Examining the influence of organizational characteristics on nonprofit commercialization

A growing body of literature discusses the (dis)advantages of nonprofit organizations becoming commercial by engaging in the sale of organizational services and products. However, when explaining this phenomenon, scholars tend to focus on resource uncertainty, thereby disregarding the organizational ability to commercialize. Complementing resource dependency theory with insights from contingency theory, this study presents arguments drawn from a comparative case study of six sociocultural nonprofits in Belgium. We find that, when resource uncertainty is similar, organizational differences in terms of commercial income can be explained by differences in (a) organizational origins, (b) professional capacity and, (c) type of tasks. We conclude that organizational characteristics can either enable or disable the ability of nonprofits to commercialize and consequently their ability to self-sustain in an increasing challenging resource environment