Something Old and Something New: Using the Technology Acceptance Model to Evaluate Nonprofit Certification

Several nonprofit associations have implemented assessment and certification programs intending to produce institutional improvement for member organizations. Using the Technology Acceptance Model (TAM) as a foundation, this study develops and tests an extension of TAM with organizations that chose to participate in one such program, (the Louisiana Standards for Excellence organizational assessment), and with those that did not. The results of this quantitative study largely validate TAM and indicate that dimensions such as usefulness, access barriers related to resources, attitudes, executive director pro-activity and behavioral intent all influence the decision to pursue voluntary certification. These findings advance current theory and contribute to the foundation for future research aimed at understanding user-adoption behavior in a general sense, and more specifically, in the nonprofit sector.