The document discusses the discourse on nonprofit evaluation, focusing on how different languages and worldviews interact and establish a boundary-spanning interlanguage across social domains. It examines the characteristics of organizations involved in nonprofit evaluation and their use of specific discourse patterns based on factors like size, age, and audience. Findings suggest that while original discourses are influenced by organizational features, interlanguage use is widespread and aids communication across diverse social and linguistic boundaries.

1. Co-exist, Colonize, or Combine?
Accounting for patterns of discourse on nonprofit evaluation
Carrie Oelberger, Achim Oberg, Karina Kloos, Valeska Korff, Woody Powell
EGOS Colloquium 2012
Subtheme 20: Rationalization and Professionalization of the Nonprofit Sector
5 – 7 July - Helsinki, Finland

2. Is talk cheap?
Language is a constitutive feature of social life
• creates cohesion and enforces social boundaries
• reflects and reinforces common systems of norms
• serves to enroll and exclude
 Creates communities

3. Crossing Boundaries
Boundary work as the establishment of local
interlanguages – pidgins and creoles – that emerge in
the interstices between social domains (Galison 1997).
Interlanguage
• facilitates local communication across social and linguistic
boundaries.
• enables coordination of action across place, time and context.
 Connects communities

4. Nonprofit Evaluation
Influences from the domains of
• Civil society and associations
• Science
• Management
 Confluence of
disparate world views
and languages
Nonprofit evaluation discourse is an illuminating case to analyze
communication at the interface of social spheres

5. Research Questions
Who is contributing what
to the discourse on nonprofit evaluation?
1. What kind of discourse patterns form when
different languages come into contact?
Does a boundary-spanning interlanguage emerge?
2. What organizational features influence an entity’s
proclivity to use such interlanguage?

6. Websites as self-representation
• Websites constitute purposeful presentations of organizations
• Information provided on websites has the capacity to travel
across spatial and symbolic distances
• Symbolic representation of an organization whose structure
and content reflect the features of a particular entity
(Pollach, 2004)
• Comparable in its signaling character to national symbols:
flags and anthems (Cerulo, 1993)
 Language used on websites reflects an organizations
intentional portrayal of itself to diverse audiences

7. Sample selection by use of Webcrawler
• Focus on websites:
Websites as purposeful self-
presentations
• Crawler network:
Websites are added based on
number of incoming references by
identified members of the
relevant sample.  Snowball
sample
• Inclusion/exclusion decision:
Collective analysis of website
content to appraise extent of
contribution to non-profit
evaluation discourse.
• Coding of entities:
Websites are aggregated and core
organizational features are coded.

8. Sample Characteristics
419 highly interconnected entities involved in nonprofit evaluation
Demography
• Age: 2 to over 200 years old
• Size - Scale: one person blogs to 250,000 employee global organizations;
Scope: local, regional, national and scale
Institutional Properties
• Form: 56% nonprofits, 13% for-profits, 3% branches of state or national government, 14%
transnational organizations, and 14% non-organizational forms
• Activity: evaluation, funding, consulting, networking, media, advocacy, research, social services
Resources and Constituencies
• Revenue Streams: foundation grants, government grants, corporate funding, individual
donors, fee-for-services, membership fees, endowment, public equity market and taxes
• Target Audiences: social service beneficiaries, donors, nonprofits, for-profits, (transnational)
government and the public

9. Collecting Keywords
Keywords are “significant, indicative words in certain forms of thought” that
make up a distinctive, domain-specific vocabulary (Williams 1969: 14)
1) Iterative process of identifying keywords to develop a vocabulary of nonprofit
evaluation:
• Mined the discourse on the websites and consulted experts
• Created word clusters (associational, scientific, managerial)
 Process resulted in 196 terms categorized in 3 clusters (e.g. participation, social
change, justice = associational; data, systematic, framework = scientific;
performance, benchmarks, outcomes = managerial)
2) Counting of occurrences of each term on all websites to calculate relative
percentage of language used by an entity.
3) Co-occurrence analysis to affirm validity of clusters.
 Assessment of entities’ individual language use, and the collective pattern of
language use among all entities in the sample

10. Models of Discourse Patterns
 Option 1: Entities co-exist, separated
into linguistic factions
 Option 2: Entities combine and blend
different languages.
 Option 3: One language colonizes and
dominates the discourse.

