Nonprofits as a Resilient Sector: Implications for Public Policy

Abstract

Lester Salamon first characterized nonprofits in the United States as “the resilient sector” in 2003. He based this characterization on the sector’s growth, its ability to adapt to new economic and political conditions over time and its increasingly adaptive entrepreneurial culture. The view of nonprofits as resilient institutions has been reinforced since by their performance in recent crises including the COVID pandemic beginning in 2020 and the financial crisis of 2008–2009, though not without exception or assurance that nonprofits would necessarily be resilient in future crises. This paper examines some of the strategies nonprofits have employed to navigate recent crises and prepare themselves for less certain futures. It also teases apart the nature of resilience, asking how resilience at the organizational level differs from network level and sector-level resilience. Such differences have important implications for public policy vis-à-vis nonprofits. In particular, policies that would strengthen nonprofits at the organizational level may differ from, even conflict with, those that would strengthen the nonprofit sector as a whole.