The 1991 proposal on a European Association (EA) was revised in 1993. It has not yet been adopted. The UK and Germany appear to be negative, while France and Spain, who are holding the presidencies of the European Union in 1995, supposedly are more positive. Nobody knows if and when the European Association regulation will be adopted. On many points the proposal is flawed, too bureaucratic and detailed. Too much attention is paid to the internal procedures of the Association, and too little to the possibilities for tax evasion and the exploitation of lax regulatory environments for non-profit organisations (NPOs) in some member countries. The EA regulation matters most to small and medium NPOs. For these organisations the costs of establishing themselves in other jurisdictions and complying with foreign laws might be disproportionately high. For the truly big NPOs the costs may be more marginal. Despite all its faults, not adopting the proposed European Association statute will be another lost opportunity in the modem saga of NPOs.

Bulgaria, like other East European nations since the collapse of communism, has moved rapidly to form private, self-directed non-profit and voluntary organisations. Like those nations too, Bulgaria faces a number of challenges in its pursuit of forming a strong non-profit sector. Chief among those challenges are establishing a sound legal foundation, defining the social purposes and functions of the non-profit sector, and establishing the legitimacy of these organisations in the minds of the Bulgarian people. These three challenges are analysed in the essay, following an overview of the current make-up and characteristics of the emerging non-profit sector.

This paper describes how estimates of individual charitable giving are derived from two major continuous surveys: the Family Expenditure Survey and the Individual Giving Survey. It explores the reasons for and the significance of the differences between the two estimates. Conclusions are drawn on the relative merits and demerits of the two survey datasets, and the circumstances in which it might be appropriate to use each of them.

Beginning in the late 1970s, US multi-nationals and South African business both supported local development initiatives in Soweto. Comparison of two of these projects reveals significant differences in approach and effectiveness. American businesses supported a secondary school, Pace, which experienced critical problems related to organisational difficulties unforeseen by the donors. South African business supported an educational centre, the Funda Centre, which developed more gradually and was more deeply rooted in the community. Examination of these two cases produces some lessons that can be of use to other donors giving support to local development initiatives.

In an earlier paper, Herman and Heimovics (1994), have raised the issue of the importance of defining the criteria used to evaluate the effectiveness of voluntary and non-profit organisations (VNPOs), in contrast to the apparent availability of such criteria in respect of for-profit organisations. They are right to raise this issue. VNPOs are both playing a greater part in the delivery of public services throughout the world, and are subject to greater scrutiny of their operations precisely because of this. This requires attention to be directed to their effectiveness by researchers, policy makers and practitioners alike. The lack of a commonly agreed framework for this was highlighted a decade ago by Knokke and Prensky (1984). It remains still to be resolved.

However, we will argue in this paper that the approach taken by Herman and Heimovics in their paper is itself a flawed one. We will commence by summarising our understanding of their argument and then highlight what we consider to be its flaws. Finally, we offer an alternative model which we believe has the potential to take the debate further.

We appreciate the interest of Osborne and Tricker in our work on a factorial survey approach to the study of the social construction of non-profit organisational effectiveness. We welcome this opportunity to respond to their appraisal of our work, and to further the debate about conceptualising and researching the complex issue of non-profit organisational effectiveness. In their response to our recent paper, Osborne and Tricker take issue with our approach and sketch an alternative method for researching non-profit organisational effectiveness.

In this reply we first suggest that their criticisms reflect a different understanding of the goals of our paper than our own. Next we briefly review their proposed alternative in relation to some consequences of that alternative. We close with observations about promising lines for future research on non-profit organisational effectiveness.