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This article draws on literature on nonprofit resilience to hazards to explore the impact of federal Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) loans on nonprofits' staffing, services, and financial health during the COVID-19 pandemic's first year. Through propensity score matching with survey data collected in spring 2020 and winter 2021 from the New Orleans area, linked to publicly available PPP data, nonprofits that did and did not receive a PPP loan were matched on covariates representing critical resilience capacities pre-pandemic, allowing calculation of effect sizes for short-term outcomes. Results suggest that PPP tentatively supported nonprofit liquidity in the form of reserves, but had at best mixed results in promoting service maintenance, and did not support hiring or staff retention in excess of the non-treatment group. Despite the small sample size, these preliminary findings inform how PPP may have supported short-term sustainability and help guide future federal policy to support nonprofits during crises. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Public service education aims to prepare students to serve in the "public interest," historically encompassing the "3Es" of efficiency, economy, and effectiveness. However, modern public servants must apply practical and moral wisdom to answer calls for administrators to address inequities and advance social justice. The field is thus implored to elevate social equity as a normative foundation and connect it to complementary values—including engagement, empathy, and ethics—comprising a set of "new 4Es" often overlooked in public administration curricula. But how might instructors teach the new 4Es in Master of Public Administration (MPA) coursework? Review of diverse literatures suggests the case teaching method, which assigns narrative case readings putting learners in the role of participant in a realistic dilemma and asks them to make a critical decision, holds promise for cultivating the new 4Es. Through an example of a foundational MPA management course, this article equips instructors with strategies for implementing the case teaching method and connecting cases to each of the new 4Es. The design, delivery, assessment strategies, and preliminary outcomes of the course are discussed. The article concludes with challenges and opportunities for public service educators to adopt the pedagogical approach within their own contexts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Keywords: access; advocacy; pandemic; charitable nonprofits; interest groups; equity EN access advocacy pandemic charitable nonprofits interest groups equity 91 118 28 04/29/22 20220401 NES 220401 1 Introduction The nonprofit sector serves many vital functions. 7 Conclusion The case study described in this article, comprised of interviews with nonprofit leaders and analysis of legislative records and committee hearings, suggests that charitable nonprofits' legislative access was impeded during the spring 2020 session of the Louisiana State Legislature. Nevertheless, the bill was voted down by the Republican majority on the committee, helping to underscore the political disadvantage that small progressive charitable nonprofit organizations face in the conservative Louisiana Legislature ([3]; [52]), and the need for nonprofits to engage in aggressive in-person grassroots advocacy in order to make their voices heard within this context ([39]). Studies have explored the dynamics of the so-called "nonprofit industrial complex" - a system built on mutually beneficial relationships between the nonprofit sector, lawmakers, and industry ([47]) - and criticized the potential for this system to co-opt community leaders by providing them with opportunities for employment and professional advancement in the public and nonprofit sectors, thereby realigning their interests with maintaining the system as opposed to transforming it ([24]). [Extracted from the article]

Public officials are oath takers and expected to uphold the law, but criminal convictions provide evidence that corruption exists. When public officials violate their oath, these violations evade ethical norms of behavior important to protecting the integrity inherent in the public office. This article synthesizes the literature on public corruption and related fields and presents a conceptual model to help us understand public leader violations of the oath and factors that enable corrupt behavior more broadly. Through an exploratory analysis of news articles and local government websites of examples of federal corruption convictions from the top ten most corrupt juridictions in the United States, this preliminary model finds six factors influence corruption within a jurisdiction at two collective levels: (1) organizational, and (2) institutional. A case study of an independent nonprofit's experience in anti-corruption further informs a claim that corrupt leaders (i.e., oath-takers) often involve and exert corrupt influence on subordinates. Findings on convicted corruptions expands the conceptual model to inform on institutional factors that may mitigate corruption. Failure to act on corruption creates a distributional consequence for society. Public corruption minimizes equal access to public goods and services, diverts public finances for personal gain, and undermines public confidence. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]