International Review on Public and Nonprofit Marketing, 2024
Nonprofit organizations receive charitable contributions from both institutional donors and indiv... more Nonprofit organizations receive charitable contributions from both institutional donors and individual donors. Existing studies have traditionally focused on factors related to nonprofits' total donation income rather than exploring similarity and difference in the two types of donors' preference for donation recipients. Following Wang's (2023) call for the distinction between institutional donors (i.e., corporations) and individual donors, this study regresses corporate giving and individual giving separately on four themes of explanatory variables, namely organizational legitimacy, political connections, organizational attributes, and environmental factors, of a sample of 2,021 Chinese foundations for the year 2013. The results showed that multiple variables are related to corporate giving and individual giving differently to varying degrees. This study suggests future research (1) consider the potentially different effects of predictors on multiple sources of giving when analyzing nonprofits' total donation income and (2) theorize the different preferences of the two types of donors.
Voluntary certification that signals nonprofit organizations’ legitimacy has been found to be pos... more Voluntary certification that signals nonprofit organizations’ legitimacy has been found to be positively related to charitable donations in Europe and North America. However, whether these proxies of organizational legitimacy matter under authoritarian regimes where political connections are deemed critical for resource acquisition has not been explored. Based on a sample of 2,021 Chinese foundations, this article finds that organizational legitimacy achieved through certification is tied to an increase in charitable donations. Meanwhile, organizational legitimacy tends to negatively moderate the relationship between foundations’ political affiliation and charitable donations. That is, certification lifts the amount of charitable donations to civic foundations that are not formally affiliated with the state more than it does for politically affiliated foundations. As the first quantitative study on the effect of voluntary nonprofit certification programs on charitable donations outside Western democracies, this article contributes to our understanding of fundraising in China and other authoritarian states.
The literature on NGOs under authoritarian rule largely attributes NGOs' receipt of government gr... more The literature on NGOs under authoritarian rule largely attributes NGOs' receipt of government grants to their political connections. This article presents an alternative explanation by asking the question: Does nonprofit organizational legitimacy influence the receipt of government grants under authoritarianism? Applying logit regression to 2,021 Chinese foundations, this article proposes that passing the nonprofit evaluation, which is one of the major certification programs in the country's nonprofit sector, is positively related to the probability of receiving government grants. Subsample analysis reveals that nonprofit evaluation is influential for the receipt of government grants primarily among foundations formally affiliated with government agencies. This article provides for the first time evidence that contemporary authoritarian regimes appreciate nonprofit organizational legitimacy, albeit still in a highly politicized manner.
This article analyzes the recent 14th Five-Year Plan for Social Organization Development, which s... more This article analyzes the recent 14th Five-Year Plan for Social Organization Development, which signifies the Chinese party-state's comprehensive planning for NGOs in the years 2021-2025. By clarifying the guiding ideology, basic principles, goals, targets, and tasks, the Plan stresses a dual political-regulatory mechanism that drives China's nonprofit sector further in transitioning from an emerging organizational field to a manufactured civil society and shifts nonprofit policy fragmentation toward institutionalization. The Plan manifests centralized means to corral NGOs into a disciplined and capable nonprofit sector that subordinates itself to and enhances the authoritarian regime. Implications drawn from this article update policy analysts on state-NGO relations and the trajectory of the nonprofit sector in China.
Under authoritarianism, nonprofits establish formal political connections at the organizational l... more Under authoritarianism, nonprofits establish formal political connections at the organizational level when they are affiliated with the state or at the individual level when they have government officials assume managerial positions. From the perspective of multilevel interorganizational relations, this study uses a sample of Chinese foundations to investigate the association of the two levels of political connections and their interactions with a wide range of nonprofit revenues.
Corporation foundation is one of the most popular tools for Chinese corporations and entrepreneur... more Corporation foundation is one of the most popular tools for Chinese corporations and entrepreneurs to carry out their charitable activities. However, do these foundations play a role in the development of Chinese civil society and in what ways? Followed by a brief introduction on the history, regulations, and rational of the establishment of Chinese corporate foundations, the major body of work aims to appraise the aforementioned topic under the framework of roles of nonpoint organizations (i.e., service, value guardian, advocacy, and social capital), with a focus on service and social capital dimensions. Our empirical data analysis shows that Chinese corporate foundations have been enhancing the civil society through its mission centrality on the pressing societal issues, larger expenditure on charitable activities, and adequate equity and lower amounts on administrative costs in carrying out their missions. A public space is being created through the commitment of corporate founda...
