Ohio State University Scholars Garner Prestigious ARNOVA Research Accolades

Published Date November 21, 2025
News Type College News
Long Tran
Assistant Professor
Maham Ali
Doctoral Candidate

John Glenn College of Public Affairs Assistant Professor Long Tran and Maham Ali, a doctoral candidate, have been recognized by the Association for Research on Nonprofit Organizations and Voluntary Action (ARNOVA) with significant research distinctions, representing the college’s commitment to scholarly excellence in the nonprofit sector.

Tran and Ali are recipients of the 2025 Felice Davidson Perlmutter Award conferred by ARNOVA’s Theory, Issues, Boundaries Section (TIBS) for their manuscript “Community Foundations’ Racialized Framing and Donor Solicitation: Theory and Experimental Evidence.”

This award acknowledges nascent research demonstrating substantial promise for advancing nonprofit theory, addressing critical issues and crossing disciplinary boundaries.

“Maham and I are truly honored to receive this research award,” said Tran. “Spearheaded by Maham, one of the Glenn College’s PhD candidates on the job market, our research project aims to build innovative theoretical insights and empirical evidence regarding the implications of an important recent phenomenon: community foundations positioning themselves as major institutional actors in addressing social and racial inequities.”

Their research investigates how the stated commitments of community foundations to social and racial equity impact their donor solicitation strategies. The investigation employed a rigorous randomized experimental design, yielding the following preliminary findings: The donation intentions of non-Latino white individuals exhibited no statistically significant variation in response to the racialized organizational frames utilized by the foundations. Conversely, people of color demonstrated a statistically significant response to several racialized frames, influencing both their hypothetical and actual donation decisions.

LePere-Schloop wins 2021 Perlmutter Award

Professor Megan LePere-Schloop’s winning paper examined the nexus of public administration and nonprofit studies.

“This award is an important honor in the field of nonprofit management research,” said Stephanie Moulton, associate dean for faculty and research at the Glenn College. “Professor Long Tran and doctoral candidate Maham Ali are advancing nonprofit theory and practice with their paper, representing the Glenn College’s commitment to high impact scholarship that makes a difference in the real world.”

In addition to the Perlmutter Award, Tran has also won the 2025 ARNOVA Governance Paper Award from the Governance Section. This accolade recognizes the preeminent governance-related research papers authored during the recipient’s graduate student tenure between 2018 and 2025.

His winning paper, “International NGO Centralization and Leader-Perceived Effectiveness," offers substantive theoretical and practical implications for international NGO governance reform.

View Assistant Professor Long Tran’s bio and CV.