Whether in looking for resources or doing their work, voluntary and charitable organisations have always needed to publicise their existence. However, major changes in the role and funding of the sector in Britain have meant that the issue of publicity has gained particular salience. This article discusses these changes and provides preliminary findings from a large-scale investigation into media and public attitudes towards voluntary and charitable activity. It explores how voluntary activity is reported by mainstream news media, and how these presentations are framed by media professionals’ perceptions of, and value judgements about, different types of voluntary action.

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.

The American Tax Reform Act of 1969 represented a major watershed in the law of philanthropy, introducing a new classification scheme — one that sharply distinguished between ‘private foundations’ and other charitable organisations — and, for the private foundation category, a new regulatory system, new regulatory sanctions, a new tax on investment income and new restricitons on the deductibility of property gifts. After briefly tracing the origins of this legislation, the paper sets forth five norms that should characterise the legislative process, and proceeds to explore, albeit in abbreviated fashion, the extent to which each of these norms was respected by the Congress in 1969. The paper then turns from an examination of regulatory principles to a consideration of regulatory impacts, dealing with several ways in which the 1969 Act appears to have caused diversion of resources, including: diversion of charitable giving from foundations to non-foundation charities (with consequences for the ‘birthrate’ of foundations); diversion of resources from charitable to non-charitable uses; diversion of funds from charitable channels to the US Treasury; and a diversion of resources from certain grantees to others. The mitigating effects of recent forms of deregulation are described, followed by the suggestion that more deregulation is desirable, in order to sustain the health and strength of America's private foundation sector.

Very little attention has been devoted by third sector researchers to the question of comparable or related activities in Asia. This article explores a complex of Asian Buddhist religious beliefs and practices using ‘the commons’ as a comparative concept. Examination of published, English-language sources provides clear evidence of the existence of a variety of third sector-like activity in Asia far in the past. Village codes codifying charitable practices and village associations have been recorded in China, Japan and Korea. In addition, a good deal of charitable and philanthropic activity has been associated with Asian Buddhism: beliefs supporting gift exchange (dharma and dana), veneration of certain leader-philanthropists, a distinctive model of community organisation (sangha), a Japanese model of fund-raising (hinjin) campaigns, and a long tradition of international Buddhist convocations are among the range of indigenous common goods which can be found in the Asian context prior to any discernible western influences.

This paper compares legal approaches to foundations in six economically well-developed democracies (USA, England and Wales, Germany, Austria, France and the Netherlands). ‘Foundations’ refers to ‘nongovernmental, non-membership, organisations, recognised as a legal category with a purpose in the general interest’. This covers the common field of the common law's charity and the civil law's foundation as a legal person. The countries organise public supervision of foundations in very different ways. Mostly there is governmental involvement or involvement of an independent body in the establishment and governmental supervision of foundations in action. In a few cases, the supervisory power — concerning the foundations’ activities, not their establishment — is with judicial authorities. Access to information of foundations (registration) and possible requests for sanctions by interested parties are also rather different. Not all rules are in accordance with the freedom of organisation and some are less desirable. The conclusion is that a balance between the freedom of the foundation (board), the protection of the public order and the protection of the interests of others can be found in a system with systematic supervision at the establishment — and later practice — by governmental or independent authorities or in a system with good registration and incidental supervision by judicial authorities, also at the request of interested parties. Both have their advantages and disadvantages.

This article presents a conceptional framework which analyses the third sector as a part of a mixed welfare system, otherwise made up of the market, the state and the informal private household spheres. From this perspective, the third sector appears as a dimension of the public space in civil societies: an intermediate area rather than a clear-cut sector. Third sector organisations are understood as polyvalent organisations whose social and political roles can be as important as their economic ones; they are portrayed as hybrids, intermeshing resources and rationales from different sectors. In present policies of ‘welfare pluralism’ the emphasis is consequently more on ‘synergetic’ mixes of resources and rationales than on mere issues of substitution processes between different sectors of provision. The last section discusses the potential distinguishing features of such policies with respect to ‘pluralist’ approaches which try to safeguard the conventional hierarchies in a mixed economy of welfare.

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.

One of the important developments in post-Communist Hungary has been the growth of the voluntary or non-profit sector. Under the Communist regime, voluntary associations were controlled and independent organisations were largely suppressed. During the 1980s, advocacy groups and independent associations emerged to challenge the Communist monopoly on organisation. These challenges were instrumental in laying the foundation for the post-Communist non-profit sector, providing models of organisation and experienced activists. After the creation of a new legal framework in 1989 and 1990, the growth of the non-profit sector was dramatic. Two types of non-profit organisations have developed in democratic Hungary: associations predominate in membership activities, while foundations are active in fields requiring fund-raising. Attempts by the Hungarian Democratic Forum-led government to shape the non-profit sector to meet its goals were met with political pressure from professionals in the non-profit sector. The result was the beginnings of a contract-for-service regime and increased organisation of interests within the non-profit sector itself.

