This paper employed a structural equation modeling technique to investigate how Development Oriented Non-Governmental Organizations (DONGOs) could complement government efforts through the concept of shared value creation in the educational sector of Ghana. To address this objective, we analyzed whether DONGOs could create shared value by pursuing both social and economic objectives and also how the growing basic needs of education could influence these relationships. The study concluded that basic needs fully mediate social value to shared value and partially mediate economic value to shared value. Moreover, the study revealed that economic value to shared value creation is statistically significant and also demonstrated a positive and significant relationship between social value and shared value. The results further indicate that basic needs have a positive and significant relationship with shared value.

Dutch citizens on welfare have to volunteer at Civil Society Organizations (CSOs) in return for their benefits. Through applying the ‘worlds of justification’ of Boltanski and Thévenot, this article aims to provide a better theoretical and empirical understanding of social justice of policies that obligate welfare clients to participate in CSOs. The analysis of 51 in-depth interviews with Dutch welfare recipients shows that respondents perceive these policies partly but not unilaterally as unfair. If respondents perceive welfare as ‘free money’ and if they are convinced that civic behavior demands interventions against free riding on welfare resources, ‘mandatory volunteering’ is considered as fair. Our main contribution is to the theoretical debate on recognition and redistribution by showing empirically how ‘othering’ plays an important role in determining when mandatory volunteering becomes a matter of redistribution or recognition.

This article explores the experiences of third sector development actors and the actions that they took during the Dominican Republic’s National Regularization Plan for Foreigners until its expiration in the summer of 2015. The study employs an interpretivist approach that assumes that third sector development actors construct their roles through an interactive process based on their co-created interpretations and negotiated meanings ascribed to factors, conditions, and situations related to the regularization plan. Data were gathered from December 2015 to July 2016 from 19 semi-structured interviews with third sector development actors, who work with members of the Haitian immigrant community. Using constructivist grounded theory methods, the analysis identifies four key roles of third sector actors in the documentation process that incorporate guidance, support, collaboration, and accompaniment. This research elevates the importance of third sector organizations in responding to immigrant documentation issues.

This paper describes the features of grassroots philanthropy as viewed by the participants. Using content analysis, we show that while the mainstream discourse focuses on efficiency, accountability, and professionalism, the grassroots discourse focuses on the individual aspects, viewing philanthropy as small good deeds, a personal spiritual journey, and something that brings happiness. To avoid making this personal journey impure or less happy, the grassroots philanthropists resist practices such as formalization and professionalization. They also distance themselves from corporates and bureaucracies which they view as corrupt and hypocritical. The grassroots’ discourse has its roots in the traditional Chinese culture, and is also shaped by the realities of the transitioning Chinese society, where citizens are searching for meaning, values, and support. Such a discourse has profound influence on the organizations that embrace the grassroots values and may also impact the development of the Chinese nonprofit sector.

Along with the nuclear renaissance in China, anti-nuclear sentiments are emerging, that are yet to be comprehensively studied by scholars. Conflicts arise due to rapid development and enormous social change, puzzling that stability remains in the society while these conflicts take place. This article analyses the relationship between social mobilizations and social stability in China in the context of anti-nuclear incidents and argues that there are political opportunities and resources for petitioners to exert their influence on the political system. The opportunities arise out of the decentralization and fragmentation of the political system, such as the diverging priorities of the central and local government. Furthermore, if the petitioners blame specific local governments and raise specific demands, local interest groups have a high chance to achieve their desired goals. Petitions facilitate communication between local interest groups and governments which may resolve social conflicts and preserve social stability.

The article argues that closer attention to how solidarity is understood and expressed in different European contexts can shed light on the conditions for establishing a social and solidarity economy. Drawing on data collected within the H2020 SOLIDUS project, which explores current expressions of European solidarity, the comparative analysis covers three social economy initiatives, each representing a country with different political and economic context. The analysis focuses on solidarity as reciprocity and, in particular, how it is affected by such factors as actor motivations, internal participatory functioning, resource mix and political legitimacy. While further empirical work is needed, the findings suggest that solidarity as reciprocity produced by social and solidarity economy organisations thrives where political institutions are both supportive and trusted, where public funding is accessible, and where partnerships with relatively autonomous social and solidarity economy organisations are genuinely collaborative.

