Historical circumstances and available data sources have determined in large part the measurement strategies and specific estimates for individual components associated with the independent sector. The research programme at the Independent Sector (IS) started with the obvious advantage that other qualified researchers had conducted initial studies and published their findings about different aspects of the non-profit sector (Commission on Private Philanthropy and Public Needs, 1977). This helped us tremendously in our efforts to transform and make a mass of somewhat disparate data into a coherent, if not precise, description of the dimensions of the independent sector. In developing our programmes, we have relied on published and unpublished statistics and programmes of the US Government, those of private organisations, IS-commissioned surveys and in-house studies. Without significant contributions from each of these sources, our knowledge and understanding of the independent sector would be more circumscribed, and our estimates more aggregate and probably less precise than they are at present.

The Nonprofit Almanac (née Dimensions of the Independent Sector), is an invaluable compilation of basic statistical data on the non-profit sector in the United States. Included within this volume are detailed figures on the expenditures and revenues of the non-profit sector as a whole and of its component parts, as well as extensive data on the activities of foundations and the scope and pattern of private giving and volunteering.

Invaluable though it is, however, the Almanac also presents its users with a number of important issues, some of which are highlighted in the document itself, but most of which are far less apparent. In order to use the Almanac appropriately and interpret its data correctly, it is essential that these issues be examined and understood.

The purpose of this article is to call attention to some of the most important of these issues and suggest the implications they have for the way we interpret the Almanac's picture of the non-profit sector. In particular, I focus on four issues that I believe are especially important but also especially likely to be overlooked.

The Independent Sector's statistical profiling of the non-profit sector in the United States is unique. No other country enjoys such a thorough, rich or informative volume as The Nonprofit Almanac or its predecessors, Dimensions of the Independent Sector.

Although the international sales of Dimensions and The Almanac will doubtless account for but a small proportion of the total, these volumes nevertheless reach many scholars, organisations and governments across the world. As the contribution of the voluntary or non-profit sector grows, both within individual countries and in international exchange and understanding, it is also natural that those scholars, organisations and governments might look to The Almanac as a guide or model for their own endeavours. How useful is The Almanac for that purpose?

In addressing this question, I want to focus on the issues for Europe. These issues might not apply elsewhere, for most European countries have characteristics which do not necessarily apply to developing or other countries. They have well-developed non-profit sectors, well-developed national income statistics (though rarely do those statistics adequately identify or measure the non-profit sector), and generally well-established and respected research communities.

This Nonprofit Almanac Symposium, sponsored by Voluntas, is noteworthy. The symposium celebrates the publication of the Nonprofit Almanac 1992-1993. This is really the fourth edition of the work by Virginia Hodgkinson and Murray Weitzman which first appeared in 1984. That first edition was less than 80 pages long; the second edition, in 1986, was twice that length; the third edition, in 1989, comprised 224 pages; and the current edition has 619 pages plus an index, a table of contents, etc. We can safely assume that its growth in length reflects both the growth rate of its value to us and the growth rate of the effort it takes to produce it. It has become an absolutely indispensable resource for all interested in the independent sector in this country.

The three major sources of financial support for non-profit institutions are user fees, government transfers and private contributions. Chapter 2 of the Nonprofit Almanac focuses on the last of these, which is taken to include charitable donations of money and assets (from individuals, corporations and estates), volunteer work and foundation grants. These forms of support, according to the chapter's introduction, ‘provide a barometer of public support for the activities of this sector and its continued vitality’ (p.41). I begin with a brief review of the chapter and the information presented in it, noting some of its highlights. I then offer several comments and suggestions regarding the presentation.

Until pioneering research on non-profit employment was performed under the auspices of the Filer Commission in the mid-1970s and shortly thereafter at Yale, there had been little public recognition of the non-profit sector's use of human resources.

Victor Fuchs and others had earlier brought to public attention the rapid growth of the service economy in the United States, but it was the Filer and Yale work that revealed the importance of the non-profit segment of the service economy by demonstrating that the growth of the non-profit labour force during the 1970s had substantially outstripped the growth of the for-profit labour force in the service economy.

