The article takes an in-depth look at the experiences Australia and Canada have had dealing with issues related to the funding and financial regulation of the third or ‘private, non-profit’ sector of broadcasting. Through the analysis of these experiences, recommendations are extracted aimed at providing policy makers and stakeholders from other jurisdictions guidance regarding how to deal with these issues.

This paper examines the goals of organizations that sponsor short-term volunteer trips in global health, whether they be NGO’s, faith-based, educational, or corporate organizations. Results from a U.S.-based national survey of 177 such organizations and 27 interviews with trip organizers suggest that organizations often sponsor volunteer trips to achieve goals that are quite different from the improvement of health outcomes in poor countries. While providing health services is often cited as the most important goal, volunteer activity is also considered important in enhancing the organizations’ reputation, recruitment and retention, and financial well-being. The prominence of other goals has the potential for diverting resources and focus from what is presumably the primary purpose of serving host communities in the most effective manner possible.

Social enterprises have reached world levels as an alternative to combat negative effects of the economy such as unemployment, poor distribution of income, and poverty, thus stimulating social entrepreneurship with local actions directed especially to excluded communities. This article corresponds to a study that uses the bibliometric method to analyze the world scientific literature on social enterprises in order to research on the possible existence of investigation projects that may have approached the cultural dimension of said phenomenon. Studies in this field may contribute to the establishment of social enterprises as a cultural practice, for the promotion of a more equitable social and economic development. The analysis of the scientific publications inherent to the topic, suggests, among other results, that the academic production is diverse, but there is still a lack of initiatives in order to explore new perspectives concerning the phenomenon. On the other hand, similarities in the motivation of the studies allow outlining 10 categories that evidence the most interest in the research on social enterprises.

What are the local characteristics influencing where new nonprofits will be established? How important are community needs, available resources, or the existence of similar organizations for nonprofits’ location? This paper analyzes how the characteristics of 5562 Brazilian municipalities in the year 2000 help explain the location of nonprofits formed between 2001 and 2010. Based on geographically weighted regressions, results indicate that neither access to resources nor poor socioeconomic indicators are powerful influences on nonprofit location in Brazilian municipalities. The main predictor of nonprofit entry is a high pre-existing density of nonprofits in that area. These findings, however, vary across regions and nonprofit fields of activity. By mapping the effect of key explanatory variables, this paper helps understand nonprofit location. The methodology and findings on nonprofit location presented here are novel and may contribute to research in other countries.

Non-governmental organizations (NGOs) are a major institutional force in promoting sustainable development, especially in institutional environments where governments have often not been able to assume the role of development agent. Despite this importance, the approach of Latin American NGOs to sustainability has received only little attention so far and respective research is scarce. To address this research gap, we conducted an online survey of 306 Latin American NGOs, investigating their understanding of sustainability and how they seek to transmit it. Due to the lack of previous empirical studies, our study is exploratory in nature and examines eight research categories: (1) NGOs definition of sustainability; (2) the role they see for themselves in its promotion, (3) dimensions of sustainability judged as important, (4) stakeholders and (5) partners considered, (6) motives for pursuing sustainability, (7) forms of implementation, and (8) measures regarded as necessary for spreading it further. Our findings are discussed against the institutional environment of Latin America, as we assume that the understanding and transmission of sustainability is contextual in nature. Our study shows that the sustainability concept of the sample NGOs is broad and that they take a wide variety of efforts for implementing it. Exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses confirmed the reliability and validity of the eight-component-model we applied for our study. Thus, it serves as a valuable starting point for future research into the “terra incognita” of Latin American NGOs’ approach to sustainability.

Engagement is a positive psychological state that is linked with a range of beneficial individual and organizational outcomes. However, the factors associated with volunteer engagement have rarely been examined. Data from 1064 volunteers of a wildlife charity in the United Kingdom revealed that both task- and emotion-oriented organizational support were positively related to volunteer engagement, and volunteer engagement was positively related to volunteer happiness and perceived social worth and negatively related to intent to leave the voluntary organization. Consistent with theory, engagement acted as a mediator between these factors. The implications for future research and the relevance of the findings for voluntary organizations are discussed.

Throughout Latin America, the relationship between government and civil society organizations (CSOs) has been characterized by opposition, substitution, and submission; and, the incipient path to cooperation is barely noticeable. For their part, participatory public policies make sense within a theory of democratic governance. Democratic governance seeks two propositions: (a) participation from other social actors will give rise to more efficient government action; and (b) citizen support will emerge from the said government action. This paper criticizes the current relationships between the governments and CSOs in this region. In addition, it explores the potential strategies that could be adopted were there a cooperation between these two entities. The paper is supported by theoretical literature as well as by a revision of some cases of participatory public policies that are currently active in the region. The paper proposes that the strategies of opposition to government and government substitution have to be abandoned in this region. The paper focuses on civil organizations (CSOs). It is true that they do not constitute the entirety of civil society; however, they are frequently the most organized compared with other civic actors, such as social movements, families, and individual initiatives. CSOs form only a part of the diversity known as civil society; however, they significantly contribute to the discussion about the public good, and very often they participate in providing such goods. The future of participatory democracy in Latin America is related to our ability to achieve a more complete participation of CSOs in the entire process of participatory public policies—from the formation of public agendas to their design, implementation, and evaluation.

