In recent years, sociologists have increasingly called attention to the organizationally embedded nature of resource access among the poor. Nonprofit organizations (NPOs), in particular, have been identified as key organizations poor individuals must often work through in order to secure vital resources, rendering NPOs a crucial link to the American welfare state. Sociologists, however, have seldom acknowledged the highly fragmented nature of welfare provision in the United States. NPOs’ efforts, for instance, are likely influenced by a host of regional characteristics: the robustness of state and municipal support, the number and quality of government-NPO contracts, the generosity of donors, the extent of collaboration among neighborhood institutions, and others. In an effort to better understand the ramifications of a highly decentralized American welfare state, this project will ask how NPOs of a common organizational form (the nonprofit homeless shelter) respond to common shocks but in different cities across the country. In turn, the project will seek to isolate place-based differences in the strength and resilience of NPO-based welfare provision.
Harvard Mellon Urban Initiative Report
The HMUI Urban Research Grant supported dissertation research I conducted during Summer 2021.
My dissertation project seeks to better understand the ramifications of a highly decentralized welfare state, focusing on nonprofit organizations in particular. It asks how antipoverty nonprofits of a common organizational form respond to a common shock, but in different cities across the US. It uses nonprofit homeless shelters as its focal organizational form and the novel coronavirus as its focal shock. By holding constant these two variables, the project will attempt to isolate place-based differences in the strength and resilience of welfare provision and social services.
For the first phase of the study, I conducted over 70 semi-structured interviews with nonprofit shelter employees, beginning in April 2020 and ending in June 2020. I sought to capture geographic variation, so I made sure to connect with at least one shelter in each of the 50 states and the District of Columbia. For the second phase, which is what I worked on this summer and what the HMUI funding supported, I sought to re-interview all of the respondents from the first wave of interviews. The goal of these follow-up interviews was to capture longitudinal perspective—to understand how nonprofit shelters’ responses to the novel coronavirus had unfolded, and how their plans had evolved, over the course of the year.
I was able to re-interview 61 of the original respondents (or, in some cases, different individuals from their organizations). There are an additional seven who replied affirmatively to my follow-up request but who I have not yet been able to get on the phone, and there are another five I have been unable to reach entirely; I hope to make contact with some of these respondents in the weeks to come. The HMUI funding also facilitated transcription of the interviews I conducted this summer.
Researcher: Joseph Wallerstein