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Voluntary member-organizations are a large and important part of the non-profit sector in Northern Europe (Torpe & Ferrer-Fons, 2007). Members have an exclusive right to elect representatives on governance boards through democratic procedures (Heitmann & Selle, 1993). Many organizations have formal or informal norms of representativity regarding geography, organizational divisions, or gender. In general people with high education, income, and employment rank are more likely to volunteer (Musick, 2008). When recruiting board members, additional factors may be sought after, such as professional competence, experience from management and administration, social network, or reputable careers from politics or business (Abzug & Galaskiewicz, 2001; Gulbrandsen, 2020; Moore et al., 2002). Some types of organizations may perceive a need for board members with an elite background because they have large administrations, professional services, formal demands on reporting and accounting, and rely on trust among external stakeholders and funders (Cornforth, 2003; Van Puyvelde et al., 2016). This paper empirically assesses such inequalities by comparing demographic data for board members with organization members across organization categories.
Previous research has largely dealt with nonprofit organizations where the external stakeholders play a key role, as funders, donors, and service recipients. The social composition of boards tends to be seen in relation to external constituencies or target groups, addressing lack of diversity, and inclusion of vulnerable or under-represented groups (Brown, 2002; Fredette et al., 2016; Fredette & Sessler Bernstein, 2019; LeRoux & Medina, 2023; Steane & Christie, 2001; Weisinger et al., 2016). Other research is concerned with the consequences of board composition for reaching the organization’s goals (Cornforth, 2003; Cornforth & Brown, 2013; Gazley et al., 2010; Renz & Andersson, 2013). In contrast, this paper focuses to what extent internal democratic election procedures in member-organizations result in boards with an elite social profile compared with the ordinary members.
Data on board members are from the national register for voluntary and nonprofit organizations, with demographic data from Statistic Norway’s registers attached to each individual. This is a comprehensive dataset with all board members in registered organizations, more than 290,000 individuals. The organization member data are from a population survey conducted by Statistics Norway about volunteering and membership in different types of voluntary organizations (58% response, net 3,388 respondents), with demographic register-data (Fladmoe et al., 2018).
Compared to the members, the boards in general have a higher percentage of men, middle-aged, professionally educated, and non-immigrants. Chairs are even more different from members on many variables. The analysis focuses on differences in representativity between organization types, i.e. culture, sports, recreation, welfare, advocacy, religion, economy, employment, etc. An interesting observation is that some organization types have an under-representation of board members with long education, contrary to expectations from resource theory.
The findings indicate that organizations need to weigh advantages of elite board members and chairs against consequences for their democratic functioning and for their potential as inclusive intermediary social structures in society. We need more research to understand the mechanisms underlying these patterns.
