Phone:

317-278-8906

Email:

benjamin@iu.edu

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Areas of expertise:

Nonprofit Management

Lehn Benjamin’s work has been principally concerned with inequity. She worked in South Africa during the democratic transition, on the Senate Banking Housing and Urban Affairs Committee as a Congressional Fellow, and for the U.S. Department of the Treasury’s Community Development Financial Institutions Fund. Prior to joining the faculty at the school, she spent 10 years on the faculty at George Mason University, where she taught courses on nonprofit management, public management, and performance measurement. Her research examines issues of accountability and effectiveness in the nonprofit sector. Her current projects explore these issues by looking at the daily work of frontline staff in nonprofits and the experience of the people they serve. In this work she seeks to understand how participating in these nonprofits affects the health and political efficacy of citizen-clients. Although most of her current research focuses on human service organizations, as an urban planner who has worked in both governmental and grassroots organizations as well as at a policy level, she is also interested in broader community development and governance questions.

• Ph.D., City and Regional Planning, Cornell University, 2004
• M.R.P., City and Regional Planning, Cornell University, 1998
• B.A., Summa Cum Laude, Speech Communication, University of Minnesota, 1990

• “If not the program then what? Evaluating social change in nonprofit and voluntary organizations.” A research agenda for evaluation: Inspirational themes. Edward Elgar (Forthcoming 2021)
• “Bringing beneficiaries more centrally into nonprofit education and research.” Nonprofit and Voluntary Sector Quarterly (2020)
• “Evaluation and performance measurement.” (with D. A. Campbell), Routledge companion to nonprofit management, (2020)
• “Tax Expenditures and Accountability: The case of the ambivalent principals.” (with P. L. Posner) Journal of Public Administration Research and Theory, (2018) 
• “Policy Fields, Data Systems and the Performance of Nonprofit Human Service Organizations.” (with A. Voida and C. Bopp) Human Service Organizations: Management, Leadership and Governance (2018)
• “Client Authority in Nonprofit Human Service Organizations.” Chapter in the Handbook of Community Movements and Local Organizations 2nd edition. Edited by Ram Cnaan and Carl Milofsky. Springer Publishing (2018)
• “How Can Evaluation Strengthen Democracy?” (edited by Donna Podems) Democratic Evaluation and Democracy: Exploring the Reality (2017) 
• “A Bump in the Road: The Benefits of Established Networks for Implementing ARRA under the The New Markets Tax Credit Program.” Chapter in Networks Under Stress: Managing Obama's Stimulus Program (2017)
• “How Civil Society Organizations Foster Insurgent Citizenship: Lessons from the Brazilian Landless Movement." (with A. Karriem) Voluntas (2016)
• “Nonprofit Performance: Accounting for the Agency of Clients.” (with D. C. Campbell) Nonprofit and Voluntary Sector Quarterly (2015)
• “The Potential of Outcome Measurement for Strengthening Nonprofits' Accountability to Beneficiaries.” Nonprofit Voluntary Sector Quarterly (2013)
• “Nonprofits and Outcome Measurement:  From Tracking Program Activities to Focusing on Front Line Work.” American Journal of Evaluation (2012)
• “Mediating Accountability: How Nonprofit Funding Intermediaries use Performance Measurement and Why it Matters for Governance.” Public Performance & Management Review (2010)
• “For the World’s Sake: U.S. Foundations International Grantmaking.” (with K. Quigley) American Foundations: Roles and Contributions (2010) 

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