Chapter 4 of the Nonprofit Almanac concerns financial trends in private foundations and other non-profit organisations, reporting the sources and disposition of annual funds and several measures of organisational wealth. Like the rest of the volume, this chapter reports only financial measures of input and output use. This is regrettable, for the distinctive outputs of the sector are often undervalued at market prices (due to external benefits), and financial aggregates shed no light on the sector's impact on the distribution of income.

Would our knowledge of the independent sector be enriched by a selective taxonomy of US non-profit organisations and presentation of financial and other data for important sub-groups in the sector? A useful taxonomy should provide meaningful, significant and relatively homogeneous categories of a population that aid in analysis and interpretation. This review of the Nonprofit Almanac assesses the contribution that the information, discussion and tables in Chapter 5 make to our understanding of the non-profit sector. The initial discussion of the classification of non-profits by functional purpose, size and region is followed by a review of basic data limitations, chapter findings and their significance.

The Nonprofit Almanac, published by Independent Sector (IS), updates and extends the useful compilations of data - much of which were collected in IS-sponsored surveys - that have been published under the title, Dimensions of the Independent Sector. More importantly, it is the first grand application of the National Taxonomy of Exempt Entities (NTEE), a framework for describing charitable organisations and purposes that has been developed by the National Center for Charitable Statistics at IS, and the first major statistical use of the information that non-profits file with the Internal Revenue Service. Does this new data source improve the quality of available information about American non-profits? An examination of the health care section of the Almanac suggests that, at best, the answer is ‘not yet’.

This paper addresses three topics to which researchers should turn their attention in regard to the dependent variable of giving and volunteering. The first is to develop an expanded definition of philanthropy revolving around the notion of ‘gift’ and the relations of exchange and around the theological virtue of charity and the emotional dispositions of care, altruism, and love of neighbour. The second is to attend to measurement problems in regard to operationalising giving and volunteering; obtaining comparable information from givers and non-givers; improving the reliability of the data, including an effort to reduce the amount of missing data; and establishing a consistent unit of analysis. The third direction is to conduct some innovative research activity to obtain better measures and understandings of giving and volunteering, including development of a diary study, closer analysis of the relationship between class and giving, and attention to measuring the social effects or outcomes of philanthropic activity.

This article describes a revised methodology for estimating the current amount of total personal giving in the United States. The previous methodology is evaluated and it is determined that a different methodology, drawing upon recent enrichments in the data on personal giving, would yield improved historical estimates. This would lead to more reliable extrapolations of the current level of giving. Preliminary historical estimates using the new methodology are made for the period 1984 through 1991. These serve as the base for extrapolations to 1992, and results using several extrapolation formulas are compared.

The following changes are included in the historical estimates.

• • Changes in the standard deduction strongly affect the decision to itemise deductions and contributions for a large and varying number of habitual contributors. Accordingly, two groups of contributions itemisers - permanent and transitory - were identified and their contributions separately estimated. The estimate of total giving now reflects the different income and contributions levels of each group.

• • Tax return filers who can be taken as dependents on other persons’ tax returns (predominantly children of living parents) are excluded from the group of non-itemiser returns.

• • Tax return data on itemised contributions are adjusted using IRS tax return audit findings.

• • A survey-based estimate of the proportion of non-contributors (zero contributors) is used to provide a more accurate count of the number of individuals and families who habitually make contributions but do not itemise them.

• • An estimate is included of the contributions of the large number of low-income individuals and families not in the tax return data as they are not required to file tax returns.

There is but a single source of widely-accepted estimates of charitable giving in the United States, and that is Giving USA, an annual publication of the AAFRC Trust for Philanthropy. This paper examines the validity of those estimates and raises questions that imply a need for further research in this area.

Despite the improvements in the quality of the estimates over the years, there remain conceptual, empirical and procedural problems of which all users of the numbers should be aware. The conceptual problems are largely a matter of definition, and it is argued that grants by private foundations should be excluded from the total because foundations themselves are charitable recipients of funds from the rest of society and their inclusion results in double-counting. The empirical problems arise from defects in much of the data from the tax files that are used as sources of information for making the final estimates; some of those defects are spelled out in detail. The procedural problems stem from the lack of comprehensive information about the amounts of charitable giving from individual donors; in making its estimates, Giving USA relies primarily on an econometric equation, some of the variables in which are questionable.