Many beneficiaries of nonprofit and nongovernmental goods and services have a variety of simultaneous needs, such as those related to housing, food, education, employment, and healthcare. This is because these issues are not independent; one crisis can create an unfortunate domino effect in people’s lives. Yet, nonprofit organizations are typically specialized in one particular area. Therefore, people in need must mobilize and aggregate goods and services from multiple different organizations. This places a high effort cost on people who are least able to afford it. Recognizing this obstacle to effective and efficient provision, some community organizations or government agencies go “above and beyond” by working with partner organizations to bring a variety of different goods and services to their own location, thereby aggregating those goods and services for the community. In this chapter, we formally define these critically important but largely overlooked community organizations as aggregator organizations. While some organizations are created with a mission to aggregate goods and services from multiple providers, it is more common that single-focus nonprofit organizations or community schools and clinics build partnerships and become aggregator organizations in response to the multidimensional needs in the population they serve. This chapter motivates the need for new research on how to design and leverage aggregator organizations to improve frontline nonprofit operations and discusses potential areas to explore.

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Rethinking Frontline Nonprofit Operations: The Role of Aggregator Organizations

  • Samantha M. Keppler

摘要

Many beneficiaries of nonprofit and nongovernmental goods and services have a variety of simultaneous needs, such as those related to housing, food, education, employment, and healthcare. This is because these issues are not independent; one crisis can create an unfortunate domino effect in people’s lives. Yet, nonprofit organizations are typically specialized in one particular area. Therefore, people in need must mobilize and aggregate goods and services from multiple different organizations. This places a high effort cost on people who are least able to afford it. Recognizing this obstacle to effective and efficient provision, some community organizations or government agencies go “above and beyond” by working with partner organizations to bring a variety of different goods and services to their own location, thereby aggregating those goods and services for the community. In this chapter, we formally define these critically important but largely overlooked community organizations as aggregator organizations. While some organizations are created with a mission to aggregate goods and services from multiple providers, it is more common that single-focus nonprofit organizations or community schools and clinics build partnerships and become aggregator organizations in response to the multidimensional needs in the population they serve. This chapter motivates the need for new research on how to design and leverage aggregator organizations to improve frontline nonprofit operations and discusses potential areas to explore.