Scholarship on volunteering has paid insufficient attention to how experiences of volunteering in the past affect current and future participation. The importance of this relationship is emphasized by the introduction of public policies across the globe focusing on national service programmes and community service in schools with the underlying intention of inducing ongoing pro-social behavior. Using the UK longitudinal data, this article analyzes the prevalence of persistent individual volunteering behavior over the life-course, and most importantly, the extent to which past volunteering has a causal influence on current and future participation. Strong evidence of this relationship is provided, suggesting that volunteer-stimulating policy measures—such as the UK government’s National Citizen Service initiative for all young people between 16 and 17 years of age—will have a more profound effect because they do not only affect current volunteering activities but are also likely to induce a permanent change in favor of volunteering.

This article adds to conceptualisations of philanthropy. Applying an ontological approach within an evolutionary perspective, it advances an analogous African narrative of pro-social transactions of gift-giving, or gifting, associated with Marcel Mauss. Originating on the continent, this relational behaviour is subject to indeterminate complex processes which co-determine any society’s institutional design. Analysing gifting’s sociopolitical influence on the continent pays attention to the (non-)agonistic as well as the ‘vertical’ and ‘horizontal’ features of gifting across pre- to post-colonial eras, examining their role in establishing patrimonial systems of governance. When gifting is set against (institutionalised) philanthropy’s dominant discourse, issues for its critique are identified. Suggestions for further inquiry and implications for improving development on the continent are provided.

While the links between the fields of social enterprise and social finance appear apparent, academic research on the relationship lags behind practice. This study examines how social enterprises interact with social finance organizations in the context of impact measurement. Through qualitative research with eight social enterprises and their respective funders, I find evidence that both sides view impact measurement primarily as a means for establishing legitimacy prior to engagement, and in the early stages of their relationship. These relationships are hierarchical and rigid at early stages, but over time evolve into more collaborative partnerships. Eventually, social enterprises embrace impact measurement as a tool for organizational learning, and social finance organizations develop more empowering approaches for impact measurement. The level of flexibility and the closeness of the relationship between social finance organizations and social enterprises suggest important lessons for the development of a more enabling use of impact measurement.

The internet plays an important part in our daily lives. In this paper, we ask whether internet use is negatively related to civic life when focusing specifically on formal volunteering. Furthermore, we account for group-specific and activity-specific internet effects. Using a representative population sample of Switzerland, we show that internet use decreases the probability of undertaking voluntary work. This result is qualified in two respects: First, we find that the negative relationship between internet use and volunteering is more powerful among young people than older adults who are more likely to volunteer when they use the internet. Second, the use of social networking sites seems to mitigate the negative influence of internet use on volunteering.

In recent years, there has been an increasing concern about non-governmental development organisations’ (NGDOs) sustainability especially in countries including Ghana that have transitioned into lower-middle-income status. The effect has been donor withdrawal and funding cuts for NGDOs. This presents opportunities and challenges for NGDOs in their attempt to mobilise alternative funding routes in ensuring their sustainability. Drawing on secondary literature and semi-structured interviews with fifty-seven respondents from national NGDOs, government, donors and corporate organisations, this article documents and expands our understanding of the different typologies of philanthropic institutions in Ghana as potential alternative funding routes for NGDOs. It finds that a weak enabling environment including the absence of a regulatory framework and fiscal incentives for domestic resource mobilisation stands to affect the potential of philanthropic institutions as alternative funding routes for NGDOs’ sustainability.

Welfare politics can be largely assessed by the following three kinds of political prisms: bureaucratic politics, partisan politics, and social politics. Bureaucratic and partisan politics which accounted for the evolution of welfare states in East Asia are not adequate to illuminate the difference in recent welfare reforms between Korea and Japan after a significant political transition. Social politics is construed as a triangular relationship between civic advocacy groups, trade unions, and political leaders. The relative strength and weakness of civic advocacy groups in Korea and Japan, respectively, provide an analytical niche capable of explaining cross-national variations in welfare politics. The original version of the power resources model thus needs to be complemented by incorporating the role of civil society mobilisation in welfare politics. The core of new power resources in our comparative analysis is alliance-building led by non-parliamentary social forces, which cannot be easily measured by quantifiable strength of labour movements and affiliated political parties.

Volunteering research has long focused on the characteristics of volunteers and their motivations to highlight what drives them to dedicate their free time to good causes. More recently, researchers have turned their attention toward exploring the management practices that nonprofit organizations can implement to promote volunteers’ motivations and thereby improve their attitudes and performance. Our study contributes to this research by analyzing the extent to which combinations of human resource practices can be leveraged to influence volunteers’ level of engagement in their role. Survey results from 256 volunteers in five different nonprofit organizations in the Netherlands support our hypothesized model. Specifically, high-performance human resource practices are related positively to volunteer engagement, and volunteers’ organizational identification and psychological empowerment can account for a significant portion of variance in this relationship. Implications for research and the professional management of volunteers are discussed.

