Shen Yongdong, Zhejiang University
There is a general consensus in the existing literature that government funding plays an important role in improving the performance of human services nonprofit organizations. However, most of these studies focus on Western countries and we do not know the mechanisms through which such impacts take place in non-Western contexts. Taking advantage of a unique dataset of central government funding to nonprofits in China, we find that private donations (Treasure), volunteers (Time), and network quality (Tie) are important mediators in this government funding–nonprofit performance relationship. While private donations mediate the impact of government funding on both types of nonprofit performance, volunteers and network quality only have a mediating impact on service delivery and policy advocacy, respectively. These findings suggest that government funding leverages divergent resources to influence nonprofit performance adapting local contexts.