Thank You for Your Service: The Rise of the Veteran Nonprofit Sector

In this dissertation, I explore the changing landscape of veteran-focused nonprofit organizations in the United States in the post-9/11 era through an ethnographic research design with veterans’ charities in San Diego. Though veterans’ supportive services are an important issue in American consciousness, little scholarly attention has been paid to the private sector agencies that provide for veterans’ welfare. I highlight how veteran-focused charities have begun to take hold in the nonprofit sector as new purveyors of veterans’ services. I also trace the emerging logics and practices they bring to their work, including how they approach collaboration as well as the gendered division of labor. I show that veterans’ charities can negotiate institutional logics from both the nonprofit sector and the military and, in so doing, generate novel organizational practices. Attention to these organizations can yield important insights for scholars of veterans, the military, and nonprofit organizations