• Chinese foundations flourished in the 21st century, and empirical studies emerged to address mu... more • Chinese foundations flourished in the 21st century, and empirical studies emerged to address multiple aspects of their activities and relations with the government. Yet there has been little research synthetically reviewing their development and operation. As a result, we often lack the knowledge of the context in which these organizations interact with state and society. • This article divides the history of Chinese foundations into three phases: in search of identity, 1978–2004; in search of legal status, 2004–2016; and in search of the role in civil society, from 2016 onward. Within those three periods, it also examines overseas foundations and their representative offices in China. The discussion covers the normative and contextualized foundation operations in regard to the legal, political, and economic environment during each phase. • This article not only helps readers understand and interpret findings from research on Chinese foundations, but also provides practical information to Chinese and non-Chinese practitioners who work, or will work, for or with foundations in China.
Since the 18th National Congress of the Communist Party of China, the party-state has established... more Since the 18th National Congress of the Communist Party of China, the party-state has established a number of policies on social organizations. Some policies are complementary, whereas some seem to be contradictory. These policies are associated with two policy approaches. The first is socially oriented, allowing social organizations the opportunity for autonomy and encouraging capacity-building. The second is political integration mainly through party-building in social organizations. The two approaches do not exist alone or in isolation. Intertwined they indicate that the Chinese party-state has begun to institutionalize an integrative control mechanism to maximize the utility of social organizations in prioritized fields of work.
Asia Pacific Journal of Public Administration, 2020
Foundations have become a significant form of nongovernmental organisation in China since 2004. L... more Foundations have become a significant form of nongovernmental organisation in China since 2004. Large-sample research about Chinese foundations, however, did not appear until the middle 2010s. The database of the Research Infrastructure of Chinese Foundations was created to mitigate data scarcity, a key reason for the lack of research on Chinese foundations. In the last 3 years, this database has produced about 30 academic works that address at least three themes of Chinese foundations, namely government control, governance and spatial distribution. Collectively this group of studies has advanced non-profit theory development under authoritarian rule. This article reviews what we have learned from research using the Research Infrastructure of Chinese Foundations database and proposes directions for future research.
Asia Pacific Journal of Public Administration, 2018
The Regulations on the Management of Foundations (2004) potentially marked a watershed in the dev... more The Regulations on the Management of Foundations (2004) potentially marked a watershed in the development of foundations in China. Many practitioners and researchers believe that, since then, foundations have become an independent sector with significant characteristics. This note addresses this matter, based on available data from various sources. It counters the belief about the independence of foundations by indicating that most are state-linked, with state-granted privileges in choosing their fundraising status and the policy areas in which they work. Their state connections serve, at least in part, to explain their structures and modes of operation.
A central theme in contemporary China scholarship is the state-society relations, in particular, ... more A central theme in contemporary China scholarship is the state-society relations, in particular, the government-NGO relations. However, despite the understanding that the government plays an important role in NGO development and differentiates its relations with NGOs, we still don’t know why and how. This paper adopts the critical discourse analysis approach to examine the foundation mission statements. The finding of distinct patterns of “harmony” and “obeying the law” allows the author to construct a two-dimensional control mechanism composed of government’s intention to co-opt or restrict a foundation. Through multinomial logistic regression, the paper finds that foundation funding sufficiency leads to government’s strong intention to co-opt and weak intention to restrict. That is, resource dependence can break certain institutional constraints such as government ties and issue sensitivity. It proves the Chinese government can adapt to the socioeconomic conditions and impose calculated control over foundations accordingly.
As the civil society and corporatism theories have been frequently challenged recently, alternati... more As the civil society and corporatism theories have been frequently challenged recently, alternative theories emerged to investigate the government-ngo relationship in China. Some new theories are largely related to resource dependence or share core ideas with it. This paper conducts a comprehensive review of the resource dependence theory. It identifies four groups of variables (organizational characteristics, board of directors, attitude and value, and external environment), finds support for their relevance from both Western and China scholarship, and applies them to the Chinese context. The resource dependence theory has the potential of empirically examining the relationship without over-focusing on the state or society. It is capable of explaining the dynamic and diverse relationships between the government and various ngos in China.
