New research unlocks opportunities for nonprofits to share resources

Oxford economist Alex Teytelboym is part of a research team developing a new approach to help nonprofit organisations share resources, expertise and skills - without the need for monetary payments.

The paper, Community-Oriented Market Design for Nonprofit Resource Exchange, has been accepted for publication in Operations Research. It introduces SWAP (Sharing With A Purpose), a resource-sharing system designed to help nonprofit organisations make better use of resources that already exist within their communities.

Nonprofits frequently operate under significant financial and resource constraints. Yet at the same time, valuable resources - from unused space and equipment to specialist knowledge and staff expertise - can remain underused.

SWAP aims to bridge that gap by allowing participating organisations to offer resources they have available and access resources they need. Exchanges can include physical assets, but also skills and services in areas such as marketing, management, event planning and organisational development.

Rather than relying on conventional one-to-one exchanges, SWAP uses market design to facilitate resource-sharing across multiple organisations. The system combines an auction-based process, a virtual currency known as SWAPcredits, and optimisation techniques to match the resources organisations can contribute with those sought by others.

A central feature of the project is that the platform has been developed with the nonprofit community rather than simply for it. Researchers have worked alongside participating organisations and SWAP Inc., the platform’s affiliated nonprofit, to develop and refine the system. The SWAP Hub has been used by nonprofit communities in Maryland, with participating organisations helping to shape the platform through repeated rounds of resource exchange.

The research demonstrates how market design - often associated with the allocation of scarce resources in areas such as school places, organ donation and matching markets - can also be applied to challenges faced by community organisations.

By making underused resources more visible and easier to share, the researchers hope the approach can expand nonprofits’ access to useful assets and expertise while reducing the need for additional spending. It can also create new connections between organisations that may not otherwise have worked together.

Alex Teytelboym, Professor in the Department of Economics, is one of eight co-authors on the study, alongside researchers from Worcester Polytechnic Institute and Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. Some of theoretical ideas underpinning the design of SWAP were developed in Alex’s prior work (supported by his ERC Starter Grant DUALMARKETS) with Simon Jantschgi (a former postdoctoral fellow at the Department) and Thành Nguyen (Purdue).

SWAP has been in use with nonprofit communities since 2022, and the research team is now looking towards expanding both the range and volume of exchanges supported by the platform.