Understanding Community Dynamics in the Study of Grand Challenges: How Nonprofits, Institutional Actors, and the Community Fabric Interact to Influence Income Inequality

This paper provides a conceptual model that explains how competitive and institutional dynamics at the community level influence the ability of welfare-oriented nonprofits to eradicate income inequality. To test our framework, we build a large and unique seven-year panel dataset consisting of data from 245 U.S. communities. We find that increasing the number of welfare nonprofits is beneficial for reducing community inequality, but only up to a...