Several challenges, external and internal, to the identity and position of civil society organizations exist today. Organizations may be tempted or coerced into closer cooperation with the state. There are also incentives to become more market oriented. This article deals with such struggles in Swedish study associations and how these organizations attempt to gain legitimacy. The tradition of the organization is an important legitimating aspect and so is efficiency. These two aspects can complement each other but may also collide. The article demonstrates how civil society organizations handle an influx of market logics and trends of professionalization when these clash with a civil society identity. The findings indicate that different isomorphic processes are at work. Cultural resources are used to handle conflicting myths, leading to varied discursive strategies and incidences of decoupling.

Volunteers are recognized as people devoting significant time to provide unpaid services to social organizations. In nonprofit hospitals, volunteers play three essential roles. First, they provide assistance and care to patients. Secondly, they generate strategic value through fundraising, marketing, and community relations’ activities. Third, they generate financial benefits for the institution by reducing hospital costs. This article examines such roles and contributions of volunteers at two Brazilian nonprofit hospitals. Managers at these organizations consider volunteers valuable for the psycho-social service they provide, the strategic actions they develop, the cost savings they generate, the goodwill they create, and the funds they raise. In conclusion, volunteers at both hospitals are key stakeholders whose altruistic motives as good citizens motivate them to join either of the organizations, help humanize their services, and assist with the development of strategies that make significant contributions to the improvement of performance at both locales.

Universities in the U.S. have been criticized for not contributing enough to the social well-being of the communities within which they operate, and business schools have been accused of failing to prepare students adequately for careers in business. These criticisms have led to increased focus on service learning, a form of experiential learning that aids students in the application of theoretical knowledge to “real-life” situations—including problems and opportunities—faced by local as well as international communities. Even though service-learning has become fairly popular in business schools throughout the U.S., there is relatively little literature that illuminates its application. Thus, the present article describes a service-learning project in a marketing research course and how this project supports the university’s mission of civic engagement. Included are also a discussion of course-specific objectives as well as learning goals, objectives, and assessments as commonly required by regional and national accreditation agencies.

In many parts of the Western world, interventions for people with mental illness have radically changed in recent decades. In the deinstitutionalized system of today, the role for non-profit organizations is generally characterized by dual goals: political advocacy and service provision. Here, the role and function of the user movement in the Swedish mental health system is examined through a case study of all local branches of the largest non-profit organization within the Swedish mental health field. The empirical material consisted of annual reports from all local branches, and was analysed through two analytical schemes, concerning voice/service and conflict/consensus. The analysis pointed to a user movement that still retained the basic ideas of peer support and mutual aid, but were also increasingly being asked by formal service providers to represent the need of users. A hybrid organization category, a ‘Social Movement Peer Organization’, was identified that where social recreational activities are combined with local political advocacy.

Indigenous NGOs in Uganda are a key stakeholder in the development process. Unfortunately, their impact on the ground has over the years been affected by their poor credibility. Until this research, no empirical research had been done to explore this terrain in Uganda. It is in the wake of this that this research was undertaken. This work was undertaken under the Swedish International Development Agency/Swedish Department for Research Cooperation grant for capacity-building for Makerere University. It was carried out on 100 NGOs selected randomly from some purposively selected districts. A total of 783 respondents responded to a questionnaire whereas some 100 key informants were also involved. The study employed both qualitative and quantitative approaches. Factor analysis with loadings above 0.4 established that several variables affect each of the factors, with the highest randomly selected loading in each factor being as follows: in accountability (0.61291), transparency (−0.66958), legitimacy (0.43661) partnership/networking (0.48110), ICT (−0.42610) and effectiveness (−0.77667). The beta (β) column under the standardised coefficients shows that the beta for legitimacy = 0.236; efficiency = 0.171; transparency = 0.153; accountability = 0.141; partnership = 0.120 and ICT = 0.080 and that all are significant at 0.001 level. The coefficients show that legitimacy is the most predictive factor for credibility and that the least predictive factor is ICT. All in all, it was established that the credibility of the NGOs is just average. The level of credibility was found to be insufficient for the badly needed effective service delivery and poverty eradication in a country where 24.5% of the population still live in absolute poverty. It is recommended that in practice, for NGOs to effectively participate in poverty eradication and enhance their credibility, they should invest in the above factors in proportion to their predictive power. Theoretically, more research needs to be done in order to develop a robust theory on the NGOs’ credibility. However, it was noted that these key factors could still provide guidelines for the theoretical explanation of the NGOs’ credibility in Uganda.

