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48 Stanford Social Innovation Review / Summer 2023
Nonprofits today are expected to go beyond their missions to adopt
a wider set of commitments and values.
This movement is remaking the sector in surprising ways.
NONPROFITS WORLDWIDE HAVE come under a sweeping movement for social responsibility. They are now engag-
ing in all manner of prosocial activities that go well beyond their primary missions. Diversifying their boards by gender
and race, paying their suppliers a fair wage, reducing their environmental footprint, and lending their voice to social
causes from #MeToo to Black Lives Matter are just a few trappings of this surprising development.
As the movement has taken off, some nonprofits have formally broadened their missions to incorporate new con-
cerns for social responsibility. In 2022, the American Hospital Association, which represents nearly 5,000 organizations
in the health-care sector, revised its vision statement to insert language about justice and equity. Likewise, the Sierra
Club is no longer focused narrowly on environmentalism; its “2030 Strategic Framework” also touches on antiracism,
sexism, economic justice, and achieving work-life balance for its employees. Similarly, Goodwill Industries, which has
a heritage statement from its founder, Rev. Dr. Edgar J. Helms, that acknowledges its history of creating employment
opportunities for those who are disabled, now stresses in its core values the broader objective of being “socially, finan-
cially, and environmentally responsible.”
The Movement for Nonprofit Social Responsibility
BY SHAWN POPE AND PATRICIA BROMLEY
FROM
DOING GOOD
TO
BEING GOOD
Illustrations by Christiana Couceiro
50 Stanford Social Innovation Review / Summer 2023
ed in 1992 of misusing nearly $1.2 million in donations, some on
extramarital affairs. Social-work scholars Margaret Gibelman and
Sheldon Gelman have identified 11 major scandals that broke from
1992 to 1998, piercing the illusion that nonprofits are somehow im-
mune to wrongdoing.3
The series of scandals triggered a wave of third-party standards
and certifications that spread throughout the sector. Well-publicized
examples of nonprofit malfeasance gave rise to the founding of
watchdog groups, such as Charity Watch, established in 1992, and
the creation of organizations that verify nonprofits’ good stand-
ing, like the launch of GuideStar (now Candid) in 1994. Concerns
about nonprofit embezzlement, tax evasion, and overall incom-
petence also led to initiatives such as Charity Navigator, estab-
lished in 2001, to evaluate nonprofits on their resource use and
efficiency.
This accountability infrastructure also included organizations
that promulgated best practices for nonprofit governance (e.g.,
Board Source, est. 1988) and packaged ethical principles into codes
of conduct that any nonprofit can adopt, irrespective of its area of
work (e.g., the World Association of Nongovernmental Organiza-
tions, est. 2000). A follow-on development was nonprofit accred-
itation, for which many providers now exist, including the Stan-
dards for Excellence Institute (est. 1998) and Nonprofits First (est.
2005). Overall, these initiatives sought not only to repair damaged
faith in the sector but also to guide nonprofits toward rational, ef-
fective, and professional practices. As a result of their work, the
goodness of nonprofits, previously assumed to emanate from
within, increasingly came to be stamped from without through a
variety of external assurances.
Dimensions of the Contemporary Movement
AS THE MOVEMENT FOR nonprofit social responsibility has
evolved, its character has also changed. It emerged against a back-
drop of high-profile scandals and rapid growth in the number, size,
and reach of nonprofits and, perhaps as a result, initially operated
by a logic of social control. The initial movement was animated by
the push for external oversight and standardization, in the form
of certifications, accreditations, watchdogs, and codes of conduct.
By contrast, the contemporary movement is driven by non-
profits taking proactive steps to incorporate an expanding array
of social issues into their core values. It goes beyond a narrow
conception of the nonprofit mission and beyond the baseline re-
sponsibilities of being lawful and ethical to stress responsibility to
a wide array of stakeholders, including the sector as whole, and
practicing leadership on emergent social issues.
This development is surprising, not only because of its reach
and depth but because nonprofits are already supposed to be good
actors. Advocates of corporate social responsibility typically jus-
tify it as a corrective to the social ills created by the pursuit of
profit. But nonprofits’ very purpose is to contribute to the public
good. In the United States, this is a legal matter: The Internal
Revenue Service grants tax-exempt status only to organizations
that provide public benefit. The goodness of nonprofits is also
implicit to the main theory of their existence: They provide ser-
vices (feeding the poor, caring for the sick) that society needs but
that are undersupplied by governments and not lucrative enough
for traditional investors.
