The international humanitarian system’s localization agenda increasingly relies on digital technologies to coordinate local and global actors. While NGO literature emphasizes digital literacy (DL) as the primary driver of transformative digital integration, this study examines how environmental constraints shape the relationship between DL and NGO digital integration outcomes. Through a comparative analysis of 16 Nigerian NGOs across infrastructure-rich Ogun State and infrastructure-poor Borno State, findings reveal that environmental barriers create a skill-implementation gap where even highly skilled NGOs cannot translate capabilities into transformative integration due to three barriers: infrastructure gaps, bandwidth ceilings, and beneficiary connectivity limitations. Borno NGOs consequently experienced constraints in maintaining digitally mediated accountability to donors, beneficiaries, other NGOs, and staff. These findings reveal that digital skill building alone cannot address humanitarian accountability challenges without parallel infrastructure development.

How did the climate movement, so strong and dynamic after 2018 face such a sharp backlash even in eco-minded democratic environments? To answer this question, this article analyses political strategies and the media discourse regarding climate activism in Austria. Drawing on theoretical notions of changing civic spaces and civil society capture, we illustrate how delegitimization lays the groundwork for multiple forms of repression. Ultimately, activists and civil society scale back their activities, while public support diminishes. Methodologically, we take a mixed-methods approach and combine interviews with civil society representatives with a quantitative analysis of newspaper articles. Our contribution is twofold: first, we validate and expand upon the civil society capture model through empirical investigation; second, we enrich the social movements literature by analyzing the conditions and effects of repression.

Nonprofit organizations are expected to collaborate with peers to advance social good while simultaneously competing for scarce resources such as funding, volunteers, and legitimacy. This paradox of “coopetition” has been explored structurally, but less is known about how nonprofit employees themselves communicate these tensions. Drawing on 82 hours of meeting data from a mid-sized U.S. nonprofit, this exploratory study examined moments where employees explicitly discussed both collaboration and competition. Constant comparative analysis revealed three themes that represent communicative mechanisms through which employees made the tension between collaboration and competition manageable: framing coopetition as benefiting the community, admiring and replicating others’ practices, and setting boundary conditions on collaboration and competition. These findings demonstrate how nonprofit employees in meetings reframed both collaboration and competition as community-oriented while also setting boundaries around when and how each occurs. Competitive talk became acceptable through communicative mechanisms including moral reframing, allowing employees to reconcile competition with nonprofit norms. This research offers nonprofit leaders insight into how everyday meeting talk shapes collaboration and competition, illustrating how employees can acknowledge competitive realities while preserving legitimacy and a shared sense of mission. Theoretically, this study extends paradox theory by examining how the collaboration–competition paradox is communicatively managed in organizational meetings.

Voluntary mental health support services play an important role in public health. However, long-term retention of volunteers is a major challenge. The present study aimed to understand the reasons for reduced volunteer engagement and retention loss in a UK mental health charity. Twenty-two participants from two populations (new volunteers and leavers) were engaged in semi-structured interviews to (1) longitudinally explore new volunteers’ expectations and experiences in their new role; and (2) explore reasons for stopping volunteering. Using constructivist grounded theory, we found key barriers to engagement among volunteers in this sector: unmet needs and values, unclear or demanding commitments, and reduced confidence in the role. Addressing these barriers through clearer expectations, stronger social connection, and processes that build confidence and coping (e.g., additional training) may enhance engagement and retention. Our findings suggest areas where targeted adjustments could enhance volunteer engagement and retention.

Existing literature has offered evidence that ethical leadership could increase employees’ work engagement, but the mechanisms that link their relationship are underexamined. Based on the motivational pathway of the Job Demands-Resources Model (JD-R), this study aims to explore how ethical leadership influences nonprofit employees’ work engagement. Using survey data from a sample of 345 nonprofit employees in China, the study reveals a motivational mechanism through which ethical leadership fosters followers’ mission valence and work meaningfulness, which in turn leads to a higher level of work engagement. The study further finds that stakeholder participation moderates the relationship between ethical leadership and mission valence, as well as the serial mediation effect. These findings contribute to the ethical leadership literature and expand the application of the JD-R model in nonprofit contexts. Research findings also validate the importance of ethical leadership development and stakeholder participation in nonprofit management.

Non-fungible tokens (NFTs) are unique digital assets stored on a blockchain that can be used to transfer value without relying on traditional payment intermediaries. In this paper, we present a case study of an action research project in which we apply NFTs to raise funds for a children’s hospital. A total of 11 children’s drawings were digitized, and 10 copies of each were offered on the online marketplace OpenSea. From a technical perspective, the solution works reliably as a vehicle for donations, but user adoption was low. Here, we discuss the lessons learned and list 12 advantages and 8 disadvantages/barriers to using NFTs for fundraising based on feedback from 24 digital natives, supplemented by input from non-expert individuals. From a technological perspective, blockchain technology offers promising affordances for nonprofit organizations. However, important problems must be solved to gain widespread adoption, most notably usability and legal clarification.

This article explores the motivations and barriers influencing participation in river-based environmental volunteering, with a focus on how these vary across activity types, to inform more effective engagement and retention strategies. Data were collected through a structured questionnaire administered to 125 volunteers involved in four activity types: education, monitoring, restoration, and activism. Initial motivations and perceived barriers were assessed using Likert-scale items adapted from validated instruments. While environmental concern and a desire to learn about nature were common across all groups, distinct motivational patterns emerged according to activity type. Volunteers involved in outreach and education activities were characterized as community-oriented educators, participants engaged in environmental monitoring as career-oriented learners, volunteers involved in sociopolitical activism as advocacy-driven volunteers, and participants engaged in restoration activities as action-focused restorers. Time constraints, limited public awareness, bureaucratic complexity, and greenwashing were identified as common barriers. However, barriers also varied across activity types, with educators and activists reporting higher emotional and institutional barriers than restorers and monitoring volunteers. These findings suggest that motivations and barriers are closely interconnected and associated with different river-based volunteering activity types. This highlights the need for tailored programs designed around the specific motivational and barrier profiles associated with each activity type, in order to foster long-term commitment and meaningful participation in river restoration.

