standards for excellence program
mission and program, governing body, conflict of interest, human resources (including volunteers), financial and legal, openness (or transparency) with the public, fundraising, and public affairs/public policy (including public education and public policy advocacy)
We expect that stakeholders (including staff, volunteers, clients, donors, and funders) will react positively to organizations receiving the Standards for Excellence certification by allocating more resources to the newly certified nonprofit. Consistent with this expectation, we find that the certified NPOs have larger increases in public support in the certification year than in the application year. However, the increase does not persist through the post-certification year. Feng (2016)