In this article, we address the causes, contemporary character-
istics, and consequences of this puzzling movement for nonprofit
social responsibility. The phenomenon has profound implications
for our understanding of nonprofit mission and for the demands
that are placed on nonprofit leadership. Nonprofits that incor-
porate a broader view of responsibility into their work may gain
legitimacy, and the expansion of purpose could spark innovation.
However, leaders will also be challenged as the mission becomes
less singular and will need greater skill in navigating multiple,
sometimes competing goals.
The Emergence of the Movement
TO THE EXTENT THAT THERE IS ONE, the standard account
oStarting in the 1990s, the nonprofit sector expanded rapidly in
the United States and around the world. Growing resources and
numbers of organizations meant greater potential for good, but
also for ill, and the a series of high-profile scandals rocked the sec-
tor. Academics and journalists locate the emergence of nonprofit
social responsibility in the need to counterbalance the growing
power of nonprofits in society.
The number of US nonprofits has exploded from fewer than
13,000 in 1940 to more than 1.5 million last year.1 Meanwhile, many
became gargantuan. The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, for ex-
ample, was founded as recently as 2000 but now commands about
$50 billion in assets—larger than the annual GDP of more than 100
countries. At the same time, the number of international nongov-
ernmental organizations increased dramatically, from about 1,000
in 1950 to more than 76,000 in 2023.2
Nonprofits grew not only in number, size, and global reach but
also in notoriety: A handful of major scandals in the 1990s fueled a
backlash against their newfound status. Some of the biggest names
were implicated, including the United Way, the world’s largest pri-
vately funded nonprofit. Its CEO, William Aramony, was convict-
NONPROFITS HAVE RESPONSIBILITIES THAT GO
BEYOND THE DIRECT GOOD THEY DO IN
THEIR SPHERE OF INFLUENCE TO INCLUDE SUPPORTING
A HEALTHY, VIBRANT FIELD OF
ENDEAVOR FOR ALL.
51Stanford Social Innovation Review / Summer 2023
movement for social responsibility has grown more extensive over
time. Indeed, as the issue of diversity has permeated the nonprofit
sector, it has demanded attention on more and more fronts. An
early emphasis on race and gender has broadened to include age,
nationality, sexuality, educational attainment, and disability status.
For example, we see nonprofits’ growing awareness of the need to
create quality volunteer opportunities for the aging baby boomer
population5 asnd for colleges to be welcoming to first-generation
students and those with learning differences, such as autism.
It goes beyond lawfulness and ethics to emphasize living out the non-
profit’s values. | The 1990s initiatives for nonprofit responsibility
emphasized ethics and, at a minimum, lawfulness. Today, both di-
mensions of nonprofit responsibility have remained important, as
is apparent in the ubiquity of nonprofit codes of conduct,6 which
provide guidelines for employee behavior on everything from sex-
ual harassment to whistleblowing.7 To be sure, both dimensions
are still evolving. There are now active ethical and legal discours-
es, for example, about what employees can say on social media,
whether donor identities should be kept private, and whether to
pay a ransom to hackers who hold the organization’s operating
system hostage.
But in contrast with the previous era, the sector today is driven
more by values. Ethics are duty-based prescriptions for behavior
that impact nonprofits from without, as rules and standards that
reflect widely shared beliefs about what is right and wrong. On the
other hand, values are internal ideals that differ across nonprofits
and reflect their individual estimations about which of the many
cultural aspirations on offer are most important.
In the early 2000s, values became a more prominent topic, as
experts advised nonprofits to identify a small set of priorities to
formalize into core values statements that are now commonplace
In particular, we identify the following features in the contem-
porary movement:
It goes beyond mission. | Whereas the goodness of nonprofits was
traditionally grounded in their ability to advance a mission in an
area of social work (e.g. cancer research or homelessness), non-
profits today are also addressing the connections between their
missions and a larger set of social issues. One such issue is sus-
tainability, which has been taken up by countless nonprofits whose
main focus is not environmental protection. Universities such as
Oxford and Harvard, for instance, have disallowed their endow-
ments from investing in fossil fuels, while other nonprofits have
supported the cause by going paperless, teleworking, and being
early adopters of green technology.
