Nonprofit and Voluntary Sector Quarterly

This article describes the section on nonprofit statistics that will be in the forthcoming edition of Historical Statistics of the United States. The article provides a few examples of the use of long-term statistical series to gain perspective on the contemporary nonprofit sector and of the use of such series in evaluating standard liberal interpretations of American history in general. The historical examples in the article (such as the decline in American generosity since the 1960s) are as much suggestive as definitive but all point to valuable questions to be explored through more detailed studies.

Though deeply rooted in the Middle Ages, as in every European Country, the French nonprofit sector differs in that it was secularized and restricted at the beginning of the 19th century by the centralized state. According to a tradition dating back to the 1789 Revolution, the state had the monopoly of public interest concerns. This tradition gradually lost force in the 20th century, and nonprofit organizations multiplied during the past three decades in every field of public interest. This trend was encouraged by the central and local governments in a period of decentralization and European integration. Decentralization offers a great opportunity for the French nonprofit sector; conversely, nonprofit organizations provide collective services in an alternative way and can offer an antidote to latent centralization tendencies.

In the past century, the Netherlands’ nonprofit sector has grown tremendously. Nowadays, it is one of the largest in the world. This article considers the growth of the sector in general, and pays special attention to its main domains: education, health care, social work, the arts, and culture. It argues that three factors explain the sector’s current size. First, the Netherlands has a long and rich tradition of private initiatives, ranging from the medieval guilds and church-related activities to pillarization in the 19th and 20th centuries. Second, the posture of the government created a political environment that stimulated nonprofit growth. Finally, the crucial factor in the expansion of the nonprofit sector is the scheme of collective finance and private provision for key welfare state services. This scheme started ineducation and later spread to health care and social services.

The establishment of the British National Health Service in 1948 was a watershed for the nonprofit sector, as the voluntary hospitals were taken into public ownership. This article surveys the voluntary hospitals of London in the last two peacetime decades of their existence. Although this was a period of significant expansion for the hospitals, there were also difficulties looming. City-wide data and records of individual institutions are used to explore the risk of deficit, the hospitals’ asset base, the demand for expenditure, and the changing basis of income. The analysis confirms and augments earlier discussion of gathering financial hardship. Finally, the growth of the municipal hospital service is detailed. The London County Council’s enthusiastic development of publicly funded institutions added to the problems of the voluntary sector. Public/nonprofit partnership remained underdeveloped, voluntary fundraising was undermined, and principled opposition was articulated by council members.

In this article, the author examines a slow but profound revolution in U.S. human services over the past 50 years. The author provides a general overview of the human service field, its current size and composition, and the role of nonprofit organizations; examines broad trends in these dimensions and the role of government policies; and reviews why and how these developments constitute significant changes in human services and how they compare with those in other fields. The article concludes with a look at the future role of nonprofit organizations in human services and at major developments in the funding and management of nonprofit human service organizations.

Civil rights advocacy has long been a part of the U.S. tradition of nonprofit charity organizations. Even before the passage of federal, state, and local fair housing laws, groups of concerned citizens gathered together to improve opportunities for equal housing choice. Fair housing councils (FHCs) cropped up across the country as the Civil Rights movement expanded throughout the nation. As a part of then on profit “quiet revolution,”some FHCs have come across a new way to affirmatively further fair housing with much reduced government subsidies. This article explores the successes (and failures) of fair housing advocacy nonprofits that have sought compensatory and punitive damages through the courts for frustration of their missions and diversion of their resources. Some of these groups have moved from dependency on federal, state, and local government funds to reliance on court orders and civil settlements, whereby fair housing scofflaws pay for their transgressions by funding the work of these advocacy organizations.

This article develops a Professional Mobilization Framework to guide research and discussion of the mobilization of nonprofit professionals in issue politics. We use the framework, together with literature on women clergy, to develop expectations about the issue interests and political mobilization of women clergy. We use qualitative interview data and aggregate survey data from 54 women clergy to test the expectations developed in the framework. The results of the study show that the women’s issue agendas focus on racism and intolerance, poverty, and gay rights, while their action agendas stress poverty, community organizing, and reproductive rights. Organizational mobilization and ease of entry appear to push women clergy into far more poverty and community-organizing activities than would be expected based on their interest in these issues alone. Meanwhile, organizational demobilization appears to result in less activity than interest on issues such as gay rights, women’s rights, and racism.

The purpose of this study is to determine whether nonprofits that serve a membership (that is, mutual nonprofits) have more in common with cooperatives (also member-oriented associations) than with nonprofits that are oriented toward the public. A MANOVA was used to analyze the effect of organizational type of which there were four categories (publicly oriented nonprofits, mutual nonprofits, cooperatives without shares, and cooperatives with shares) on the five dependent measures (social objectives, volunteer participation, democratic decision making, government dependence, and market reliance) derived from the social economy framework. The results offer some support for the hypothesis that serving a membership is an important factor in the basic characteristics of an organization, and that is true regardless of whether the incorporation is nonprofit or cooperative. However, charitable status also appeared to influence on the results. The implications for the social economy and civil society are discussed.

In the past decade, nonprofits scholars have given increased attention to the topic of vulnerability and organizational demise. An early contribution to this literature was Tuckman and Chang’s elaboration of four financial ratios that they believe could be used to predict financial vulnerability. These measures have largely escaped empirical tests. This research note describes a test of the Tuckman-Chang financial vulnerability measures among a population of nonprofit arts organizations. The article concludes that although the Tuckman-Chang measures do not have utility for all types of arts nonprofits, the measures nonetheless show substantial promise for predicting the closure of some nonprofit organizations.

This article explores a series of issues the Northwest Area Foundation has considered as part of its strategic planning process. The Foundation engaged in intensive strategic planning from 1996 to 1998 and has continued to focus on strategic alignment since that time. This has led to major changes in how the foundation is governed, does its work, and identifies its potential partners.