Elizabeth Searing
Adjunct Research Professor
Dr. Elizabeth Searing is an Associate Professor of Public and Nonprofit Management at the University of Texas at Dallas and the Fellow to the Venise Stuart Professor in Nonprofit Management and Leadership. Dr. Searing’s primary research focus is the financial management of nonprofit and social enterprise organizations, but she also conducts work on resilience, charity data, and comparative social economy more broadly. She is an Associate Editor and editorial board member of Nonprofit Management & Leadership, and an editorial advisory board member at VOLUNTAS, the Journal of Civil Society, and the Journal of Public Budgeting, Accounting and Financial Management (JPBAFM). Her articles have been published in peer-reviewed journals such as the Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization, Nonprofit Management & Leadership, and Nonprofit and Voluntary Sector Quarterly. Dr. Searing also serves as an Adjunct Research Professor at Carleton University, Canada.
With Dr. Nathan Grasse of Carleton University, Dr. Searing has been working to make a comprehensive database of T3010 annual Canadian charity filings available to the public. This also allows exploration of numerous research questions involving the unique context of the Canadian data, including published studies on the funding of religious organizations, the relationship between state and philanthropic funding, and how researchers accustomed to US charity data should approach Canadian charity data.
Dr. Searing and Dr. Dennis Young wrote Resilience and the Management of Nonprofit Organizations: A New Paradigm (2022) and serve as the editors for the companion volume, Case Studies on Nonprofit Resilience Management (2025). Prof. Searing is also an editor of Practicing Professional Ethics in Economics and Public Policy (with D. Searing) and The Social Enterprise Zoo: A Guide to Perplexed Entrepreneurs, Philanthropists, Investors and Policymakers (with D. Young and C. Brewer). Immediately prior to her time in Texas, she was an Assistant Professor of Public Administration and Policy at the Rockefeller College of Public Affairs and Policy, University at Albany (SUNY); she is also the former Director of the Institute of Nonprofit Leadership and Community Development at the University at Albany.