About

Thad Calabrese is a Professor of Public and Nonprofit Financial Management and serves as the Director of Finance Specialization at NYU Wagner. His research and teaching broadly focus on applying financial management theories and techniques to organizations engaged in providing public services within the public and not-for-profit sectors. He is an active researcher whose work has been published in numerous academic journals, including the Journal of Accounting and Public Policy, Public Administration Review, Nonprofit and Voluntary Sector Quarterly, Public Budgeting and Finance, Nonprofit Management & Leadership, National Tax Journal, and the Journal of Public Administration Research and Theory (JPART). Calabrese has co-authored several texts, notably 'Financial Management for Public, Health, and Not-for-Profit Organizations' and 'Government and Not-for-Profit Accounting: Concepts and Practices,' among others. In addition to his academic publications, he has published many applied public policy research reports. He has received recognition such as the Editors' Prize for Best Scholarly Paper in Nonprofit Management & Leadership in 2013 and has served on editorial boards for prominent journals. Calabrese has held leadership roles in professional associations, including serving as the immediate past Treasurer for the Association for Research on Nonprofit and Voluntary Action (ARNOVA) and as the elected Chair for the Association for Budgeting and Financial Management (ABFM). Before joining NYU Wagner, he was on the faculty at the School of Public Affairs at Baruch College – CUNY and has professional experience working in the New York City Office of Management and Budget in tax policy, as well as working as a financial consultant with nonprofit organizations in New York City.

Research topics

• Political Science
• Business
• Economics
• Public economics
• Law
• Sociology
• Public administration
• Economic growth
• Marketing
• Public relations
• Finance
• Accounting
• Microeconomics

Selected publications

• Shaking the foundations: Calls for change in private foundation practices during the COVID-19 pandemic

  Edward Elgar Publishing eBooks · 2025-04-22

  book-chapterSenior author

  The COVID-19 pandemic served as a catalyst for the airing of historic grievances about private foundation practices. As the nonprofit sector experienced tremendous revenue uncertainty, attention turned to the more than $1 trillion worth of assets held by private foundations. Calls for higher payouts and more flexible grantmaking came from an array of nonprofit stakeholders, including foundation leaders themselves, with renewed Congressional interest in private foundations. Umbrella organizations reacted aggressively to address criticisms through pledges, actions, and research. Many foundations pledged to loosen restrictions on existing grants, make more flexible new grants to the most-impacted communities, reduce reporting requirements, and learn from these practices for philanthropy following the crisis. The responses stretched from meaningful changes in grantmaking to increased giving, including some through innovative means. Early evidence suggests incremental, but lasting, changes in how foundations operate particularly around minimizing the administrative burden on grantees, increasing unrestricted funding, and heightened attention to racial equity in foundation activities. At the same time, private foundations successfully avoided more stringent regulation of grantmaking payouts, an outcome that was argued to weaken resiliency by leaving foundations less prepared to address future crises or fulfill missions in perpetuity.

  PublisherDOI

• Who Determines Where the Sun Shines: Nonprofit Sector Stakeholders and the IRS Form 990 Redesign

  Nonprofit and Voluntary Sector Quarterly · 2025-04-18

  articleSenior author

  Despite the importance of Internal Revenue Service (IRS) Form 990 to exempt organizations’ regulation, management, and accountability, scholars and practitioners have overlooked how the form evolved over time. This study uses public comments, submitted during the most recent revision of the form in 2007, to examine who participated, stakeholder priorities, and how the updated form was shaped by the federal rulemaking process. The study finds that (a) the submitters of public comments provide a comprehensive view of the nonprofit sector’s diverse set of stakeholders and (b) the public comments highlight substantive self-identified priorities for the sector that can serve as a guide to future research. Key takeaways include the need to consider for-profit and trade association influence in nonprofit policy formation, to recognize selective transparency in reporting requirements, and to understand how stakeholder interests shape regulatory outcomes. Implications suggest researchers should fully leverage Form 990’s extensive changes while remaining cognizant of information gaps.

