Recipient Organization
UNIVERSITY OF FLORIDA
G022 MCCARTY HALL
GAINESVILLE,FL 32611
Performing Department
Family Youth and Community Sciences
Non Technical Summary
As a land grant institution, UF/IFAS is compelled to support engagement between citizens and the state. Nonprofit organizations (NPOs) also reside in this space between citizens and the state as contracted service providers and political advocates. Public charities such as human services organizations and organizations addressing the concerns of the environment and animals are funded in part through federal, state, and local government. For public charities in the US in 2012, fees and goods from government sources made up 23.1% of revenue and government grants made up another 9.2% (McKeever & Pettijohn, 2014). U.S. Department of Agriculture funds are distributed to nonprofit education institutions like charter schools and preschools, which serve meals to low income children. NPOs providing human services or support for farmers facilitate citizen access to the federal Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP). The Departments of Housing, Justice, and Health and Human Services also fund NPOs through competitive and formulaic grant programs to fulfill the departments' legislative purposes. This means that NPOs are charged with public policy implementation in rural and urban communities throughout the country. However, accessing public services can be burdensome both for the citizen in need of public goods and for NPOs seeking government funding. Moynihan and Herd define this onerous experience with public services as administrative burden (2018). These onerous burdens are experiences like excessive bureaucratic paperwork, impersonal service provision regarding personal matters, accountability processes, and multiple levels of oversight. Administrative burdens are often driven by public policy efforts towards accountability and transparency. The problem emerges when the public value of accountability overshadows the public values of equity, sustainability, and efficiency. When people engage with service providers in costly ways, they are less likely to take up benefits or services (Bennet, 1995; Brodkin & Majmundar, 2010).The administrative burden framework has been successfully applied to direct relationships between government and citizens such as accessing publicly-subsidized health care, voting, and SNAP (Herd & Moynihan, 2018). We can learn from programs that have successfully reduced administrative burdens like the distribution of U.S. Social Security benefits (Herd & Moynihan, 2018) and the trend among libraries to eliminate late fees. Automated public benefit renewal systems and streamlined communication between providers are structural designs that improve the user experience and reduce burdens. Less is known about administrative burden when resource-strapped NPOs serve as liaisons. A better understanding of the learning, compliance, and psychological costs at this intersection will help us understand the family's, individual's, and organization's take-up of public services. Reducing the friction in the interactions between citizens and third-party providers of public services must be a priority because NPOs will continue to serve in this role and as a conduit to public benefits.I will use a three stage analysis to define the citizen's and NPO's experience with administrative burdens and then develop public policy solutions. First, I will conduct interview and field observations to assess users' administrative experiences with NPOs, specifically during the take-up of services, employment, and seeking volunteering opportunities. Second, I will develop and validate a scale for calculating costs of administrative burden in publicly-funded human service NPOs. These scales will be used to determine at what point individuals choose to no longer seek services because of the high costs of the administrative burden. Through a series of focus groups, I will build a weighting system for the learning, compliance, and psychological costs and their impact on decision-making in the take-up of services. This will allow me to calculate learning, compliance, and psychological costs of administrative burden on individuals, NPOs, and government entities. Finally, I will conduct process mapping and policy tracing to identify the source of administrative burdens. I will use the findings from these three stages of analysis to build policy tools and administrative solutions to mitigate administrative burden within NPOs and then test their efficacy.
Animal Health Component
(N/A)
Research Effort Categories
Basic
100%
Applied
(N/A)
Developmental
(N/A)
Goals / Objectives
The goal of this research is to apply theories from public administration to understand the users' administrative experience with NPOs. I will focus on the subsector of 501(c)3 human service NPOs that address intimate partner violence, family violence, and youth violence, such as domestic violence shelters, rape crisis centers, and child advocacy centers. Other organizations of interest that intersect with the issue but do not directly address it are mental health and substance abuse treatment centers and community action agencies. These organizations provide complex services linked to multiple public policy initiatives. Organizations in this subsector serve as the liaison between the individual and public benefits and as a result are heavily dependent on government funding. State agencies like Florida Department of Children and Families, Department of Health, and the Office of the Attorney General must ensure access to such services throughout the state. Federal and state policy on victim services, health, and welfare provision must be implemented equitably to all Floridians. This means that human service NPOs must effectively serve rural and urban areas with varying demographic makeups throughout the state. This research will help me develop policy tools and administrative solutions for streamlined stakeholder access to NPOs, with a focus on building the capacity of NPO administrators and their public funders. The specific objectives of this research are:Objective 1: To assess users' administrative experiences with NPOs, specifically during the take-up of services, employment, and seeking volunteering opportunities.Objective 2: To calculate learning, compliance, and psychological costs of administrative burden on individuals, NPOs, and government entities.Objective 3: To build policy tools and administrative solutions to mitigate administrative burden within NPOs and test their efficacy.