Since the 2004 Regulations of Administration of Foundations, there has been limited research on C... more Since the 2004 Regulations of Administration of Foundations, there has been limited research on Chinese foundations’ financial health. Considering the importance of foundations in the nonprofit sector, this is a needed task. The present paper conducts an empirical evaluation of their financial health using 2,763 foundations with 10,102 observations. Tuckman and Chang (1991), which measures adequacy of equity, revenue diversification, administrative cost ratio and operating margin, reveals that 1) two thirds of the Chinese foundations are financially unhealthy; 2) 2008 to 2013, foundations’ overall financial health saw moderate improvement. Public foundations outperformed private foundations; and 3) new foundations may improve their health at a faster pace than older foundations. However, the financial health scores prove that we should interpret the results conservatively, because the quality of their health improvement is between low to moderate. The decreased number of unhealthy f...
Corporation foundation is one of the most popular tools for Chinese corporations and entrepreneur... more Corporation foundation is one of the most popular tools for Chinese corporations and entrepreneurs to carry out their charitable activities. However, do these foundations play a role in the development of Chinese civil society and in what ways? Followed by a brief introduction on the history, regulations, and rational of the establishment of Chinese corporate foundations, the major body of work aims to appraise the aforementioned topic under the framework of roles of nonpoint organizations (i.e., service, value guardian, advocacy, and social capital), with a focus on service and social capital dimensions. Our empirical data analysis shows that Chinese corporate foundations have been enhancing the civil society through its mission centrality on the pressing societal issues, larger expenditure on charitable activities, and adequate equity and lower amounts on administrative costs in carrying out their missions. A public space is being created through the commitment of corporate foundations to expressing pluralism, volunteer mobilization, and an ever-growing ability to attract donations. However, its role to civil society can also be limited due to modest numbers of full-time staff and their relatively low performance ratings or accountability.
International Review on Public and Nonprofit Marketing, 2024
Nonprofit organizations receive charitable contributions from both institutional donors and indiv... more Nonprofit organizations receive charitable contributions from both institutional donors and individual donors. Existing studies have traditionally focused on factors related to nonprofits' total donation income rather than exploring similarity and difference in the two types of donors' preference for donation recipients. Following Wang's (2023) call for the distinction between institutional donors (i.e., corporations) and individual donors, this study regresses corporate giving and individual giving separately on four themes of explanatory variables, namely organizational legitimacy, political connections, organizational attributes, and environmental factors, of a sample of 2,021 Chinese foundations for the year 2013. The results showed that multiple variables are related to corporate giving and individual giving differently to varying degrees. This study suggests future research (1) consider the potentially different effects of predictors on multiple sources of giving when analyzing nonprofits' total donation income and (2) theorize the different preferences of the two types of donors.
Voluntary certification that signals nonprofit organizations’ legitimacy has been found to be pos... more Voluntary certification that signals nonprofit organizations’ legitimacy has been found to be positively related to charitable donations in Europe and North America. However, whether these proxies of organizational legitimacy matter under authoritarian regimes where political connections are deemed critical for resource acquisition has not been explored. Based on a sample of 2,021 Chinese foundations, this article finds that organizational legitimacy achieved through certification is tied to an increase in charitable donations. Meanwhile, organizational legitimacy tends to negatively moderate the relationship between foundations’ political affiliation and charitable donations. That is, certification lifts the amount of charitable donations to civic foundations that are not formally affiliated with the state more than it does for politically affiliated foundations. As the first quantitative study on the effect of voluntary nonprofit certification programs on charitable donations outside Western democracies, this article contributes to our understanding of fundraising in China and other authoritarian states.