Another issue that has swept the sector is diversity. Whether
or not diversity is central to a nonprofit’s mission, the nonprofit is
now expected to address the issue to the extent to which it can. For
example, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation has experimented
with a double-blind grantmaking process to see if it reduces gen-
der bias in awards.4 The foundation has also created and hired a
chief diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) officer to ensure that
its own internal practices are consistent with the value of diversity.
The issue of diversity illustrates two other points about the
movement. First, in some cases, nonprofits broaden their missions
to allow for a wider scope of social impact. Earlier this year, for
example, the American Hospital Association (AHA) augmented its
mission with new language about equity (italics in the original):
“The AHA’s mission is to advance the health of all individuals and
communities. AHA leads, represents, and serves hospitals, health
systems, and other related organizations that are accountable to
communities and committed to equitable care and health improve-
ment for all.” Second, the issue of diversity demonstrates that the
The Expanding Nature of Nonprofit Social Responsibility
While a slate of conventional responsibilities has remained, newer emphases, on citizenship,
stakeholding, values, and leadership, have arisen.
TRADITIONAL EMPHASES
Mission
• Make a positive impact in a core area of social work
(e.g., homelessness, cancer research).
Accountability
• Be answerable to donors and communities and held liable
for failure, lack of oversight, and scandal.
Lawfulness/Ethics
• Follow laws and regulations, as well as widely held prescriptions
for right and wrong behavior.
Governance and Management
• Establish rules and procedures to align lower levels of
the organization with the overall mission and to integrate social
responsibility in a structural manner.
CONTEMPORARY EMPHASES
The “greater good”
• Address wider social issues that are implicated in the
nonprofit’s work (e.g., sustainability, diversity).
• Contribute to a vibrant, healthy collective enterprise through
citizenship, sharing, and collaboration.
Stakeholding
• Actively identify, involve, and manage an enlarged group
of constituents with a legitimate interest in the
nonprofit’s work.
Values
• Live out the nonprofit’s beliefs about which issues, causes,
and ideals are most important.
Leadership
• Motivate and inspire constituents toward a visionary future
that may involve bold action and require them to be first movers
Won a social issue, or its deepest and truest supporters.
52 Stanford Social Innovation Review / Summer 2023
keep them informed of organizational affairs, and create channels
to include them in decision-making. With this approach, non-
profits may consider employees, for example, not just as kindred
spirits with a shared belief in the mission but as stakeholders with
legitimate, concrete, and addressable concerns, such as pay, job se-
curity, career advancement, and working conditions.8 Stakeholder
management, as commonly presented, is not just a moral impera-
tive but a strategic endeavor that can bring operational benefits,
such as greater trust, rapport, and satisfaction among the many
groups that are involved in the nonprofit’s work.
It goes beyond the individual nonprofit to stress citizenship and the
collective enterprise. | The “social” in social responsibility suggests
not only stakeholder relationships but also wider society and the
collective nonprofit enterprise. Nonprofits
have responsibilities that go beyond the di-
rect good they do in their sphere of influence
to include supporting a healthy, vibrant field
of endeavor for all. Citizenship, more specif-
ically, refers to public-minded behaviors that
are voluntary and often not formally reward-
ed but generally viewed positively as contrib-
uting to public goods that everyone should
ideally supply.
Nonprofits today are practicing citizen-
ship in myriad ways. The YMCA, Feeding
America, and the United Way are among
thousands that give their employees paid
time off on Election Day. Other nonprofits
have lent their voices to issues that affect
the entire sector, as when Code for America,
Greenpeace, and Sierra Club signed a petition
to block the sale of the online “.org” registry
to a for-profit investor. Yet others have con-
sented to practices that are not necessarily
optimized for them but that are good for the
sector if done by all, such as accepting grant
applications in a common, standardized for-
mat. In addition, some nonprofits allow peers
to recruit their workers and have shared do-
nor contact information to nonprofits in sim-
ilar areas of work. Through all these actions,
nonprofits have done their part to support
the sector and foster a civic spirit within it.
