The nonprofit Institutional Imperative leads nonprofit management teams to run their organization for the sake of the organization rather than for the sake of stakeholders:

from Tactical Philanthropy:

The Nonprofit Institutional Imperative

… The nonprofit Institutional Imperative is driven by fear, the fear created by running an organization which is constantly fighting for survival.

Nonprofits, even large ones, rarely have enough money. Even when their revenue is high, they frequently do not have the philanthropic equity on their balance sheet that would give them the ability to invest in the future. When an organization, or an organism, is in survival mode, it must shut down nonessential functions. It must operate so as to preserve itself. In the case of a nonprofit, this means focusing on fundraising and executing existing programs.

The nonprofit Institutional Imperative is responsible for the fact that so few nonprofit measure their performance, track the outcomes of their work or make the resources available to share information about what works (and what does not) with the field.