Social Justice Through Health Care Financing: The Birth and Signaling of a New Nonprofit Field

Abstract

This research note explores patterns in the ways that nonprofits use their Web sites to signal their membership in new organizational fields. Over the past 15 years, the Volunteers in Medicine movement has created a new organizational model for providing health care to the underserved, to specifically address some of the most unjust gaps in the U.S. health care fabric. Analyzing regional and time-of-founding variations in the content of organizational Web sites of this population of nonprofit organizations, this study helps to answer questions about the use and spread of organizational signals and symbols of field membership and boundaries.