It goes beyond governance and good man-
agement to include leadership. | Social respon-
sibility starts at the top of the nonprofit and
is practiced most genuinely and concertedly
when boards, executives, and senior officers
are aligned and fully committed. Specifically,
the movement has influenced two dimen-
sions of the nonprofit apex: the traditional,
structural focus on governance and manage-
ment, and a newer, more dynamic emphasis
on leadership.
Governance refers to an organization’s
top-level administration through rules and
throughout the sector and easily located on nonprofit web pages.
These documents have incorporated many of the dimensions and
concerns of the social responsibility movement, such as “diversi-
ty” (e.g., the Nature Conservancy), “environmental stewardship”
(Goodwill Industries), and “accountability” (Save the Children).
It goes beyond accountability to donors and served communities to
include a wider array of stakeholders. | Another early nonprofit re-
sponsibility that organizations have carried forward to the present
day and further elaborated upon is accountability. A nonprofit is
answerable, for example, to donors in terms of how funds are used
and to served communities for any unintended harm. Account-
ability goes hand in hand with the duty to explain and justify, the
practice of reporting, and the very activity of accounting—in the
sense of recording, verifying, and analyzing
the nonprofit’s resources. When nonprof-
its become more accountable, for example,
by tracking and reporting their expenses to
external audiences, they may become more
disciplined to cut waste and lower unneces-
sary overhead. When nonprofits measure and
report their social impacts, they may become
more sensitive to the ways in which programs
can be improved. When nonprofits disclose
their donors and foundations submit their
grant decisions to public scrutiny, they may
avoid the perception of being controlled by
“dark money” or nepotism.
Accountability also means being held re-
sponsible for failure or malfeasance. As such,
accountability incentivizes nonprofits to pre-
vent wrongdoing before it occurs. They do
so by putting controls in place and adopting
best practices and procedures that people
with proper training and credentials oversee.
Accountability—including its fellow travelers
reporting, control, and professionalization—
safeguards trust in nonprofits by assuring
outsiders that things are being done in an
upright manner.
While the emphasis on accountability has
certainly not waned in recent years, under-
standing of whom exactly a nonprofit should
be accountable to has expanded. A previous
focus on groups with direct ties to nonprof-
its, including donors, boards, employees, and
served communities, has grown to include
all groups that are affected in some way by
a nonprofit’s operations—in other words,
stakeholders. Nowadays stakeholders include
even notional entities such as unborn genera-
tions and the natural environment.
In particular, experts ask nonprofits to
practice stakeholder management. This re-
quires nonprofits to identify their stakehold-
ers, take an inventory of their needs and in-
terests, treat them with dignity and respect,
Implications for
Nonprofit Managers
The nonprofit social responsibility
movement places new demands
on organizational leaders while
promising to deliver a medley of
operational benefits.
NONPROFIT MANAGERS ARE
NOW ENCOURAGED TO...
ATTEND
to social issues beyond the core
nonprofit mission to improve society on
more fronts, enhance the nonprofit’s
license to operate, add meaningfulness
to the nonprofit’s work, and generate
visibility with potential donors.
FOCUS
on social issues that are deeply
entwined with the nonprofit’s core work
to maintain identity coherence and
to ensure that existing competencies
are deployed most eectively.
COMMIT
to the social issues from the top of the
organization so that lower-level
employees can pursue them confidently
and passionately.
INTEGRATE
the social issues in a structural manner,
innovating as necessary, to avoid
accusations of “greenwashing” or taking
advantage of the social responsibility
movement merely for branding purposes.
TRAIN
visionary leaders who can stay abreast
…of social developments, manage
multiple stakeholders, and seize opportu-
nities at the intersection of the nonprofit
mission and larger social issues.
