CNSM affiliated faculty conduct research on a variety of topics related to nonprofit organizations and international NGOs. A list of recent academic publications is available for participating faculty on Google Scholar. Recent books authored by CNSM affiliated faculty include:

• Leadership Standpoints: A Practical Framework for the Next Generation of Nonprofit Leaders (Cambridge University Press, 2021)
• Between Power and Irrelevance: The Future of Transnational NGOs (Oxford University Press, 2020)
• The Paradox of Scale: How NGOs Build, Maintain, and Lose Authority in Environmental Governance (The MIT Press, 2018)
• The Nonprofit World: Civil Society and the Rise of the Nonprofit Sector (Kumarian Press, 2015)

Faculty research is often featured in nonacademic outlets such as The Conversation, HistPhil, Inside Philanthropy, and the Stanford Social Innovation Review, among others.

Professional Engagement

Our faculty regularly present research at the annual meetings of the Association for Research on Nonprofit Organizations and Voluntary Action (ARNOVA), the International Society for Third Sector Research (ISTR), and many other professional associations in nonprofit studies, social science, public policy, public administration, and international affairs. Many of our faculty serve in governance, leadership, and management roles in various academic and professional associations.

Our faculty serve on the editorial boards of several academic journals, including Nonprofit Management and Leadership, Nonprofit and Voluntary Sector Quarterly, and the American Review of Public Administration.

CNSM is a member of the Nonprofit Academic Centers Council (NACC).

Special Projects

International NGO CEO Surveys

InterAction, the largest U.S.-based alliance of international NGOs and partners, seeks to accelerate NGOs’ ability to adapt and evolve in service of their missions. The InterAction NGO Futures initiative creates a safe exploration and co-learning space among sector leaders in support of transformational change. It facilitates peer learning, supplemented by events with outside experts, to build awareness and agility skills, leveraging the savvy of leaders to affect sustainable change. The InterAction International NGO CEO Survey assess leader perceptions of the changing global development and humanitarian operating ecosystem, how NGOs are responding, and where they want help. Through the annual survey report produced in conjunction with the Center for Nonprofit Strategy and Management, InterAction member organization CEOs share what the changing world means for their organizations. Learn more about NGO Futures at InterAction and access the 2022 report here.

New York Nonprofit Data

CNSM, in conjunction with Nonprofit New York, publishes occasional reports on the size and scope of the nonprofit sector in New York City, New York State, and the Metropolitan Statistical Area (NYC and surrounding counties in CT, NJ, NY, and PA). The goal of the project is to provide policymakers, workers in the nonprofit sector, and the general public an accurate picture of how many registered nonprofits there are in New York, where they are based, what fields they work in, and what their income and assets are. The reports are based on publicly available data, primarily from the Internal Revenue Service (IRS), which has been disaggregated for the New York area. Read the 2021 report here.