Effectiveness of nonprofit organizations for the regional economy: conceptual foundations for identification

We make an attempt to substantiate the significance of creating institutional conditions for the development of nonprofit organizations; to this end, we identify social and economic impact of their activities on the regional economy. Using the synthesis of theoretical approaches to explaining the reasons for the emergence of the nonprofit sector (theory of interdependence and failure theory) and the results of content analysis of the projects supported by the Presidential Grants Foundation and submitted by socially oriented nonprofit organizations from the Volga Federal District, we identify directions and specify forms of leveling government failures. It was found that socially oriented nonprofit organizations focus on providing a range of services in the education system, health care and social support, which are of priority importance for the formation of people's basic needs, which can be fulfilled by the state only to a certain limit, regardless of the territory of residence and taking into account residents' individual needs. When assessing the effectiveness of their own work, representatives of socially oriented nonprofit organizations focus on its social significance, using mechanisms of point solutions to the current problems of the target audience. We identify the range of potential socio-economic effects from the activities of socially oriented nonprofit organization carried out on a systematic and long-term basis in the context of priority areas of their work. We emphasize that our approach, due to the formation of a unified view among economic agents (government, business, society and nonprofit organizations themselves), expands the idea of its importance for the region's economy and may become a starting point for the creation of institutional conditions for the development of nonprofit organizations in Russia. The prospects for our future research include modeling the management system of specific regions of the Russian Federation based on the creation of institutional conditions to increase the contribution of socially oriented nonprofit organizations to the balanced development of territories.