53Stanford Social Innovation Review / Summer 2023
More recently, academic and practitioner
discourses on how nonprofits should be run
have expanded to include an emphasis on
leadership. These discourses portray the
nonprofit not merely as a system that re-
quires appropriate design but as an entity
to be infused with life and direction. Good
leaders not only put the right controls in
place but also inspire and motivate orga-
nizational constituents. Increasingly, lead-
ers are expected to be visionary—to set
bold, meaningful objectives and to equip
and empower subordinates to accomplish
them. As a reflection of this change, mis-
sion statements, core values statements,
and codes of conduct have been joined by
vision statements. These inspire stake-
holders with a nearly utopian, highly aspi-
rational state of affairs that the nonprofit
can usher into being through its social
work, whether it is a world “where every-
one has a decent place to live” (Habitat for
Humanity) or “no child goes to bed hun-
gry” (Feed the Children).
Leadership is important to social respon-
sibility for several reasons. First, because
leaders are not just another employee of the
organization but are also figureheads, they
are expected to model the organization’s
values in their personal and professional
lives. Second, given that social responsibil-
ity often involves actions that are loosely
related to the primary nonprofit mission,
senior leaders need exceptional charisma,
persuasion, and creativity to integrate the
meaning of disparate actions into a co-
herent theory of action for stakeholders.
Third, leaders are often needed to make
difficult decisions with steep downsides, such as when college
trustees risked alienating alumni by removing campus monuments
to slave-owning benefactors.
Implications
FROM LEADERSHIP TO stakeholder management to value pledg-
es, the contemporary movement for social responsibility places
extraordinary demands on nonprofits. Displaying commitment to
broader social issues may bring operational benefits by bolstering
a nonprofit’s legitimacy and reputation. Attention to social re-
sponsibility may also instill nonprofits’ work with a larger sense
of meaningfulness, which can help improve employee morale and
recruitment. Lastly, as many of the associated activities enhance
visibility, they may promote awareness, which can lead to more
donations and volunteer engagement.
Additionally, nonprofits that become more aware of the social
issues that are inextricably involved in their work may come up
procedures, including how the board and management are nom-
inated, hired, structured, monitored, compensated, and kept
independent from one another. Similarly, management refers to
the stewardship and effective use of the nonprofit’s human and
physical resources and to the establishment of protocols and best
practices for integrating the nonprofit’s mission into lower levels
of the organization. Good governance and management stitch so-
cial responsibility into the fabric of the nonprofit. For example,
the model of multistakeholder governance serves to ensure, as
a structural matter, that there will be board representation and
therefore influence on board decision-making from the various
groups that are impacted by the nonprofit, including its own work-
ers and served communities, in addition to the usual membership
of donors and industry experts. Likewise, nonprofits can promote
social responsibility through their compensation schemes, for ex-
ample, by linking executive pay to diversity or sustainability tar-
gets. Through such arrangements, social responsibility becomes
built into the nonprofit, rather than bolted on.
54 Stanford Social Innovation Review / Summer 2023
with innovations. For example, the Museum of Photographic Arts
in San Diego, among many other museums, has improved access
to the arts by instituting a “pay what you wish” admissions policy.
To address gender inequality in salary, the Hillel Foundation, the
world’s largest Jewish campus-life organization, has experimented
with establishing salary bands with set pay ranges for employees
at different positions and making those bands known to all em-
ployees. Additionally, to promote mental health and to make work-
places more welcoming to people with disabilities, many service
organizations have introduced unlimited paid time off.
The movement for nonprofit responsibility also comes with
risks. Attention to noncore social responsibilities may detract
from the organizational mission, especially in a sector that always
seems to be operating on a tight budget. Possibilities for mission
creep that used to be attributed to pressure from donors or the
search for funding can now be introduced to the organization on
all sides from an array of stakeholders. Over time, nonprofits that
do not stick closely to their core calling and key competencies may
find their identity and skills becoming less sharp as they try to be-
come all things to all people.
Nonprofit leaders may also worry about undercutting their
credibility through promotions of social responsibility that appear
too corporate. Indeed, even using the language of “social responsi-
bility” to describe the activities may be problematic, as the term is
often linked in the corporate world to insincere, ineffective brand-
ing exercises. More problematically, nonprofits could themselves
become subject to accusations of “greenwashing,” superficial
“DEI-ization” (i.e., displaying an appearance of concern for the en-
vironment or diversity through symbolic, rather than meaningful,
organizational change), or directing resources away from mission.
For organizations and a sector that are built on ideas of the public
good, the consequences of such criticisms could be far more dele-
terious than in the business world.
