Exploring the Moderators of the Relationship between Nonprofit Sector Size and Its Societal Impact: A Meta-Analysis

Abstract

Assessing the impact of the nonprofit sector on society has been one of the most fundamental yet challenging questions in public and nonprofit management scholarship. Built on a recent systematic literature review published in VOLUNTAS (Cheng & Choi, 2022), our meta-analysis synthesizes the existing literature from multiple disciplines and fills this critical knowledge gap. Using 357 effects from 29 studies, our moderation analysis shows that a larger nonprofit sector has a more positive impact on society especially when the impact is political and measured at the city/county level. Studies that used fixed effects models and quasi-experimental designs also found a more positive societal impact of the nonprofit sector. However, the choice of sector size measure, the selection of impact measure, the use of lagged explanatory variables, publication bias, and publication time seem not to matter.