Project Methods
Objective 1: Assess users' administrative experiences with NPOs, specifically during the take-up of services and seeking volunteering opportunities. I will answer the research question, what are the consequences of administrative burdens for the take-up of NPO services? First, I will examine the take-up of public services of human service NPOs to identify the user's risks to privacy, self-protection, identity, or self-mastery. Data will include interviews with staff and service recipients, field notes, and document analysis. Institutional ethnography will be employed to understand how service recipients and NPO staff engage through administrative tasks (Smith, 2006). To ensure external credibility, I will focus this study on NPOs borne of social movements who now are dependent on public dollars (Majic, 2011; Onwuegbuzie1& Leech, 2006). This includes NPOs serving families, youth, and communities such as domestic violence advocacy organizations, rape crisis centers, substance abuse treatment centers, and community action agencies. These organizations have a shared experience in the more recent taking on of government funding to address their mission areas. This distinguishes them from organizations like education and health entities.Second, I will conduct an analysis of volunteer onboarding in volunteer-dependent organizations, like 4-H, local NPOs, and local governmental agencies. This will allow me to locate barriers and complexities in the onboarding process that deter potential volunteers. Only NPOs dependent on government funding will be included. This limits the scope of NPOs to human service, education, and health organizations. Research assistants will seek volunteer, service learning tasks and gather information about the recruitment and onboarding of volunteers. They will document their experiences in field notes and photographs and will assemble a packet of the administrative paperwork from recruitment to their first day volunteering. Research assistants will be provided an instrument for streamlined documentation of learning, compliance, and psychological costs in relation to their onboarding experience. To ensure this research project does not create an additional burden for these NPOs, research assistants will only engage where they can complete the volunteer obligation (i.e., practicum students, interns, and community service hours for school credit). I will use Nvivo software for data management and analysis. This series of studies will take place over Years 1, 2, and 3.Objective 2: Calculate learning, compliance, and psychological costs of administrative burden on individuals, NPOs, and government entities. I will answer the following research questions, (1) how do individuals and organizations respond to burdens in terms of program participation? and (2) how do people respond the experience of psychological costs? I will begin the study focusing on psychological costs because these costs may be more prevalent to the take up of services in human service NPOs as discussed above. First, I will develop and validate a scale for calculating costs of administrative burden in publicly-funded human service NPOs, building on the findings from Objective 1. These scales can be used to determine at what point individuals choose to no longer seek services because of the cost of the administrative burden. Through a series of focus groups, I will build a weighting system for the learning, compliance, and psychological costs and their impact on decision-making in the take-up of services. This form of member-checking/informant feedback will help ensure internal credibility (Onwuegbuzie1& Leech, 2006). I will test this scale through a series of behavioral studies. This analysis will help uncover what factors make users more or less tolerant of burdens. This series of studies will take place over Years 2, 3, and 4.Second, I will assess the decision-making within NPOs about applying for and managing public grants. Fifteen direct service organizations in Florida will be included in the study, ranging in budget size and scope of services. Data collection will take place in Years 2 and 3 and will include interviews with leaders, grant writers, and contract managers; onsite observations; and observations of grantee meetings hosted by a public funder. Analysis will include content and document analysis (Hsieh & Shannon, 2007; Bowen, 2009). A codebook will be created for calculating learning, compliance, and psychological costs to the organization. I will assess impact of the costs on the organization's decision to apply for competitive public grants and what factors make administrators more or less tolerant of burdens. This series of studies will take place over Years 2, 3, and 4.Objective 3: Build administrative solutions and policy tools to mitigate administrative burden within NPOs and test their efficacy. First, I will answer the research question, under what circumstances do public authorities impose burdens on individuals and NPOs? Policy tracing will be conducted to identify formal policy influencing the learning, compliance, and psychological costs in the take-up of service in human services NPOs. Building on the administrative tasks identified in Objectives 1 and 2, I will select one series of required tasks impacting individuals and one series of tasks impacting organizations. I will locate the agency policy, administrative rule, and/or statutory law codifying the administrative tasks. When administrative rule or statutory policy is identified, I will identify its origination and influences. Data will include agency policy manuals, legislative committee reports and hearings, news reports, and voting records. This analysis will shed light on the democratic influences on (1) how policymaker beliefs and actions contribute to the creation of burdens, (2) under what circumstances public authorities impose burdens on individuals and NPOs, and (3) what factors make policymakers more or less tolerant of burdens.Next, public and organizational policy will be developed to reduce or eliminate these costs. These policy solutions will be presented to NPO leaders for feedback on their potential efficacy. Public policy solutions will be provided to NPO leaders for testing through democratic means. NPO leaders may propose these solutions to municipal elected bodies or state legislatures. Organizational policy solutions will be tested in an NPO for efficacy though formative evaluation. These steps will build on Objectives 1 and 2 and take place in Years 4 and 5.