Abstract
Charity watchdogs and the media level serious allegations of mismanagement of funds at charities serving former and current members of the U.S. armed services, affecting service recipients, families, donors, grantors, foundations, and taxpayers. To examine these allegations, we use two approaches from the literature to assess nonprofit financial effectiveness: the organization’s ability to gain resources and to sustain activities. We mirror the approach of charity raters, whose measures are widely available to the public. Using GuideStar/Internal Revenue Service data, we compare fund-raising expenditures, assets, and financial sustainability of large national military and veterans nonprofits to a random sample of national nonprofits. We apply propensity score matching and compare organizations similar in size, age, and other factors. We find little difference between military and veterans charities and other nonprofits and provide an improved method for evaluating the financial health of nonprofits across academic discipline, nonprofit field of service, and within or among countries.
Get full access to this article
View all access options for this article.
References
Supplementary Material
Please find the following supplemental material available below.
For Open Access articles published under a Creative Commons License, all supplemental material carries the same license as the article it is associated with.
For non-Open Access articles published, all supplemental material carries a non-exclusive license, and permission requests for re-use of supplemental material or any part of supplemental material shall be sent directly to the copyright owner as specified in the copyright notice associated with the article.