The literature on NGOs under authoritarian rule largely attributes NGOs' receipt of government gr... more The literature on NGOs under authoritarian rule largely attributes NGOs' receipt of government grants to their political connections. This article presents an alternative explanation by asking the question: Does nonprofit organizational legitimacy influence the receipt of government grants under authoritarianism? Applying logit regression to 2,021 Chinese foundations, this article proposes that passing the nonprofit evaluation, which is one of the major certification programs in the country's nonprofit sector, is positively related to the probability of receiving government grants. Subsample analysis reveals that nonprofit evaluation is influential for the receipt of government grants primarily among foundations formally affiliated with government agencies. This article provides for the first time evidence that contemporary authoritarian regimes appreciate nonprofit organizational legitimacy, albeit still in a highly politicized manner.
This article analyzes the recent 14th Five-Year Plan for Social Organization Development, which s... more This article analyzes the recent 14th Five-Year Plan for Social Organization Development, which signifies the Chinese party-state's comprehensive planning for NGOs in the years 2021-2025. By clarifying the guiding ideology, basic principles, goals, targets, and tasks, the Plan stresses a dual political-regulatory mechanism that drives China's nonprofit sector further in transitioning from an emerging organizational field to a manufactured civil society and shifts nonprofit policy fragmentation toward institutionalization. The Plan manifests centralized means to corral NGOs into a disciplined and capable nonprofit sector that subordinates itself to and enhances the authoritarian regime. Implications drawn from this article update policy analysts on state-NGO relations and the trajectory of the nonprofit sector in China.
Under authoritarianism, nonprofits establish formal political connections at the organizational l... more Under authoritarianism, nonprofits establish formal political connections at the organizational level when they are affiliated with the state or at the individual level when they have government officials assume managerial positions. From the perspective of multilevel interorganizational relations, this study uses a sample of Chinese foundations to investigate the association of the two levels of political connections and their interactions with a wide range of nonprofit revenues.
Corporation foundation is one of the most popular tools for Chinese corporations and entrepreneur... more Corporation foundation is one of the most popular tools for Chinese corporations and entrepreneurs to carry out their charitable activities. However, do these foundations play a role in the development of Chinese civil society and in what ways? Followed by a brief introduction on the history, regulations, and rational of the establishment of Chinese corporate foundations, the major body of work aims to appraise the aforementioned topic under the framework of roles of nonpoint organizations (i.e., service, value guardian, advocacy, and social capital), with a focus on service and social capital dimensions. Our empirical data analysis shows that Chinese corporate foundations have been enhancing the civil society through its mission centrality on the pressing societal issues, larger expenditure on charitable activities, and adequate equity and lower amounts on administrative costs in carrying out their missions. A public space is being created through the commitment of corporate founda...
• Chinese foundations flourished in the 21st century, and empirical studies emerged to address mu... more • Chinese foundations flourished in the 21st century, and empirical studies emerged to address multiple aspects of their activities and relations with the government. Yet there has been little research synthetically reviewing their development and operation. As a result, we often lack the knowledge of the context in which these organizations interact with state and society. • This article divides the history of Chinese foundations into three phases: in search of identity, 1978–2004; in search of legal status, 2004–2016; and in search of the role in civil society, from 2016 onward. Within those three periods, it also examines overseas foundations and their representative offices in China. The discussion covers the normative and contextualized foundation operations in regard to the legal, political, and economic environment during each phase. • This article not only helps readers understand and interpret findings from research on Chinese foundations, but also provides practical information to Chinese and non-Chinese practitioners who work, or will work, for or with foundations in China.
Since the 18th National Congress of the Communist Party of China, the party-state has established... more Since the 18th National Congress of the Communist Party of China, the party-state has established a number of policies on social organizations. Some policies are complementary, whereas some seem to be contradictory. These policies are associated with two policy approaches. The first is socially oriented, allowing social organizations the opportunity for autonomy and encouraging capacity-building. The second is political integration mainly through party-building in social organizations. The two approaches do not exist alone or in isolation. Intertwined they indicate that the Chinese party-state has begun to institutionalize an integrative control mechanism to maximize the utility of social organizations in prioritized fields of work.
Asia Pacific Journal of Public Administration, 2020
Foundations have become a significant form of nongovernmental organisation in China since 2004. L... more Foundations have become a significant form of nongovernmental organisation in China since 2004. Large-sample research about Chinese foundations, however, did not appear until the middle 2010s. The database of the Research Infrastructure of Chinese Foundations was created to mitigate data scarcity, a key reason for the lack of research on Chinese foundations. In the last 3 years, this database has produced about 30 academic works that address at least three themes of Chinese foundations, namely government control, governance and spatial distribution. Collectively this group of studies has advanced non-profit theory development under authoritarian rule. This article reviews what we have learned from research using the Research Infrastructure of Chinese Foundations database and proposes directions for future research.