Which of the multiple social responsibilities should a nonprof-
it focus on? Given the pressures for nonprofits to develop sharp,
distinctive identities that resonate enough with specific donor seg-
ments to get them to open their wallets, nonprofits may be more
successful if they target causes that are adjacent to their core work.
While it is true that, on some level, all nonprofits should be ac-
countable, ethical, and well governed, nonprofits must in practice
also decide how far they want to go in each responsibility. Do they
merely meet their social obligations, or do they try to exceed them
and become issue-specific leaders? As they ponder the question,
nonprofits may consider the many organizations that have prac-
ticed social responsibility in ways that build upon their core issues
of concern. The Girl Scouts, for example, has furthered an exist-
WHILE IT IS TRUE THAT ALL NONPROFITS SHOULD
BE ACCOUNTABLE, ETHICAL,
AND WELL GOVERNED, NONPROFITS MUST IN
PRACTICE ALSO DECIDE HOW FAR THEY WANT TO GO IN
EACH RESPONSIBILITY.
ing commitment to women’s issues by giving a relatively long 12
weeks of paid parental leave to employees. Likewise, Every Texan,
an Austin-based advocate for economic justice in public policies,
has responded cooperatively and affirmatively to its own workers’
efforts to unionize.
The movement for social responsibility has had many practical
effects. For one, it has led to an elaboration of roles and responsi-
bilities within nonprofits around an expanded set of issues of con-
cern. As a result of their efforts to balance an increasing number
of stakeholders and social causes, nonprofits have become more
complex operationally and structurally and have thereby placed
more demands on leaders. Social enterprises, for example, take on
hybrid forms so that they can better balance commercial and social
goals. Nonprofits have also come to need leaders with vision and
charisma who can connect with disparate stakeholders.
One of the most striking features of the contemporary non-
profit sector is the increasing rapidity with which new social
causes have generated cascades of actions, policies, and state-
ments. In recent history, these waves have followed the #MeToo
movement and Black Lives Matter, as well as heightened atten-
tion to transgender rights, gender-neutral language, abortion
rights, and the war in Ukraine. The greater amplitude and fre-
quency of these issue waves no doubt reflects the nature of soci-
ety today—the viral nature of social media, growing polarization
in the United States and elsewhere, and advanced levels of glo-
balization. As such, the surprising and, many would argue, wel-
come development of expanded nonprofit social responsibility is
likely to intensify. O
SHAWN POPE is an associate professor of business strategy at EMLV Business School
PATRICIA BROMLEY is an associate professor in the Graduate School of Edu-
cation and Doerr School of Sustainability at Stanford University and a faculty
codirector of the Stanford Center on Philanthropy and Civil Society.
NOTES
1 Patricia Bromley, “The Organizational Transformation of Civil Society,” in
in The Nonprofit Sector: A Research Handbook, 3rd ed., edited by Walter W. Powell and Patricia
Bromley, Stanford, California: Stanford University Press, 2020.
2 These are the numbers of organizations categorized as A, B, C, or D in the Yearbook
of International Organizations.
3 Margaret Gibelman and Sheldon R. Gelman, “Very Public Scandals: An Analysis of
How and Why Nongovernmental Organizations Get in Trouble,” International Society for
Third-Sector Research Fourth International Conference, Dublin, July 7, 2000.
4 Alex Daniels, “How Gender Bias Creeps Into Grant Making,” The Chronicle of
Philanthropy, June 4, 2019.
5 Joshua Braverman and Ryan Kaitz, “Engaging Our Elders: The Power and Potential
of Senior Volunteerism,” Nonprofit Quarterly, February 18, 2021.
6 Patricia Bromley and Charlene D. Orchard, “Managed Morality: The Rise of Professional
Codes of Conduct in the US Nonprofit Sector,” Nonprofit and Voluntary Sector
Quarterly, April 2015.
7 Shawn Pope et al., “The Pyramid of Nonprofit Responsibility: The Institutionalization
of Organizational Responsibility Across Sectors,” Voluntas, September 17, 2018.
8 Jim Rendon, “Low Pay Hurts Nonprofits and Workers. Some Groups are Fighting Back,”
The Chronicle of Philanthropy, September 4, 2019.
