August 19, 2004 | Read Time: 2 minutes
Independent Sector, a coalition of 600 charities and foundations, has announced that it plans to greatly reduce the amount of original research that it conducts and concentrate instead on ensuring that work done by academic and other researchers is distributed throughout the nonprofit world. The changes come as the organization is undertaking a restructuring of its operations.
Gordon Green, Independent Sector’s vice president of research, and Chris Toppe, its director of philanthropic studies, have left Independent Sector. Mr. Green is now a research associate at the American Enterprise Institute, while Mr. Toppe will be joining the Points of Light Foundation in September.
Diana Aviv, president of Independent Sector, said the group has not yet completed the reorganization, and has not reached a final decision on whether to continue publishing two books based on its research, The Nonprofit Almanac and Desk Reference, which Independent Sector puts out jointly with the Urban Institute’s Center on Nonprofits and Philanthropy, and Giving and Volunteering, a nationwide survey of how much money and time Americans give to charity. She added, however, “It’s unlikely we’ll be doing Giving and Volunteering, and if we do, our role will probably be more of a supporting role.”
The reason for the changes, Ms. Aviv said, is that the needs of nonprofit organizations are different than they were in 1980, when Independent Sector was founded. At that time, few organizations were conducting any research into nonprofit issues. “Since then, a large number of institutions have been created that are devoted in very particular ways to research on the nonprofit sector,” she said. Those institutions include centers for the study of nonprofit organizations at several of the nation’s most prestigious universities, Ms. Aviv added.
The reduced need for Independent Sector to conduct its own research, Ms. Aviv added, “is a success story.”
The group is adding a new Department of Emerging Issues and Special Programs, to help distribute research results and encourage interaction among researchers and people operating nonprofit organizations.
“We want to help share what has been discovered,” Ms. Aviv said. “We also want to bring together researchers and practitioners, so that those in the field can say to the academic world, this is the kind of research we need to have done.”
