A Case Study of Nonprofit Leaders' Accountability Practices: Kansas City Nonprofit Organizations that Assist the Latino Population

Abstract

The Greater Metropolitan area of Kansas City has provided jobs in the railroad, meatpacking, and service sector for the undocumented and documented Latino immigrants for the past century. Although the city’s Latino population is not above ten percent of the overall population, Latino immigrants need resources for countless problems including but not limited to language barriers, discrimination, and mental and physical health issues. Nonprofit organizations in the area provide social services to a population that is often overlooked. By analyzing the interviews of five nonprofit leaders of community-based organizations and observations of three of five organizations, the research will answer these questions: what is the definition of accountability, what is accountability’s relationship to effective governance, and what are the areas of accountability that need improvement? The theoretical framework used to analyze the data is Barbara Romzek’s and Melvin Dubnick’s accountability relationship systems. Although legal and bureaucratic accountability relationships were observed, the most frequently used accountability systems were the political and professional systems due to the nonprofits responsiveness to their clients and the experts within the nonprofits that have an opportunity to teach or demonstrate reliability and knowledge for an event or program.