Accountability is a much studied subject in the social sciences and is known for its complexity, context dependence, and ambiguity. By conducting a comprehensive literature review and analysis across nonprofit, public, and private sector literatures, this article identifies the causes of ambiguities present in many accountability frameworks and describes the trend toward understanding accountability as a constructed concept combining both instrumental and interpretive elements. The relationship between legitimacy and accountability is considered. The authors develop a holistic accountability framework that facilitates defining and implementing accountability in complex, multi-stakeholder environments, by providing a means to operationalize commonly encountered but ambiguous accountability goals through a social process of deliberative dialogue. The authors conclude by summarizing limitations of the approach and describing future research needed.

External ratings of organizations have proliferated in the last few decades, impacting not only the behavior of consumers but also of the organizations being rated. This phenomenon has been widely studied in regards to the U.S. News and World Reports ratings of universities and law schools. This article strives to understand how third party ratings impact the behavior of nonprofits using the financial data the nonprofits provide in their IRS Forms 990. The results show that such ratings are, in fact, having an effect on how nonprofits report financial information on the IRS Form 990.

Although today’s nonprofit organizations make a strong appeal to volunteers, they often have difficulties with attracting and retaining these free labor forces. In this sense, studying the motivation of volunteers and its effects proves useful. In the present article, we investigate the relationship between volunteers’ motivation and their self-reported work effort, while relying on the Self-Determination Theory. The results indicate a positive link between volunteers’ autonomous motivation and work effort. Moreover, this relationship holds for each person in our sample, irrespective of the organization in which she/he is volunteering. Implications for future research, as well as the practical impact of these findings, are discussed.

Recent studies find that Western-style professional nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) in Kazakhstan and other Central Asian countries are weak and unsustainable. Most of these NGOs developed strong dependency on foreign donors for funds, and did not develop local network of support. This study is conducted to understand the lack of effectiveness of NGOs in Kazakhstan and to test popular sentiments toward NGOs. The interview with local and foreign social science experts and public figures confirm that NGOs in Kazakhstan are weak and unsustainable. The explanations of institutional ineffectiveness lay in disconnect with local traditions, low visibility of NGOs, and unsupportive government. Survey of general population suggests that people in Kazakhstan know very little about NGOs and do not appreciate their utility. We explain the inability of civil society organizations to reach out to local people by cultural mismatch. By using the Hofstede national culture model (Culture's consequences: International differences in work-related values. Thousand Oaks: SAGE Publications, 1984), we argue that local culture is in striking dissonance with the culture of donor countries, which created the NGO agenda in Kazakhstan.

Nonprofit interactions with businesses have become increasingly diverse, but which nonprofits establish relationships, and to what extent do relationships depend on the form or type of tie? Focusing on nonprofit collaboration with businesses and donations from businesses, we test arguments based on sociological institutionalism and resource dependence theory. We find that nonprofits relying on earned income, nonprofits led by individuals with management degrees, and rationalized nonprofits all are more likely to report collaborations with businesses, aligning with expectations from institutional theory. For donative ties between businesses and nonprofits, we find that rationalized nonprofits are more likely to have charitable gifts from businesses. However, nonprofits with earned income are less likely to have business donations, and funding diversity has a salient positive effect. These results reveal important but paradoxical institutional and resource dependence effects. We conclude with a discussion of our divergent findings and set an agenda for additional research on the topic.

