Xintong Chen

 

Xintong Chen

Assistant Professor
Department of Political Science
xintong.chen@sjsu.edu

 

Keywords
nonprofit management,financial performance, disaster resilience, community vulnerability, mixed method

Current Research Activities:

My current research aims to explore nonprofit resources environment in the setting of COVID-19. To be more specific, my current research explores the following research questions:1) are nonprofits in vulnerable communities more susceptible to high service demand and low revenue during a disruptive event; 2) What factors explain the managerial networking of nonprofits’ leaders under the context of crisis? The data for this study comes from multiple sources including survey, National Center for Charitable Statistics (NCCS) 2017 core PC files, and U. S. 2019 Census Data. The survey is collected from public charities whose main offices are in California. My research importantly contributes to nonprofit research by deepening our understandings on the impact of community-level factors on nonprofits’ needs and revenue in disaster contexts. In addition, understanding the pattern of managerial networking of nonprofit organizations in COVID 19 contributes to the knowledge of how to help nonprofit organizations to effectively respond to disasters and crises. I collaborate with Dr. Zheng Yang, Assistant Professor at California State University, Dominguez Hills on this research project.

 

Research Connections to Current Events

My current research aims to explore nonprofit resources environment in the setting of COVID-19. To be more specific, my current research explores the following research questions:1) are nonprofits in vulnerable communities more susceptible to high service demand and low revenue during a disruptive event; 2) What factors explain the managerial networking of nonprofits’ leaders under the context of crisis? The data for this study comes from multiple sources including survey, National Center for Charitable Statistics (NCCS) 2017 core PC files, and U. S. 2019 Census Data. The survey is collected from public charities whose main offices are in California. My research importantly contributes to nonprofit research by deepening our understandings on the impact of community-level factors on nonprofits’ needs and revenue in disaster contexts. In addition, understanding the pattern of managerial networking of nonprofit organizations in COVID 19 contributes to the knowledge of how to help nonprofit organizations to effectively respond to disasters and crises. I collaborate with Dr. Zheng Yang, Assistant Professor at California State University, Dominguez Hills on this research project.Additionally, the managerial networking behavior of nonprofit organizations has been discussed to be important for nonprofits’ success and performance, yet how nonprofits leaders’ network with their external stakeholders in relation to their fiscal health conditions, and what are the levels and patterns of managerial networking during crises are rarely explored in the nonprofit management literature (Johansen & LeRoux, 2013; Li, Tang & Lo, 2017; MacIndoe and Sullivan, 2014;). Importantly, understanding the pattern of managerial networking of nonprofit organizations in COVID 19 contributes to the knowledge of how to help nonprofit organizations to effectively respond to disasters and crises.

 

Personal Connections to Research

I developed my research interest in nonprofit resilience and sustainability under disaster settings from a class discussion years ago. I was studying at Columbia University School of Social Work in New York City when Hurricane Sandy occurred. In our direct service class, I heard many stories on how nonprofits were impacted by Hurricane Sandy. However, outside of the class, many people were unfamiliar with disaster response, and often argued that nonprofits benefit from a disaster event due to a surge in donations. Surprisingly, I found that most research on nonprofits in disaster contexts are qualitative studies with relatively small sample sizes, and we have limited quantitative evidence on how natural disasters impact the nonprofit sector. Therefore, I begin to explore the impact of natural disaster on nonprofits and factors that help nonprofits being resilient and successful in disaster context. COVID19 has impacted nonprofits financially and organizationally, the effects of which has important implications for crisis response practices in nonprofit management. Thus, I will continue my research in this stream. 

 

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Other Languages

Chinese (Mandarin)