11. Relative language use
thesroinetwork.org
swtgroup.net
cerise-microfinance.org
mullagofoundation.org
efqm.org
corostrandberg.com
ladb.org
sphereproject.org
wdi.umich.edu
usaid.org
fbheron.org
rainforest-alliance.org
organizationalresearch.com
eandco.org
compasspoint.org
arnova.org
iisd.org
robinhood.org
broadfoundation.org
joycefnd.org
gistfunders.org
gmfus.org
americanprogress.org
hfpg.org
alliance1.org
aecf.org
seechangeevaluation.com
ncvo-vol.org.uk
nonprofitquarterly.org
unstats.un.org
onphilanthropy.com
gatesfoundation.org
worldofgood.org
Entirety of entities involved in nonprofit evaluation
usip.org
cofinteract.org
africagrantmakers.org
unwomen.org
komen.org
sunlightfoundation.com
350.Org
cafonline.org
Observed Distribution of Discourse

12. Interlanguage?
Frequency analysis:
Terms used by 85% of entities
Co-occurrence analysis:
Non-particularity of terms, Interlanguage
but used in combination
with diverse languages
 No random blending of discourses
 Ubiquitous and multi-lateral interlanguage vocabulary

13. Characteristics of the Interlanguage
Interlanguage is…
Accountability Lessons learned
• Ubiquitous in being used Quantitative M&E/Monitoring
Assessment (& evaluation)
by all contributors Evaluation Effectiveness
Framework Performance
• Composed of elements of What works Transparency
Indicators Best practice
original languages Methods 23% Certification
Survey Outcomes
• Distinctive to nonprofit Accountability Evidence
Commitment Impact
evaluation discourse Participatory
Social change
Transparency
Trust
Interlanguage enables communication and coordination
across social and linguistic boundaries.

14. Explaining Interlanguage Use
• H1: Younger organizations use more interlanguage.
• H2: Larger entities, both in terms of a) scale (size) and
b) (geographic) scope use more interlanguage.
• H3: Organizations engaged in activities which involve
competition or coordination with organizations of a different
legal form – specifically evaluation, networking and consulting
- use more interlanguage.
• H4: Organizations with a) diverse revenue sources or b) a
heterogeneous audiences use more interlanguage.

15. Interlanguage Use - Findings
• H3: Organizations engaged in activities which involve
competition or coordination with organizations of a different
legal form – specifically evaluation, networking and consulting
- use more interlanguage.

16. Interlanguage Use - Discussion
• The youngest organizations use less interlanguage, and more managerial.
• Size does not affect interlanguage use, suggesting that structural features
do not condition language use.
• Organizations engaged in evaluation, networking, consulting, and research
use more interlanguage.
• Type of revenue source and audience affects interlanguage use.
– Organizations that speak to an audience of social service beneficiaries and the
general public use less interlanguage, while those speaking to for profits use
more interlanguage.
– Organizations that draw resources through grants or endowments use more
interlanguage.
• Standard features (form, size, revenue sources) remain influential on use
of original discourses, yet not on interlanguage use.

17. Observed Distribution of Interlanguage
Relative language use
Entirety of entities involved in nonprofit evaluation

18. Conclusion
• Broad use of interlanguage across organizational forms
• Interlanguage as a channel through which ideas get
transported across social boundaries
• Evidence of integration in combination and interlanguage use
• Evidence of colonization in composition of interlanguage
• Different discourses remain relevant: Rational – Normative
Interesting times ahead!

19. Future Plans
• Relational analysis of the application of keywords
– Nonprofit evaluation context as a densely interconnected
reputation network among organizations and URLs
– Identification of clusters

20. Topic clusters
Some topics are
clustered in specific
regions of the
reputation network.

21. Positioning of clusters
Other topics are
positioned on the top
and in the center.

22. Positioning of clusters
… some connect center
and periphery with an
inverse distribution of
size (marginalized
term?)

24. Thank you
for your attention!