Research on the determinants of foreign aid tends to focus on the relationship between donor country priorities and recipient state characteristics, but donors also make decisions about which organizations and programs within countries will receive assistance. Although NGOs increasingly have been recipients of foreign aid, few data are available to investigate which organizations within a given country receive that funding. Donors may prioritize structural characteristics of NGOs or their local ties—or they may seek a combination that blends concern about efficiency and accountability with an interest in developing national civil society. We use original data from Cambodia to explore whether aid is likely to go to managerial organizations (professionalized NGOs and NGOs that utilize modern management tools) or to organizations that are embedded in the domestic context. We argue that managerialism provides legitimacy for NGOs by signaling capacity and accountability to donors, increasing the likelihood of government funding. We argue that local embeddedness also confers legitimacy by aligning community ties and networks to rights-based development, increasing the likelihood of government funding. We find general support for the managerialism argument, but donor agencies do not prioritize direct funding for “indigenous” NGOs—not even among those with high levels of managerialism.

European social enterprises’ participation in the public procurement process is low, even if the European public procurement law allows using special provisions for these entities. Encouraging the participation of social enterprises in the public procurement process is an important part of the effort to modernize the EU social policy. This paper demonstrates that, despite the great importance of social enterprises for the European economy, strategies on the access of social enterprises to the EU’s public procurement market are less known by the employees of the public contracting authorities in EU Member States.

This article examines civic and political engagement in contemporary China by three recent cases where activists and citizens take full advantage of interactive information technologies and Web 2.0 tools to overcome obstacles and mobilize for public goods. The cases show how activists act strategically to mobilize mass-based support and use various technologies to ensure monetary transaction, resource allocation, public monitoring, and large-scale inter-organizational coordination. In addition, they also demonstrate how ordinary Chinese citizens take part in innovative civic initiatives, act upon their own decisions, and eventually contribute to the change of a failed policy and the solution to a public problem. Different forms of online mass political engagement have introduced new dynamism to public affairs in China, enhanced social autonomy, and thus can have accumulative impact on the asymmetric power relationship between the authoritarian state and society.

Keeping volunteers committed and engaged is one of the toughest challenges for NPOs. The aim of the present study is to investigate the individual and organizational factors that promote volunteer satisfaction and, vice versa, foster intentions to quit. Two hundred forty-seven volunteers operating in four different NPOs were asked to fill in a self-report questionnaire that aimed to explore their motivations to volunteer, their degree of satisfaction and their perception of the organizational climate in the NPO they worked with, in addition to providing details of the activities which they were involved in. Results showed that the organizational climate mediates the relationship between autonomous motivation and satisfaction, as well as that between external motivation and intentions to leave an organization.

As participatory governance approaches to local development get adopted also in transition countries, one of the key questions is how participation actually impacts local governance outcomes. This study examines the link between non-electoral participation and different public goods outcomes in rural Ukraine along with identifying the role of community-based organizations (CBOs). Using a unique survey data from Ukraine, I approach these questions empirically explicitly distinguishing between different public goods outcomes. I find that participation appears to be positively associated with local school and water supply outcomes. In addition, CBOs are found to be associated with better quality of water supply systems motivating a discussion about establishment of service cooperatives for water supply as a functional local governance arrangement.

Poor air quality has been affecting the Chinese people for many years due to the country’s speedy industrialization and urbanization. However, very few initiatives had been taken by civil society until 2011. The air pollution campaign between October 2011 and March 2012 initiated on a Chinese microblogging website, mobilized millions of citizens and effected policy change. It is often seen as a milestone in the chronology of public participation in China. Using process tracing, participant observations, framing analysis and in-depth interviews, the article analyses this campaign by revealing its major actors and frames mobilizing issue entrepreneurs and environmental publics. Our analysis generates two findings: first, microblogging platforms can greatly expand the networks of Chinese environmental activists by involving public figures and governmental agencies; second, the frame which links air pollution to health and appreciates governmental efforts is critical to the success of civic participation in China’s environmental governance.

This article explores how fundraising efficiency is affected by changes in diversification of revenues in non-profit organizations. It uses random effect regression and Arellano–Bond models to study this phenomenon in a sample of 10358 US non-profits during the 1997–2007 period. We find a negative impact on fundraising efficiency when NPOs alter their locus of dependence and change their pattern of diversification. This effect is impacted by organizational size and industry. Previous studies have suggested that income heterogeneity is associated with organizational stability and financial strength. Using a change (versus level) model of funding diversity, our work shows that increased diversification leads to a higher operational inefficiency that could be penalized by potential donors.