Power asymmetries within partnerships between Northern and Southern NGOs are thought to be undesirable. Based on a comparative case study of the partnerships between three Northern NGOs and their Southern partners in Ghana, India and Nicaragua, this study examines how the partnerships’ institutional design affects local partners’ room to manoeuvre. It is demonstrated that (1) the Northern agencies unilaterally set the rules that govern the partnerships, based on their own norms, values and beliefs; (2) similarities and differences between the rules of the three agencies can, above all, be attributed to the corresponding and diverging nature of their norms, values and beliefs; and (3) informal rules allow more flexibility in their use. Whether this is beneficial for the Southern partners’ room to manoeuvre depends on individual project officers, who are responsible for interpreting and applying the rules, and the partners’ ability to conduct negotiations.

Earnings management by nonprofit organisations is not very frequently studied in the academic literature. The present paper presents an overview of the existing literature, and derives a number of hypotheses as to nonprofit organisations’ inclination to manipulate earnings. In a sample of 844 financial statements (2007) of Belgian nonprofit organisations accounting manipulations of earnings towards zero are clearly present. Furthermore, the potential presence of agency conflicts between board and management induces these manipulations, as well as the presence of debt. Finally, larger organisations seem to be more inclined to manipulate earnings to reach earnings levels close(r) to zero.

The examination of organizational features of voluntary associations and their effects on the experiences of volunteers traditionally received less attention than other topics. This paper aimed to examine how different features as social and task support, information and appreciation affect volunteers’ experiences in terms of job satisfaction, organizational commitment, and intention to remain. Moreover, potential moderating effects by motivations to volunteer in relation to the abovementioned relations were tested. Through the use of a self-report questionnaire, distributed among 162 Italian voluntary associations (final sample of 1,445 volunteers), structural equation modeling (SEM), and moderated-SEM were carried out to verify hypothesized associations and potential moderations. Job resources were associated with the three outcomes, moreover many moderating effects by the values/understanding and career motivations were found. The results were commented on the basis of the current literature, and some practical suggestions were drawn about voluntary associations’ management and volunteers’ recruitment and selection.

This paper examines the effects of aggregate government payments to nonprofit organizations on aggregate private philanthropy. Four behavioral models of private philanthropic giving are proposed to formulate four hypotheses about those effects: no net effect (null hypothesis), crowding in (positive effect), crowding out (negative effect), and “philanthropic flight” or displacement (negative effect across different subsectors). These hypotheses were tested against the evidence from 40 countries collected as a part of a larger research project aimed to document the scale and finances of the nonprofit sector. The data show that, on the balance, government payments to nonprofit institutions (NPIs) have a positive effect on aggregate philanthropic donations to nonprofits, as stipulated by the crowding in hypothesis, but a field level analysis revealed evidence of “philanthropic flight” or displacement from “service” to “expressive” activities by government payments to “service” NPIs. Due to the limitations of the data, these results indicate empirical plausibility of the hypothesized effects rather than their incidence. The findings demonstrate the complexity of the relationship between government funding and philanthropic donations to nonprofits, which depends on the goals of the actors (donors and recipients) and institutional settings mediating the transaction costs of difference sources of nonprofit support.

Humanitarian NGOs face difficult choices about whom to help and whom not on a daily basis. The research question in this article is how humanitarian NGOs make these difficult decisions and why in a particular way. March’s study on consequential and appropriate decision-making processes is used to analyze the nature and course of NGO decision making. Since March’s two models are often explicitly or implicitly linked to certain types of organizational settings—as reflected in an organization’s formal structure, compliance and coordination mechanisms—this article particularly zooms in on the relationship between NGO decision-making processes and these settings. The theoretical framework is illustrated and discussed by means of an exploratory comparative case study of two international humanitarian NGOs: Médecins Sans Frontières Holland (MSF Holland) and Acting with Churches Netherlands (ACT Netherlands).

