Author ORCID Identifier

https://orcid.org/0009-0005-4455-080X

Document Type

Dissertation

Date of Award

Spring 5-21-2017

Keywords

crowdsourcing in nonprofits, nonprofit capacity building, Bar-Kayma Jerusalem case study, BanKayma CS apparatus, financial capital impact, human resources in nonprofits, structural capital analysis, Jerusalem nonprofit organizations, Israel nonprofit sector, motivational crowd participation

Degree Name

Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

Department

Community Research and Action

First Advisor

Josephine A. V. Allen

Second Advisor

Serdar Atav

Third Advisor

Lubna N. Chaudhry

Abstract

While there is considerable information on the crowdsourcing (CS) phenomenon among online and for-profit organizations (Kittur, Chi, & Suh, 2008; Sufen, Zhonghui, & Feng, 2013), our understanding about the phenomenon among nonprofit organizations is limited (Brabham, 2008). The purpose of this dissertation is to examine how integrating a CS apparatus among nonprofit organizations impacts their capacity. The study drew on Hall et al.’s (2003) conceptual model, in which the capacity of a nonprofit organization is determined by its financial, human resources, and structural capitals.

Bar-Kayma (BK), a nonprofit umbrella organization that assists groups of Organized Artists Collectives (OACs) in Jerusalem, was used as a case-study. Beginning in May 2016, BK implemented a CS apparatus, called BanKayma (BNK). Participants in the research included fifteen individuals associated with BK. A quasi-experimental interrupted time-series design was formulated, and a mixture of quantitative and qualitative techniques were utilized to evaluate the impact of BNK on each of BK’s three organizational capitals. Financial capital was evaluated using an interrupted time-series model. Human resources and structural capital were evaluated using a combination of quantitative and qualitative techniques. Quantitative analyses included descriptive statistics, t-tests, and ARIMA. Qualitative analyses relied on the empirical phenomenology approach, to investigate participants’ experiences.

The results show that BNK had a positive effect on BK’s financial and human resources capitals. While quantitative analyses did not yield evidence for a change in the organizational structural capital, qualitative analyses led to reconstruction of the causal relationships, as BK’s structural capital was high prior to the implementation of BNK, and remained so afterwards. Intrinsically, the dissertation describes how a nonprofit organization that implemented a crowdsourcing apparatus successfully increased its capacity. The documented empirical experience of BK will provide entrepreneurs in other locations the example of the BanKayma model. Future research may draw on this study through replicating the examined CS apparatus and evaluating the suggested impact model in similar environments. Finally, this study provides an unprecedented documentation of empirical implementation of a CS apparatus within a nonprofit organization. As such, it has the potential to contribute to our understanding of motivational conditions for crowd participation.

Creative Commons License

Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

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