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.

Large philanthropic foundations such as those which first developed in the United States in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century had four characteristics: (a) the aim of contributing to the public good; (b) applying science and scientific method to human affairs, interpreting science broadly; (c) using great wealth to pursue these purposes; and (d) seeking public recognition of their charitable status in doing so. Between 1870 and 1930 the large foundation emerged as a major social institution, and under the influence of their officers began to be major patrons of applied social science for public policy purposes. Critics of foundations have charged that they were private bodies without external accountability; they were secretive, undemocratic, unrepresentative and indeed pillars of the ruling class. Nevertheless, foundations have exercised a disproportionate influence upon public policy research and have sought to apply fundamental knowledge to tackling social problems. They represent the institutionalisation of knowledge-based social engineering.

This article traces the history of Ford's involvement in population work in South Asia from the 1950s to the mid-1980s. The primary focus is on the transition from large-scale technical assistance programmes rooted in government and academe, to work with grass-roots women's groups and community-based non-governmental organisations (NGOs). In the process, the Foundation also moved from quantitative efforts designed primarily to distribute contraceptives, to a more holistic approach focusing on maternal and child health. The article concludes by relating these trends to a larger shift from a belief in the power of ‘disinterested expertise’ and university-based policymaking that marked the efforts of the major American foundations since the Progressive era, to a new emphasis on ‘self-interested expertise’ and grass-roots social activist and development NGOs that emerged in the 1970s. Changing development paradigms, political trends and a growing disillusionment with large-scale technical assistance all contributed to this transition.

In a previous paper we have demonstrated that for the total population of households, including non-givers, lower income households participate less and donate smaller average percentages of their household incomes than do higher income households. In this paper we inquire about the relative generosity of that sub-population of households that actually donate to charitable causes. We base our analysis on data collected in the 1990 national survey of Giving and Volunteering in the United States conducted by the Gallup Organization for Independent Sector. In the first section we review the factors that differentiate the upward sloping curve describing the population of all households and the U-shaped curve describing the sub-population of contributing households. In the second section we demonstrate that a substantial proportion of the curvature in the U-shaped relationship operates through giving to religion. In the third section we show that giving by the 7 per cent of high givers increases the curvature while the giving by the 93 per cent of normal givers attenuates the curvature. In the fourth section we combine the previous two analyses by looking at the patterns of religious and non-religious giving for both normal and high givers. We conclude that income is not a reliable indicator of who is generous or selfish in regard to philanthropic giving.

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.

This article describes three ideal-typical cultures of grant-making constructed in the light of data from an exploratory study of British foundations. These three cultures, representing the values and assumptions which inform the way in which foundations approach the task of making grants, have very different implications for the resources required by foundations and for organisational processes and procedures.

The article goes on to discuss some of the organisational and management dilemmas of British grant-making foundations. Five key sources of management difficulty in the grant-giving foundation are identified. First, grant-giving foundations face particular difficulties in identifying and assessing the relevance of their priorities; these difficulties stem from the nature of grant-giving and the foundation's relationship with its ‘customer-suppliers’. Second, grant-giving foundations must manage within the constraints imposed by limited choice of and time available from trustees. Third, grant-giving foundations must manage the potential tension between control by donors and trustees. Fourth, grant-giving foundations must work within financial and time constraints. Fifth, the management of grant-giving foundations may be further hampered by lack of adequate feedback. In this article, particular attention is paid to the first three difficulties.

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.

Foundations — or proto-foundations — that had their roots in the western world in the Greek and Roman civilisations later found their way into ancient Spanish law. The early historical inheritance was transferred by Spain and Portugal to Latin America. Those first foundations were dedicated to a few activities in the areas of health, education and community services. In this article I briefly follow the transition from the traditional foundations to the contemporary one with their wider scope of activities. There is an attempt to follow the correspondence that may exist for the Argentine case between these foundations and extant theories that attempt to explain their role in a wider societal and economic context to conclude that the evidence is still limited for the various failure approaches discussed in the literature. Alternatively, we suggest that the retrenchment of the welfare state should be considered one of the factors that lead to the increase in the number of foundations and the diversification of their activities. The analysis incorporates the issue of discontinuities and crisis, and the strategies followed by different types of foundations under authoritarian rule and periods of high inflation. Surprisingly, during those periods the foundations continued to increase in numbers. I suggest that an adequate explanation for the dynamics of those foundations requires a socio-political approach complemented with the analysis of some economic factors.