nonprofits in our region and the broader community. Academic insights are secondary. Who is on the research team? - Chris Prentice, Director of UNCW’s Center for Social Impact
- Mark Imperial, Professor and MPA Director, UNCW’s Department of Public & International Affairs
- Anup Phayal, Assistant Professor, UNCW’s Department of Public & International Affairs
- Ayla Busch, UNCW MPA student
- Sara Goldsberry, UNCW MPA student
- Ethan Walters, UNCW MPA student
Who can I contact with questions? For more information on this research, please contact us at csi@uncw.edu or mpa@uncw.edu - Capacity Building and Support
