Measuring Sustainability Maturity Stages and Charitable Giving: Leveraging NLP-based Textual Analysis

Abstract

This research investigates sustainability maturity stages of nonprofit organizations through a textual analysis of their annual reports using Natural Language Processing (NLP) techniques. This NLP-based approach helps evaluate the extent to which nonprofit organizations integrate sustainability (or ESG) strategies and practices into their reporting on community service activities. The dataset consists of annual reports from organizations included in Forbes America's Top 100 Charities. Additionally, the study empirically assesses whether there is a relationship between the sustainability maturity stages and the level of donations, providing insight into whether ESG reporting influences public giving. This study sheds light on the literature on organizational sustainability maturity by exploring its impact on charitable giving in the nonprofit sector. Its contributions are twofold: First, it uses an NLP-based textual analysis to assess the sustainability maturity stages of nonprofit organizations—an area that has received limited attention in prior research. Second, it provides valuable insights into how the adoption and communication of sustainability strategies and practices in annual reports may enhance nonprofit organizations' ability to attract donations and strengthen fundraising outcomes.