Identifying essential nonprofits with a novel NLP Method

In this research note, we propose a classification method for identifying whether a 501c3 nonprofit organization is considered essential for economic recovery. During the first few months of the COVID-19 pandemic, many nonprofit organizations experienced negative financial effects from the economic recession. While these nonprofits saw increased demand for their services, the weakness in the overall economy led to a decline in donations. Fiscal assistance by local, state, and federal government to essential organizations was a critical element to an economic recovery, and governments needed to prioritize aid to the most essential organizations first. By identifying essential nonprofit organizations in advance, these organizations could quickly and efficiently receive financial assistance. Using descriptive text data provided by Ohio nonprofit organizations in their IRS tax filings, we propose a novel natural language processing (NLP) technique to measure the degree of "essentialness" to a nonprofit's work. We show that our model offers an improvement to the classification system known as the National Taxonomy of Exempt Organizations (NTEE). Our machine learning model is also compared to an independent evaluation of a nonprofit's essentialness produced by human researchers.

Leveraging the organizational mission statement to communicate identity, distinctiveness and purpose to primary and secondary stakeholders during COVID-19

Purpose>This study examines comprehensiveness and responsiveness of mission statements for the top 100 retailers on the 2020 National Retailers Federation list in order to (1) evaluate how effectively they communicate organizational identity, values and purpose, (2) underscore a distinctive commitment to stakeholders and (3) what extent these efforts are reflected in revised mission statements or addenda to meet global pandemic challenges.Design/methodology/approach>The study employs a 4-question metric to measure comprehensiveness and a two-pronged qualitative method of analysis consisting of keyword searches followed by content analysis.Findings>Retailer statements are considerably comprehensive in describing purpose and audience yet very few articulate stakeholder value, differentiate themselves as distinctive or substantively reaffirm their core mission and values. Retailers seem more invested in strategic communication around diversity, equity and inclusion, based on web content in their consumer, job seeker and investor touchpoints.Research limitations/implications>Coding and interpreting language through content analysis methods may introduce some level of subjectivity, particularly when dealing with unstructured data. Implications for how organizations acclimated in order to survive and thrive, while maintaining focus on stakeholders and strategy. Examining organizational mission statements and their contexts yields perspective into how organizations define themselves and what they do during times of crisis.Originality/value>This study provides insights into the content, structure and functions of the statements against a specific comprehensiveness metric and reveals patterns about the texts and their contexts during a pandemic and strong cultural and societal movements.

From the Editors: 2021, in Words

How might those annual "word of the year" choices-both in the US and abroad-work as a heuristic for thinking about 2021? Because this "moment" has lasted for almost two years now, we thought we'd start by looking at the words of year for 2020. In Australia, it was "strollout" (as in, a very slow rollout of vaccines) for both the Australian National Dictionary Centre and Macquarie Dictionary. Because of this small heuristic experiment, we no longer feel so alone in our inability to capture the current moment. Drawing from a range of disciplinary perspectives, Carrie Hall's "'How am I Supposed to Watch a Little Piece of Paper?': Literacy and Learning Under Duress" carefully considers the inequitably distributed attentional difficulties that writing students face when attempting to focus on writing in moments of duress, whether from personal trauma or ambient threat. [...]Kristin Bennett's "Tracing Ableism's Rhetorical Circulation through an Analysis of Composition Mission Statements" reports on a systematic study of writing program mission statements, noting where attempts to be both inclusive and standardized lead to language that is, instead, exclusive of meaningful difference.