In today’s Latin America, governments implementing public policies for development and against poverty and inequality meet with social movements that engage in practices for social change, poverty reduction, and empowering. In this context, we analyze the interplay between both processes, describing its conflicts in three specific dimensions: the material, the democratic, and the environmental. Social movements are permanently contesting and challenging public policy when they autonomously appropriate public policy resources; yet, governments respond with criminalization and cooptation strategies. In a setting where social conflict takes place in response to existing poverty and inequality levels, movements challenge development and poverty reduction projects of an ‘assistentialist’ and extractivist nature, and propose an integral understanding of development and the emergence of new relationships among individuals, society, and the environment.

The paper provides empirical evidence on impediments of the emerging social impact investment field in Germany. The study is based on 19 in-depth interviews with social impact investing funds, investment advisors, and social entrepreneurs as investees. It takes an explorative approach because of the nascent stage of research on the subject. By systematically relating the perspectives of the actors involved, the study gives a broad empirical picture on the major challenges for social impact investing in Germany. Results reveal nine critical problem areas we have arranged along three dimensions: financial returns, social returns, and relationships and infrastructure. They comprise investors’ and social entrepreneurs’ practices, institutional settings which are still heavily influenced by peculiarities of the German welfare systems, as well as undeveloped framework conditions in the social investment market. By interpreting the results through a lens of conflicting institutional logics, we further contribute to this research stream by showcasing social impact investing as a core area of friction between the logics of the market and civil society.

The influence of the state policy agenda though a neo-liberal contracted funding environment is redefining the boundaries of the third sector through a process of hybridisation. Hybridised organisations adapt to possess characteristics and logics of multiple sectors (public, private or community). Increasing hybridity within the New Zealand community and voluntary sector has resulted in a perceived dichotomy separating organisations that adapt to these challenges from those that resist. In this paper, we apply a hybridity lens to seven community development organisations, who have predominantly resisted marketisation and alignment with the state policy agenda, to assess the extent of their hybridity and how this has impacted on their place in the community and voluntary sector and access to funding opportunities available from the state.

This article analyzes the political process leading to the recent legalization of abortion in Uruguay, underlying the multiple strategies resorted to by the women’s movement to create a social consensus around women’s rights—and, more generally, around sexual and reproductive rights—as belonging to the realm of human rights. It seeks to identify the main reasons accounting for the movement’s success, which appear to be connected to the breadth of its repertoire of actions, progressively expanded to include various (and sometimes innovative) strategies operating in both the realm of civil society and public opinion and the sphere of political institutions and political representation. Focusing on the dyad speech action, the article examines the movement’s broadened repertoire of actions as well as its discourse setting human rights as a horizon of legitimacy in the context of a cultural war against a countermovement organized in defense of the status quo. Last but not least, it analyzes the issues pertaining to political representation brought to the forefront by the clashes, discrepancies, and disconnections between social movement and political institutions.

The idea of community-based organisations (CBOs) owning or managing physical assets, such as land or buildings, has a long history in many countries. This paper examines policy and practice in the UK where there has been significant interest in this field. A variety of benefits have been attributed to the role of assets including motivating community engagement, providing a vehicle for outsourcing public services, or creating financially sustainable organisations. The empirical research reveals there is a heterogeneous set of CBOs holding assets, but the majority of them are small with few paid staff. The analysis proposes a spectrum of CBO types in the field. It concludes that policy makers will need to recognise that these types are informed by contrasting traditions, ideas and operating logics that affect their different practices and resource dependencies.

This paper discusses the relationship between corporate volunteering and civic engagement outside the workplace in Russia, proceeding from a mixed-method approach. The quantitative findings are based on a comparison between employees in 37 Russian companies who participated in corporate volunteering (N = 399) and those who did not (N = 402). Using binary logistic regression analysis, we demonstrate that employee participation in corporate volunteering is positively related to four forms of civic engagement outside the workplace: informal volunteering, formal volunteering, formal monetary donation, and informal monetary donation. In addition, we draw on information obtained from interviews with 10 corporate volunteers, as well as with all 37 company corporate volunteering managers, to develop a general explanation for why corporate volunteering might lead to civic engagement. We identify three primary explanations. First, trust in companies can be converted into increased trust in social institutions. Second, corporate volunteering can expose employees to other realities, thereby leading them to rethink their priorities. Third, corporate volunteering socializes employees to volunteering, thus making them more likely to incorporate volunteering into their personal repertoires of activities. Corporate volunteering appears to be an effective mechanism for stimulating civic engagement and volunteering infrastructure in post-communist countries.