This chapter critiques Western and scientific philanthropy scholarly understanding of the nonprofit sector. It argues that this narrow analysis of nonprofits limits our understanding of Muslim prosocial behaviors that are less dominant in the academic literature. By examining the tenets and roots of Muslim prosocial action, we see how this specific view of social good has been limited in the broader conversation, which in turn has limited our understanding of the nonprofit sector across the world. The chapter also explores Muslim prosocial action by examining its theological and cultural sources to create a broader conception of giving behavior within an Islamic context, and discusses the challenges associated with strict adherence to the Western definition of the nonprofit sector for scholars who want to include Muslim perspectives and charitable acts. Ultimately, it suggests a framework that nonprofit-sector scholars can use to move beyond Western-centric definitions of prosocial action to include other cultural and faith perspectives. This approach treats Muslim prosocial action as a practice-oriented religious tradition.

This chapter examines the wide-ranging and often poorly defined SDG 17 (means of implementation) in the context of health policy and governance. It fundamentally asks: How can health policies and systems contribute to achieving goals from SDG 17? The author argues that there are significant synergies between health policy and SDG 17 as many of the factors that potentially make ‘sustainable development’ possible require healthy populations and functional health systems. When health and sustainable growth goals align, good population health, resting on environmentally sustainable food chains, adequate support for public health systems, good access to healthcare, and good enough governance for health, can provide benefits to the global economy and help to move towards a model of sustainable development.

Inequalities, specifically in Post-Apartheid South Africa, have been extensively analyzed, yet little attention has been paid to the effect of health policy on inequalities. The chapters goal is to demonstrate how SDG 3 (Health for All) can work with SDG10 (Reduce Inequalities) to fight longstanding societal inequalities. One of the first steps is the creation of the National Health Insurance (NHI), whose goal is to cover the entire population with adequate health care at an affordable price. Health and health outcomes are, however, not only affected by provision or access to healthcare and health services. They result from multidimensional and complex factors linked to the social determinants of health. So while the NHI may reduce inequality and inequity in health care, further attention will need to be placed on socio-economic inequality given the social and economic disparities among the population groups in the country.

Lamothe and colleagues view the nonprofit sector as being intentionally engineered or designed by government to create specific behaviors in the economy. This chapter examines the ways in which government and legal structures envision desirable outcomes in the broad economy and develop laws and policies intended to yield specific institutional state-sanctioned outcomes in the private market. Drawing on the Korean context as an example, the authors explore what government design of the social sector says about not only the strong-state context present in the global East, but also how this lens helps us to reinterpret our understanding of the legal underpinnings of the nonprofit sector elsewhere.

The chapter introduces readers to the major theories of the sector. Those covered include: market-failure theory, government-failure theory, contract-failure theory, voluntary-failure theory, supply-side (or entrepreneurship) theory, social-origins theory, interdependence theory, the commons, mediating structures, and associationalism.

Climate change will continually increase natural disasters, particularly hurricanes and wildfires (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, 2021; Shukla et al., 2019). Major disasters cause acute health impacts, notably from injury during flood-events (Blake & Zelinsky, 2017), and direct damage from smoke and particulate matter inhalation in the case of wildfires (Bowman & Johnston, 2005). Natural disasters also amplify infectious disease risk while simultaneously disrupting access to health services (Sharma et al., 2008; Willison & Holmes, 2020).

In this chapter, Mook and Whitman provide a critique of the dominant three-sector paradigm, which categorizes organizations into distinct public, private, and social sectors based on their legal status. The critique is inspired by the social economy perspective that focuses attention on the dynamic intersection of the sectors as part of a mixed economy. The social-economy model acknowledges the blending of sectoral elements and the evolution of different types of organizations in the political economy. The authors explain this perspective, contrast it with the three-sector paradigm, and provide an example of how it allows us to reexamine societies and better conceptualize the work of organizations with social objectives. The closing calls for a movement to balance the political economy in favor of humanity and the world.

This chapter introduces a self-development theory of the nonprofit sector, informed by alternative development and basic-needs theory. The theory presented in this chapter suggests that nonprofit law plays a role in creating a legal framework that allows people to participate in the improvement of their own lives and communities through self-development. With a nonprofit-friendly legal environment in place, individuals have greater economic incentive to work within their own communities to create organizations that help individuals, families, and communities to meet their own needs. This paradigm stands in contrast to views of nonprofit organizations as facilitators of rescuing behavior, in which one group of people seeks to uplift another. Based on cases in Nigeria and South Africa, this paper describes the role and importance of nonprofits in facilitating the development of individuals, institutions, and communities from within.

This introductory chapter makes a case for the value of considering the role and purpose of nonprofits in society. It defines “theory” in accessible terms and describes the scope of nonprofit-sector theory. It also previews the subsequent chapters.

In Chapter 6, we confront the reality that many dog owners must eventually face decisions about their dogs’ end-of-life, potentially including hard decisions about euthanasia or costly medical interventions. We frame these decisions about ending life in terms of the owners’ fiduciary responsibilities and what they imply across different property rights regimes. We show how framing the relationship between dogs and humans in terms of principal-agent theory may offer some novel insights about responsibilities. We explore the appropriateness of euthanasia and how individual preferences and societal perspectives on its appropriateness have changed over time. We then examine the growth in pet health insurance and pre-paid veterinary plans and how this growth affects the economics of the choice between various treatments and euthanasia. We conclude by considering how individual and societal attitudes toward the use of dogs in medical research have changed over time. Nonetheless, although the number of dogs used in research has declined in recent years, many dogs still suffer and experience premature death.

In Chapter 5, we explain how a stated preference method, contingent valuation, is used to estimate the value of statistical dog life (VSDL). This shadow price is useful in cost-benefit analyses, included in regulatory impact analyses of rules that affect canine mortality risk. We explain how economists estimate the value of statistical life (VSL) and how to interpret it. We motivate the value of the VSDL with the melamine pet food disaster, which killed many dogs and cats and resulted in the Food and Drug Administration being given more authority to regulate pet food. The VSDL was estimated using a survey experiment presented to dog owners in a national survey. Respondents were asked about their willingness to pay for a reduction in the mortality risk that their dogs face from canine influenza. We describe the construction of the survey instrument and the experimental design, and then demonstrate how the statistical analyses of the resulting data can reduce behavioral biases that might reduce the validity of the results. We conclude by considering how the VSDL may be extended beyond regulatory analysis to tort and divorce law and public policy more generally.

Achieving co-benefits places the focus on politics and governance. This chapter presents two basic frameworks for identifying opportunities to make successful policy for co-benefits. One is for addressing the problem of change within government, in the framework commonly used by advocates of intersectoral policy. We adopt a framework that can clearly identify key dynamics and opportunities for the construction of cross-cutting policies, as well as the areas in which, under current circumstances, progress is likely to be limited and advocates might find themselves frustrated or defending their achievements against attack. The second approach to analyzing politics and the possibility of action is grounded in the analysis of agenda-setting, which has been profitably applied to the area of intersectoral policy for health. In both cases, these are basic analytic frameworks for understanding which action is likely to be effective, in order to improve the likelihood that proposals for achieving co-benefits do achieve their potential benefits.