The study of how nonprofits evolve is fundamental to gaining an appreciation of dynamic nonprofit organizational life, and to developing insight into how nonprofits emerge and transform over time. Using a nonprofit entrepreneurship perspective, this article highlights a number of key methodological challenges associated with the study of nonprofit entrepreneurship, including issues of identification and use of single key informants. The article also provides suggestions how to capture the often “messy” nonprofit entrepreneurship process by pointing to the need for longitudinal data, and by discussing the value of qualitative inquiry and methods.

中文翻译：

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非营利组织进化的紧迫研究：使用非营利创业视角阐明方法论挑战和途径

对非营利组织如何演变的研究对于了解动态的非营利组织生活以及深入了解非营利组织如何随着时间的推移而出现和转变至关重要。本文使用非营利创业的视角，强调了与非营利创业研究相关的一些关键方法论挑战，包括识别和使用单一关键信息人的问题。本文还通过指出对纵向数据的需求，并通过讨论定性调查和方法的价值，提供了如何捕捉经常“混乱”的非营利创业过程的建议。