Exploring the Dynamics of Human Service Nonprofit Dissolution: An Analysis of Ecological Contexts and Organizational Competencies

Our study examines how changes in community characteristics intersect with nonprofit management competency to explain the dissolution of US human service nonprofits from 2007 to 2018. Our county-level fixed effects survival analysis revealed that a community's economic environment, social environment, and organization-level resources relate to a decreased dissolution rate. A community's political environment and a density of human service nonprofit organizations are associated with an increased risk of dissolution. However, looking at interactions between micro- and macro-level factors showed that the relationships between ecological factors and nonprofit dissolution do not differ by nonprofits' resource management competencies. This research highlights the intricate dynamics impacting human service nonprofit dissolution, combining insights from organizational ecology and the resource-based view.