Size of conservation organisations

Armsworth, P.R., Fishburn, I.S., Davies, Z.G., Gilbert, J., Leaver, N. & Gaston, K.J. 2012. The size, concentration, and growth of biodiversity-conservation nonprofits. BioScience 62, 271-281.

Nonprofit organizations have a vital role to play in biological conservation, at local, regional and global scales. Understanding how the structure of conservation nonprofits influences their effectiveness in improving the plight of biodiversity has been identified as a priority research topic. We review empirical patterns in the size, concentration, and growth of over 1700 biodiversity-conservation nonprofits registered for tax purposes in the United States within the context of relevant economic theory. Conservation-nonprofit sizes vary by six to seven orders of magnitude and are positively skewed. Larger nonprofits access more revenue streams and hold more of their assets in land and buildings than smaller or midsized nonprofits do. The size of conservation nonprofits varies with the ecological focus of the organization, but the growth rates of nonprofits do not.