January 19, 2004

Stressed but Coping: Nonprofit Organizations and the Current Fiscal Crisis

A key group of U.S. nonprofit organizations experienced significant fiscal stress during 2003, but managed to cope with it successfully. As a result, the vast majority of these organizations boosted their revenues in the face of often-difficult economic pressures and expanded their activities in the process. These results emerge from a new survey just completed by the Johns Hopkins Center for Civil Society Studies as part of our Listening Post Project. Focusing on a nationwide sample of nonprofit organizations that belong to national umbrella groups in five fields - children and family services, elderly services and housing, community and economic development, museums, and theaters - this survey is the most comprehensive effort to date to document the actual effects of recent economic weakness and government budget cuts on a significant group of the nations charitable organizations and those they serve, and to assess how the organizations have responded.