Census Shows Strong Trend toward Larger Social Service Organizations
A paper published in Nonprofit & Voluntary Sector Quarterly suggests that the scale of organizations needs to be given more consideration in studies of nonprofits.
Regular readers of WMN know that one of our most persistent themes is the importance of issues of scale in charity organizations, and most particularly the difficulties faced by the large number of extremely small scale charities. This paper provides further confirmation (David J. Tucker & David H. Sommerfeld, The Larger They Get: The Changing Size Distributions of Private Human Service Organizations, Nonprofit and Voluntary Sector Quarterly, vol. 35, no. 2, June 2006 183-203).
The paper as a whole won't be available online for awhile, but here is a table that presents one of the key findings. This looks at the employment in social service firms (which includes organizations with multiple sites) by the total number of employees in the firm. It shows that from 1987 to 2000, the percentage employed in organizations with less than 20 employees declined from 23.2% to 17.5%, while the percentage employed in organizations with 500 or more employees increased from 14.9% to 24.5%.
Percent of social service employment In firms with total employment of:
Less than 20
20 to 99
100 to 499
500 or more
1987
23.2%
31.7%
30.2%
14.9%
1990
21.9%
29.2%
29.4%
19.5%
2000
17.5%
26.6%
31.4%
24.5%
Other tables show that the share of total establishments (individual worplaces) in large (500+) organizations increased from 5.5% to 12.3%, more than doubling in share.
In addition, the average size of establishments also showed an increase, though not as dramatic, indicating that while individual work units are becoming somewhat larger, the overall trend is for organizations that include a larger number of work units. This certainly coincides with my observation of trends in social service agencies: the units themselves are not significantly larger, but their administrative support comes from being part of a larger nonprofit organization (often that of a hospital).
There is also a chart with estimates of the birth and death rates of different size organizations over the years, which points to a conclusion that organizations with fewer than 100 employees are under more pressure than those above that line.
We hope to see more studies like this one that explores the differences in performance, management, and impace among different size organizations. The fact that most of the social service sector is now employed in organization with 100 or more people has implications for careers and for appropriate training.
Other WMN stories in this vein:
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