Voluntary Nonprofit Sector Research Articles

Determinants of Individual Prosociality and of Collective Social Solidarity-Cohesion: A Literature Review

AbstractThe foundations of volunteering, charitable giving, voluntary associations, voluntary agencies, and other aspects of the Voluntary Nonprofit Sector (VNPS) collectively and individual voluntary action lie in various aspects of human nature and human societies. These may be referred to variously as altruism, morality, ethics, virtue, kindness, generosity, cooperation, social solidarity, and prosociality. Such foundations of the VNPS, and specifically of social solidarity and prosociality, are the subjects of this literature review article/book. The central goal here is to provide a comprehensive and interdisciplinary theoretical framework for understanding, explaining, and predicting such phenomena, based on two versions of the author’s S-Theory.

A Survey of Voluntaristics: Research on the Growth of the Global, Interdisciplinary, Socio-behavioral Science Field and Emergent Inter-discipline

A Survey of Voluntaristics: Research on the Growth of the Global, Interdisciplinary, Socio-behavioral Science Field and Emergent Inter-discipline

The Global Spirit of Philanthropy and Altruism: Meanings, Experiences, and Some Biological Roots

ngos and the voluntary nonprofit sector are ultimately based on altruism and philanthropy in humans. Altruism may be defined as unselfish concern for the welfare and satisfactions of others. Research in the past 30 years has demonstrated that 30-50% of a person’s tendency to feel and practice altruism is based on our genes anddna. Because philanthropy is a broad, more universal form of altruism, such research indicates that philanthropy in humans also has evolutionary roots in ourdna. Such research supports the conclusion that there is a Global Spirit of Altruism, hardwired into the human species as a feeling, attitude, and behavior tendency. Similarly, there has been a Global Spirit of Philanthropy emerging in humans over the past two millennia, and especially in the past two centuries.

The Current State of Civil Society and Volunteering in the World, the USA, and China

AbstractThis paper presents an overview of the statistics on Civil Society and the Voluntary Nonprofit Sector (vnps) in the world, with special attention to theusaand China. The central foci are numbers of Nonprofit Groups, especially associations, and numbers of volunteers in associations. The paper draws on various research documents, as well as estimates by the author, based on extensive prior research.

Negotiating Neoliberal Environments in British Columbia and Ontario, Canada: Restructuring of State – Voluntary Sector Relations and Disability Organizations' Struggles to Survive

As the social programmes of the postwar welfare state have been dramatically cut back and transformed, many have looked to the voluntary nonprofit sector as the ‘beacon of hope’ in terms of delivering support and services to citizens in need of assistance. But at the same time as these organizations have been under mounting pressure to deliver support and services, they have also been subject to forces of change which limit their capacities to play this vital social role. In this paper, we examine how disability organizations in two Canadian provinces have been faring in increasingly harsh neoliberal environments. We look, in particular, at the ways in which these organizations are struggling to negotiate the pressures of diminished and inadequate funding, rising demand for their services, and changing regulatory relations with the state. Drawing on mail surveys of sixty-two disability organizations in the provinces of Ontario and British Columbia, we discuss the impacts that organizational survival strategies are having on clients, staff, volunteers and volunteerism, and on the operation and structure of such organizations. We show how disability organizations are experiencing significant pressures to change how they deliver services and supports to disabled people in need. These include pressures to diminish levels of service provision to clients, particularly those in greatest need, to reduce staffing levels and institute survival strategies that negatively impact working conditions, to rely even more heavily upon volunteer labour, and to modify their operations and organizations in a struggle to cope with harsh neoliberal conditions.

Identifying the Factors That Influence Positioning Strategy in U.K. Charitable Organizations That Provide Public Services

This article is based on empirical research that for the first time identifies and explains the key factors that influence the organizational-level positioning strategy of charities involved in the delivery of public services within the wider voluntary nonprofit sector in the United Kingdom. The multidimensional factors are integrated in a theoretical model, which the authors argue is better able to accommodate the charitable context. The model suggests that a combination of external environmental, organizational, and mediating factors influence the positioning strategy of charities. Several of these factors are unique to the charitable context. They highlight the inadequacy of the existing marketing and strategy literature on positioning to fully explain strategic positioning in charities. Together, the research findings and the model provide distinct additions to the voluntary sector management literature while also providing an alternative perspective to researching charity positioning in contemporary marketing and strategy literature.

Building the Capacity of the Voluntary Nonprofit Sector: Challenges of Theory and Practice

As voluntary and community organizations in the UK (VCOs) expand their role in the provision of public services, they are under increasing pressure from governmental funders to improve their management and organizational systems - to “build their capacity.” This paper considers the theoretical and practical challenges posed by the idea of “capacity building.” It also looks at the challenges for VCOs of meeting the capacity building agenda while simultaneously retaining organizational distinctiveness and independence. Action research is proposed as a means to meet the challenges. A keynote paper prepared for the EGPA Workshop on Voluntary Action in Europe, Lisbon, September 2003. Revised for IJPA special edition following comments at Workshop, October 2003.

Managing cross‐border cooperation between voluntary organizations in Ireland

AbstractThe voluntary nonprofit sector in Ireland has grown significantly in recent years. A related trend has been the growth of cross‐border (in effect, transnational) cooperation between voluntary organizations based in Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland. However, this development has posed a set of management issues in terms of structure, forms of governance and decision making, day‐to‐day project management, and sustainability. Cross‐border work has also meant that voluntary bodies confront a distinctive set of barriers in relation to political and ethnic conflict, social and cultural attitudes, and practical delivery. Strengthening of cooperation across borders will require greater planning, mainstream funding, focused management, diversification of services, and realistic expectations.

Democratic Accountability: The Distinctiveness of the Third Sector

Each of the main sectors of society—the state, the market and the voluntary non-profit sector—is characterized by a distinctive accountability regime, focusing on a different subject of accountability (actions, results and intentions, respectively) and a different mechanism of accountability (hierarchy, competition and cooperative networking, respectively). Those different regimes can complement one another, enhancing the democratic accountability of the system overall. They can also undercut one another, if their differences are not respected. Bringing the Third Sector under a market-style accountability regime, through “public-private partnerships” based on competitive tendering, undermines the distinctive contribution that the Third Sector might make.

Public good theories of the non-profit sector: Weisbrod revisited

Burton Weisbrod's 1975 article, Toward a theory of the voluntary non-profit sector in a three-sector economy, models non-profit organisations as suppliers of public goods which are undersupplied by government to heterogeneous populations. This article examines the implications, extensions and empirical tests of the Weisbrod theory. It also examines the theories of pure and impure altruism, the heterogeneity hypothesis, and the various ‘publicness’ indexes of non-profit output. The commonalities between the public good model and the trustworthiness model of non-profit organisations are also explored.

The Voluntary Nonprofit Sector. Burton A. Weisbrod

<i>The Voluntary Nonprofit Sector</i>. Burton A. Weisbrod

Book Review Section : THE VOLUNTARY NONPROFIT SECTOR, by Burton A. Weisbrod. Lexington, Mass.: Lexington Books, 1977. 179 pp. $18.00

Book Review Section : THE VOLUNTARY NONPROFIT SECTOR, by Burton A. Weisbrod. Lexington, Mass.: Lexington Books, 1977. 179 pp. $18.00