Antecedents and consequences of employer-supported volunteering (ESV) have been widely studied. Yet, in the literature, few studies have attempted to succinctly assess this phenomenon in non-Western countries. In this regard, the primary purpose of this study is to understand the antecedents and consequences of employee participation in ESV in Iranian organizations. To achieve this, we employed a qualitative method. Fifteen managers from four companies that had experienced participating in ESV programs were chosen as the sample. Having interviewed the managers, we used grounded theory method to interpret our findings. The results revealed that 25 concepts exist. These concepts were divided into five categories: personal conditions; types of employee participation in ESV (core phenomenon); intra-organizational conditions; environmental conditions; and consequences. Finally, these categories formed a conceptual framework. It seems that this framework can be a practical tool for companies intended to run ESVs, in Iran.

Youth social action—activities such as volunteering, campaigning, and fundraising—has gained traction in the UK and internationally in recent years as governments have supported initiatives to encourage adolescents to develop a ‘habit’ of social action. However, there is not convincing evidence on what a habit of social action is. This study involved a questionnaire with 4518 16–20-year-olds in the UK and finds that moral and civic virtue identity, perceived behavioural control, goal direction, and subjective norms are related to a habit of youth social action. A key contribution of this study is the development and application of a new measure of virtue identity—the Virtue Identity Measure—to which we pay particular attention in this article.

Scholarly research about philanthropy has de-emphasized informal giving to friends, neighbors and others in need. Yet, informal giving is a critical element of philanthropy, particularly in settings with less well-developed civil society institutions. This paper examines informal giving in Turkey, based on two surveys of Turkish citizens conducted in 2004 and 2015. The surveys find much higher levels of informal giving than formal giving, though the level of informal giving decreased between 2004 and 2015. Donors directed their giving more to family member and others in need than to neighbors. In contrast to studies from most other countries, Turks overwhelmingly prefer giving to individuals rather than institutions. Determinants of informal giving, however, are largely consistent with other research on the motivations for giving.

This article uses a transaction cost economics (TCE) approach to analyze cooperation between nonprofits, governments and firms, namely, hybrids. This is a different concept from hybrids in the nonprofit management literature. In TCE, hybrids are organizational modes of transactions where the parties contribute limited resources, for which they establish modes of coordination. This article explains how the concept of hybrids can be applied to research on nonprofits, illustrating this with an analysis of foundations lobbying in the European Union (EU). As regulatory transactions are organized through hybrids, this article proposes that foundations are likely to participate in EU policymaking for regulatory transactions, which are too costly to solve individually. The results show that foundations participate in different EU regulatory environments; significantly, this includes environments with high coordination costs.

This paper examines, from a management accounting perspective, the efficacy of the dominant ‘restricted’ funding structure in the international development NGO sector in terms of overall sector effectiveness, and whether it is the most appropriate means of funding NGOs. The objective is to encourage theoretical debate around the tensions highlighted between external accountability for funding and overall value-for-money delivered by individual development NGOs and the wider international development sector. From unique access to three internationally recognised major NGOs, our case studies reveal management accounting as broadly homogenous, with some nuanced distinctions both within and between the cases; but the scope of management accounting emerges as relatively limited. This is despite the NGOs utilising complex accounting software, employing qualified accounting staff, and having a large annual income. Using the broad principles of systems theory to frame our approach, this paper suggests that due to the ‘restricted’ nature of funding awarded to NGOs by institutional donors, accounting is dominated by external accountability reporting to the detriment of management accounting. These relatively novel data on management accounting practices at international development NGOs help illustrate how, potentially, NGOs are missing opportunities to utilise, or even improve, value-for-money in terms of how various program themes, geographic areas or time periods are delivering better or worse discernible impact for the money spent.

Although various organizational forms are involved in the critically important role of providing rental housing, little is known about their potentially distinctive characteristics. Calling upon unique data collected from landlords and tenants of for-profit, non-profit, and public rental housing in Canada (N = 5624 units; N = 492 tenants), we explore shelter costs paid by tenants, quality, and unit accessibility. Findings point to some unique features based on provider type: non-profits have lower shelter costs than for-profit units, and for-profit and public status are associated with lower odds of accessibility. Limited differences are found related to housing quality.