Nonprofit organizations play a crucial role in responding to humanitarian crises, making it important to understand what motivates volunteers and how they learn about volunteering opportunities. Drawing on functional theory as well as word-of-mouth and tie strength frameworks, this study examines volunteers’ motivations and information sources during the arrival of Ukrainian refugees in Hungary. Twenty-five semi-structured interviews with volunteers have been analyzed using thematic analysis with deductive and inductive coding. The findings show that values and protective motivations were the dominant drivers of volunteering, with career, social, and understanding motivations also present, whereas enhancement motivation was absent in the context of the emergency crisis. Electronic word-of-mouth (eWOM) was the main source of information, with volunteering opportunities spreading mostly through weak ties, whose recommendations were trusted and accepted without scrutiny. Volunteer recruitment in humanitarian crises should emphasize value-driven and protective motivations while utilizing eWOM and weak-tie networks to reach potential volunteers effectively.

Third-sector organizations manage beneficiary, donor, and volunteer relationships through data-mediated systems, yet lawful basis selection is often treated as legal compliance rather than nonprofit governance. This article addresses that gap through conceptual governance analysis grounded in doctrinal interpretation of the Saudi Personal Data Protection Law. It argues that lawful basis selection can operate as a board-level accountability mechanism by allocating responsibility for purpose definition, discretion, excluded alternatives, stakeholder risk, and review. The article recasts basis selection as nonprofit governance and develops three connected outputs: a Decision Standard, a seven-step reasoning sequence, and a Purpose–Basis–Governance matrix that structure reviewable judgment across beneficiary, donor, and volunteer relationships.

Waqf (Islamic endowment) has great potential to improve community welfare, reduce inequality, and contribute to higher national economic growth. However, low public literacy remains a major challenge. Stronger efforts are needed to enhance literacy, intention, and participation in waqf. In this context, technology plays an important role in modern society by shaping various aspects of daily life and decision-making, while also accelerating digital inclusion, which can support the adoption of waqf. This research aims to analyze the impact of the Roblox-based educational game, Giving Legacy, on Indonesian high school students’ knowledge and intention toward waqf. The study uses the theory of planned behavior as its underlying framework. Field experiments were conducted, and before-after questionnaires were collected during the Waqf Goes to School program in eight schools from September 2024 to February 2026. A total of 671 questionnaires were collected, and 520 valid responses were retained for analysis. Data were analyzed using the Wilcoxon test and Partial Least Squares Structural Equation Modeling (PLS SEM). A control group was included within this sample to further strengthen and validate the results. The study found that the game-based learning (GBL) intervention significantly improved students’ knowledge and intention toward waqf. The Wilcoxon test results confirmed a significant difference between pre- and post-test scores. Post-intervention PLS-SEM analysis showed that all variables, including attitude, were significant predictors of intention. These results highlight the potential of GBL to enhance both cognitive and attitudinal dimensions of waqf learning, supporting its use for engaging youth in Islamic philanthropy.

This article examines how formal civil society organizations (CSOs) perceive and engage with informal actors in crisis management and investigates the relational dynamics that bind diverse actors in polycentric governance systems. Adopting a qualitative interpretivist epistemology, the study proceeds from the premise that social realities, including organizational relationships, legitimacy, and trust, are constructed through meaning-making and intersubjective understanding. Drawing on interviews, focus groups, and case studies with 53 CSOs across multiple European countries, the study employs a modified grounded theory approach, consistent with interpretivist traditions that prioritize contextual understanding over objective measurement. The findings reveal a clear divide among formal CSOs. One half dismissed informal actors as untrained risks requiring hierarchical control, reflecting a command-and-control orientation. The other half demonstrated a polycentric orientation, recognizing and legitimizing informal actors without attempting to absorb them. Where polycentric attitudes prevailed, relationships were characterized by four elements: trust built through recognition rather than hierarchy, flexibility in distinguishing specialized from transferable tasks, equality emerging through co-production, and temporality leveraged as a resource for adaptive, short-term cooperation. The article contributes to understanding the relational dynamics within polycentric crisis governance by specifying how these four elements are enacted in practice. In doing so, it helps operationalize polycentricity for crisis management, a contribution called for in the literature. From an interpretivist standpoint, these findings do not claim generalizable causality but instead offer a theoretically grounded understanding of how actors themselves make sense of, negotiate, and co-construct effective cooperation across organizational boundaries.

This article introduces the concept of state-constructed third sector, referring to a sector shaped less by welfare gaps or civic mobilization and more by the state. Theories of third sector emergence are largely derived from Western and middle-income contexts and remain undertested in state-led environments. To address this gap, the study analyzes Qatar’s third sector through 40 semi-structured interviews and policy analysis. Drawing on Social Origins Theory and Sociological Institutionalism, it links early charitable practices to the sector’s contemporary rules. Findings show a newly institutionalized sector with active international humanitarian organizations and nationally oriented organizations that rarely engage in advocacy or welfare substitution. Institutionalization occurred through legal reforms, global compliance, and alignment with Qatar National Vision 2030. Within the Social Origins framework, Qatar most closely approximates the statist pathway but constitutes a distinctive rentier variant, in which hydrocarbon wealth enables the state to combine extensive welfare provision with the construction, resourcing, and regulation of a legally distinct and internationally active third sector.