  PublisherDOI

• Integrating Financing Variables Into Behavioral Health Policy Implementation Research

  JAMA Psychiatry · 2025-10-15

  articleOpen access

  This Viewpoint suggests tactics for measuring and analyzing financing variables in behavioral health policy research.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Borrowing for Impact: Leveraging Foundation Endowments with Debt

  SSRN Electronic Journal · 2025-01-01

  articleOpen accessSenior author
  PublisherDOI

• Establishing an Agenda for Public Budgeting and Finance Research

  Deleted Journal · 2024 · 20 citations

  • Political Science
  • Political Science
  • Public administration

  Public budgeting and finance is a discipline that encompasses communities of research and practice. Too often, however, these communities fail to engage each other, instead choosing to operate independently. The result is that the research being conducted fails to address the questions of the day and our governments’ challenges. In this article, we come together as a community of academics and practitioners to establish an agenda for where future research should be conducted. This agenda aims to align the research being undertaken within the academic community with the needs of those working in the community of practice. After establishing ten areas where research is needed, we followed a ranked-choice voting process to establish a prioritization for them. Based on the outcome of this process, the two primary areas where research is currently needed most are the fiscal health of our governments and the implementation of social equity budgeting.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Applying benefits theory to rationalize property tax exemptions for nonprofit organizations

  Public Budgeting &amp Finance · 2024-12-01

  articleOpen access1st authorCorresponding

  Abstract Current public policy grants nonprofits property tax exemptions simply because of their status, often assuming they are “charitable,” “educational,” or “health‐related.” This research note argues exemptions should be based on the public or private benefits provided, and not be given to all nonprofits. According to benefits theory, public funds should not finance private benefits; beneficiaries should cover those costs. Property tax exemptions should be reserved for organizations offering public goods or services. In New York City, these exemptions are costly, yet only a small portion supports nonprofits that produce public goods or services.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• An Overlooked Hospital Performance Metric: Bond Ratings

  Forefront Group · 2024-02-12

  datasetSenior author
  PublisherDOI

• Endowment

  Edward Elgar Publishing eBooks · 2023-12-05

  book-chapter1st authorCorresponding

  The Elgar Encyclopedia of Nonprofit Management, Leadership and Governance is the ultimate reference guide for those interested in the rapidly growing nonprofit sector. Each insightful entry includes a definition of the concept, practical applications in nonprofit organizations, and discussion of current issues and future directions.

  PublisherDOI

• Operating reserves

  Edward Elgar Publishing eBooks · 2023-12-05

  book-chapter1st authorCorresponding

  The Elgar Encyclopedia of Nonprofit Management, Leadership and Governance is the ultimate reference guide for those interested in the rapidly growing nonprofit sector. Each insightful entry includes a definition of the concept, practical applications in nonprofit organizations, and discussion of current issues and future directions.

  PublisherDOI

• Endowment building and use by nonprofits: An integration of theory and practice

  Nonprofit Management and Leadership · 2023-07-17 · 4 citations

  articleSenior author

  Abstract This paper explores issues concerning endowment building, endowment management, and the general perceptions of endowment through the views of leaders of nonprofits that built an endowment. We find that endowment is generally considered meaningful to nonprofit leaders when it provides at least 5% of an organization's annual budget. The initiative for building endowment largely comes from boards of directors, executive directors, or some combination of both. However, external actors—especially foundations—play critical roles. The source of funds for endowments mostly come from major gifts including bequests, even though these gifts often were not solicited. Endowments serve a range of functions for organizations and do seem to alter organizational behavior and outcomes as suggested by the existing literature. Endowment aids organizational sustainability by supporting some reasonable level of annual operating costs. Many nonprofits use the flexibility and freeing up of resources provided by endowment funds for innovation, program enhancement, capacity building, and risk taking. For better or worse, endowments become a key part of a virtuous cycle of legitimacy where the nonprofits' accomplishments, relationships, and reputation attract resources to support activities in perpetuity, thus creating a more capable, stable, and accomplished organization to which additional support is more easily drawn.

  PublisherDOI

Frequent coauthors

• Todd L. Ely

  University of Colorado Denver

  18 shared

• Daniel Williams

  Baruch College

  13 shared

• Anubhav Gupta

  National University of Singapore

  7 shared

• Meagan M. Jordan

  6 shared

• G. E. Mitchell

  5 shared

• Steven A. Finkler

  Dominion University College

  5 shared

• Robert M. Purtell

  Old Dominion University

  4 shared

• Michah W. Rothbart

  Syracuse University

  4 shared

Awards & honors

• Editors' Prize for Best Scholarly Paper in Nonprofit Managem…