Asia Pacific Journal of Public Administration, 2018
The Regulations on the Management of Foundations (2004) potentially marked a watershed in the dev... more The Regulations on the Management of Foundations (2004) potentially marked a watershed in the development of foundations in China. Many practitioners and researchers believe that, since then, foundations have become an independent sector with significant characteristics. This note addresses this matter, based on available data from various sources. It counters the belief about the independence of foundations by indicating that most are state-linked, with state-granted privileges in choosing their fundraising status and the policy areas in which they work. Their state connections serve, at least in part, to explain their structures and modes of operation.
A central theme in contemporary China scholarship is the state-society relations, in particular, ... more A central theme in contemporary China scholarship is the state-society relations, in particular, the government-NGO relations. However, despite the understanding that the government plays an important role in NGO development and differentiates its relations with NGOs, we still don’t know why and how. This paper adopts the critical discourse analysis approach to examine the foundation mission statements. The finding of distinct patterns of “harmony” and “obeying the law” allows the author to construct a two-dimensional control mechanism composed of government’s intention to co-opt or restrict a foundation. Through multinomial logistic regression, the paper finds that foundation funding sufficiency leads to government’s strong intention to co-opt and weak intention to restrict. That is, resource dependence can break certain institutional constraints such as government ties and issue sensitivity. It proves the Chinese government can adapt to the socioeconomic conditions and impose calculated control over foundations accordingly.
As the civil society and corporatism theories have been frequently challenged recently, alternati... more As the civil society and corporatism theories have been frequently challenged recently, alternative theories emerged to investigate the government-ngo relationship in China. Some new theories are largely related to resource dependence or share core ideas with it. This paper conducts a comprehensive review of the resource dependence theory. It identifies four groups of variables (organizational characteristics, board of directors, attitude and value, and external environment), finds support for their relevance from both Western and China scholarship, and applies them to the Chinese context. The resource dependence theory has the potential of empirically examining the relationship without over-focusing on the state or society. It is capable of explaining the dynamic and diverse relationships between the government and various ngos in China.
Since the 2004 Regulations of Administration of Foundations, there has been limited research on C... more Since the 2004 Regulations of Administration of Foundations, there has been limited research on Chinese foundations’ financial health. Considering the importance of foundations in the nonprofit sector, this is a needed task. The present paper conducts an empirical evaluation of their financial health using 2,763 foundations with 10,102 observations. Tuckman and Chang (1991), which measures adequacy of equity, revenue diversification, administrative cost ratio and operating margin, reveals that 1) two thirds of the Chinese foundations are financially unhealthy; 2) 2008 to 2013, foundations’ overall financial health saw moderate improvement. Public foundations outperformed private foundations; and 3) new foundations may improve their health at a faster pace than older foundations. However, the financial health scores prove that we should interpret the results conservatively, because the quality of their health improvement is between low to moderate. The decreased number of unhealthy f...
Corporation foundation is one of the most popular tools for Chinese corporations and entrepreneur... more Corporation foundation is one of the most popular tools for Chinese corporations and entrepreneurs to carry out their charitable activities. However, do these foundations play a role in the development of Chinese civil society and in what ways? Followed by a brief introduction on the history, regulations, and rational of the establishment of Chinese corporate foundations, the major body of work aims to appraise the aforementioned topic under the framework of roles of nonpoint organizations (i.e., service, value guardian, advocacy, and social capital), with a focus on service and social capital dimensions. Our empirical data analysis shows that Chinese corporate foundations have been enhancing the civil society through its mission centrality on the pressing societal issues, larger expenditure on charitable activities, and adequate equity and lower amounts on administrative costs in carrying out their missions. A public space is being created through the commitment of corporate foundations to expressing pluralism, volunteer mobilization, and an ever-growing ability to attract donations. However, its role to civil society can also be limited due to modest numbers of full-time staff and their relatively low performance ratings or accountability.
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Papers by Qun Wang