Can Nonprofit Universities Operate as Social Enterprises? Donor Trust, Cross-Sector Philanthropy, and Institutional Sustainability Under Pakistan's Current Public Policy Framework

Abstract

Purpose. This paper asks under what conditions a nonprofit university can legitimately be described as a social enterprise, and what organizational and policy conditions allow such a university to remain both financially resilient and faithful to its educational mission. It uses Pakistan as a contextual anchor, where public funding for higher education falls well short of recurrent need. Design/methodology/approach. Following the theory synthesis approach to conceptual research, the paper integrates social enterprise and hybrid organizing theory, resource dependence theory and the literature on donor trust and philanthropic giving. A practitioner perspective from university advancement informs, but does not substitute for, the analysis of Pakistan's higher education, nonprofit tax and foreign contribution regimes. Findings. The paper develops the Mission-Bounded Hybridity (MBH) framework. It argues that nonprofit legal form is necessary but not sufficient for social enterprise status. A nonprofit university becomes a social enterprise only when three conditions hold together: earned income is coupled to the educational mission, surpluses are locked into mission use, and governance gives the mission primacy over revenue. Five capabilities (mission-coupled earning, donor trust capital, revenue portfolio quality, regulatory fit and mission safeguarding governance) jointly shape a dual outcome of financial resilience and mission fidelity. Seven propositions specify these relationships and their boundary conditions. Research limitations/implications. The framework is conceptual and its propositions requires empirical testing. A research agenda sets out designs, measures and data sources. Practical implications. The framework gives university boards, advancement offices and regulators a shared vocabulary for judging whether new revenue strengthens or erodes institutional purpose. Originality/value. The paper moves the debate from whether universities may earn income to how earned income, philanthropy and regulation interact, and it shows that revenue quality, not revenue quantity, determines whether hybridity sustains a public-benefit mission in a resource-constrained, multi-jurisdictional setting.