Program Development Issues in Nonprofit and Civil Society Studies: Learning from One University’s Experience

Abstract

This article examines one university’s efforts to institutionalize a graduate nonprofit curriculum. It does so through the lens of situational analysis and with an eye to five key challenges that have dogged the effort—operating in an inauspicious organizational environment, creating an interdisciplinary program in a discipline-rich context, securing a praxis analytical focus and shared pedagogical stance, ensuring a comparative analytical focus, and developing a sustainable balance between student needs and expert claims. These concerns are examined for what might be learned from each that may hold broader significance for nonprofit curriculum design, program development, and implementation. While some of these conditions are unique, what they suggest about the challenges for those seeking institutionalization of nonprofit curricula are not. The essay seeks to suggest how and why that might be so. The paper argues that, regardless of the case-specific factors at play in the present analysis, would-be nonprofit program builders would be wise to be attentive to their operating context, to the nature of existing program curricula and organizational cultures, and to the clear specification of their own curricular aims.