The change in political leadership in the UK in 2010 has created financial uncertainty and instability for many third sector organisations. In a shifting funding landscape, it is clear that an over-reliance on Government funding is a risky strategy and that there is a need to diversify and seek out alternative sources of revenue. This article considers the impact of political change on the financial sustainability of community sports trusts associated with Premier League and Football League clubs in England. It explores sources of revenue through the analysis of financial statements, revealing that on average community sports trusts receive a significant proportion of income from grant funding whilst sponsorship income is relatively small. The article goes on to discuss the potential for community sports trusts to diversify revenue streams by developing social partnerships that address the corporate social responsibility (CSR) agendas of commercial organisations. It illustrates that although commercial sponsorship can provide benefits including the provision of additional funding that can enable financial stability, key issues include the balance of power, the impact on organisational flexibility, whether there is a need to restructure, and the development of long-term partnerships. Although the findings from this article are focused on a particular type of charity, given the importance of CSR partnership income for the charities sector they may also have broader implications for other charitable organisations.

This paper analyzes how social venture capitalists evaluate the integrity of social entrepreneurs. Based on an experiment with 40 social venture capitalists and 40 students, we investigate how five attributes of the entrepreneur contribute to the assessment of integrity. These attributes are the entrepreneur’s personal experience, professional background, voluntary accountability efforts, reputation and awards/fellowships granted to the entrepreneur. Results indicate that social venture capitalists focus largely on voluntary accountability efforts of the entrepreneur and the entrepreneur’s reputation when judging integrity. For an overall positive judgment of integrity, it seems to be sufficient if either voluntary accountability efforts or reputation of the entrepreneur are high. By comparing social venture capitalists with students, we show that experience leads to a simpler decision model focusing on key attributes.

This article examines ratification of the Kyoto Protocol across 26 transitional economies of Europe and Eurasia for the period of 1998–2009; the period between the Kyoto Protocol and the 2009 Copenhagen meeting. The dependent variable measures whether or not the country has ratified the Kyoto Protocol in a given year. The key variable of interest is the strength of domestic non-governmental organizations (NGOs). To account for the nascent stage of the NGO sector, I measure NGO strength as a “stock” and as a “flow” variable. Using an event-history model, I examine the impact of the NGO strength while controlling for other domestic-based and international drivers of treaty ratification. All time-variant independent variables are lagged by a year. My analysis suggests that the stock of domestic NGO strength is a significant predictor of the timing of ratification. Further, EU accession pressures, ratification levels in contiguous countries, and domestic economic cycle impact the timing of ratification of the treaty.

UK charities experienced rapid growth during the middle years of the first decade of the new millennium. The issue investigated in this study is whether the charities took the opportunity to strengthen their financial positions before the economic recession of 2008–2009. Having evaluated, and established the empirical robustness of, Tuckman and Chang’s measures of financial vulnerability, they are used as the basis for constructing a Charities Financial Exposure Index (CFEI). Variants of the index are applied to a panel of more than 300 large UK charities in the Culture, Sport and Recreation sector for the period 2002–2007. The findings are that by 2008 these charities were in a stronger financial position than they had been in 2002 and were therefore better prepared to face the onset of the so-called credit crunch recession.

This paper considers the ways in which research into the psychological contract of volunteers have been constrained by the direct transfer of measures from the study of employees, and more generally by the assumptions in the dominant psychological contract discourse. After examining these assumptions the paper proposes a revised research agenda, open to the possibility that the psychological contract of volunteers is affected by expectations arising from socio-cultural influences beyond the volunteer/manager relationships, and in particular, from the expectations of relative freedom in volunteering and from subjective perceptions of volunteering as (variously) serious leisure, unpaid work, or activism. Understanding the contract as socially constructed reveals the need to juxtapose the expectations of managers and volunteers in order to understand the contract as a social relationship.