Community-based initiatives (CBIs) are groups of citizens operating as a community in order to provide public goods or services. CBIs can contribute to social change to tackle persistent challenges, but this depends on their encounters with the state. We argue that CBI scholarship lacks the conceptual tools to capture the full scope of these encounters. We position CBIs beyond a public service context as part of a democratic and contested public sphere. From this, we propose a relational understanding of state–CBI encounters as dynamically made up of diverse relationalities, drawing on state–society scholarship from multiple disciplines. Through an integrative literature review, we develop a two-step heuristic that distinguishes between functional, transformational, confrontational, and cohabitative encounters and identifies possibilities for shifts in the encounter. The heuristic aids both scholars and practitioners in understanding state–CBI encounters in relation to change and in navigating encounters in the pursuit of public goals. We conclude with a research agenda for further understanding state–CBI encounters.

Family businesses play an important role in philanthropic responses to disasters due to their distinctive combination of business, family, and community logics. Drawing on an institutional logics perspective and based on interviews with family business owners, we assess how three key logic features—collective identities, resources, and governing practices—affect the philanthropic responses of family businesses following the Beirut port explosion in 2020. The findings demonstrate the importance of non-financial contributions and reveal the inventiveness of family businesses in mobilizing a variety of assets distinctive to their business. This creativity, coupled with their knowledge of and embeddedness in community, resolves the paradox of how family businesses can respond so effectively to disasters with seemingly limited financial resources. Socioemotional wealth serves as a building block in the creation of civic wealth and is a key factor in explaining the enduring engagement of family businesses in later stages of disaster response. While family businesses pay significant attention to integrating institutional logics in their governance of disaster philanthropy, they often struggle with striking an appropriate balance between a personal, family-held approach and a more professionalized one. Practical implications for family businesses in Lebanon point to the challenges of resilience of philanthropic efforts in the context of a weak state and recurring crises.

The COVID-19 pandemic and the increasing frequency of extreme natural events fueled by climate change have highlighted the pressing need for countries to develop effective strategies for mitigating and responding to current and future crises and disasters. While civil society organizations (CSOs) are gaining increasing recognition as key actors by governments worldwide, there remains a lack of comprehensive research on their roles across different types of crises and throughout the various stages of the disaster cycle. This systematic literature review aims to explore and analyze the current knowledge about the roles of CSOs across diverse crises and phases of crisis and disaster management. The findings reveal that CSOs primarily perform three key roles: protecting human life, facilitating societal and individual resilience and recovery, and advocating for affected communities and individuals. While these roles are present across diverse crises, their emphasis varies depending on the nature of the disaster and the geographical context. The review also highlights a lack of research on the contributions of CSOs in disaster risk reduction (DRR) beyond natural hazards and outside the Asian context. The article concludes by identifying key areas for further research, emphasizing the need for a deeper understanding of CSOs’ roles in different crisis contexts and geographical regions.

This study explores individual- and contextual-level determinants of volunteering and donating as two voluntary acts of philanthropy in 11 Arab Middle East and North African countries. Using multilevel binary logistic regression modeling, we analyze data from 18,818 Muslim respondents collected by the Arab Barometer in 2018–2019. Combining insights from global, Arab, and Muslim philanthropic studies on the one hand, and political sociology on the other, we test both globally comparative and context-specific hypotheses. Our findings reveal that the normative effects of Islam positively associate with donating money, whereas civic culture more strongly informs volunteering. However, the control variable, educational attainment, had the largest effect on both outcomes, which we link to resource theory and state-induced mandated volunteering among higher-educated youngsters. Our findings underscore the importance of both religious and civic influences operating at structural and cultural levels in shaping voluntary philanthropic behavior by Muslims in Arab countries.

The international humanitarian system’s localization agenda increasingly relies on digital technologies to coordinate local and global actors. While NGO literature emphasizes digital literacy (DL) as the primary driver of transformative digital integration, this study examines how environmental constraints shape the relationship between DL and NGO digital integration outcomes. Through a comparative analysis of 16 Nigerian NGOs across infrastructure-rich Ogun State and infrastructure-poor Borno State, findings reveal that environmental barriers create a skill-implementation gap where even highly skilled NGOs cannot translate capabilities into transformative integration due to three barriers: infrastructure gaps, bandwidth ceilings, and beneficiary connectivity limitations. Borno NGOs consequently experienced constraints in maintaining digitally mediated accountability to donors, beneficiaries, other NGOs, and staff. These findings reveal that digital skill building alone cannot address humanitarian accountability challenges without parallel infrastructure development.

While institutionalization is often treated as a route to legitimacy, in civil society organizations (CSOs) it can harden into donor-driven formalities that reduce responsiveness in extreme contexts. This paper advances informalization not as a rejection of structure, but as a deliberate community-anchored response to rigid institutionalization that restores local flexibility and legitimacy while retaining a minimal formal backbone. Using a single case study of Palestinian CSOs operating under prolonged occupation and shrinking civic space, we draw on 30 semi-structured interviews, a small purposive survey, and document analysis. Findings identify three mechanisms of reinstitutionalization, mainly governance decentralization, knowledge-sharing routines coupled with organized bricolage, and the operationalization of Sumud in service delivery. Together, these mechanisms constitute a process of selective formalization that recouples practice to local logics, improving responsiveness and perceived legitimacy while reallocating administrative capacity from compliance to stewardship.

This article examines democracy-related attitudes of German sports club members. It employs a framework derived from the neo-Tocquevillian theoretical works about democracy to argue that the depth of individual involvement in a club, in conjunction with the club’s political and democratic culture, is crucial for determining attitudes conveyed by members. A representative sample of the population (N = 3,049) indicates that there is only a slight difference in the levels of political interest, political efficacy beliefs, cosmopolitan orientations, or satisfaction with democracy between sports club members and non-members. However, more nuanced models for sports club members indicate that active participation, as well as a club culture that encourages initiative, open political debate, and diversity, is predictive of pro-democratic attitudes. Based on these findings, we propose a perspective that no longer treats sports clubs as a homogeneous group, but acknowledges the existence of a range of club cultures.

It is undeniable that nongovernmental organization (NGO) beneficiaries should have their interests protected, especially when investing in and borrowing from a microfinance provider. Yet, prior literature highlights the patchy nature of beneficiary accountability when NGOs prioritize funders’ and donors’ accountability and commercialization. In this longitudinal case study on a large development microfinance NGO, multi-actor collaboration between donors, funders, and regulators to impose accountability requirements helps protect the interests of NGO beneficiaries. New institutional rules and accountability norms were developed to create dialogs between NGOs and their beneficiaries. Coercive mechanisms were established to sanction situations where beneficiary interests were not upheld in a type of surrogate accountability. Our longitudinal study integrates institutional theory and the stakeholder collaboration concept to show how donors and funders can work with government regulators to increase their effectiveness and protect beneficiaries. However, cultural issues limit full surrogate accountability.

Drawing on in-depth interviews with climate activists who initiated, monitored, or engaged with citizens’ assemblies (CAs) across Poland, this article addresses a gap in the deliberative democracy literature on the bottom-up adoption of democratic innovations in Central and Eastern Europe. Our analysis shows that activists played a pivotal role in promoting CAs as a participatory tool for climate policymaking. Certain features of CAs, such as the random selection of participants, were strategically employed, while others, deliberation and expert input, were valued intrinsically. Their strategic use of assembly outcomes revealed both potential and transparency gaps, highlighting the need for institutional safeguards. As activists found their involvement exhausting, our findings suggest that the future of CAs will rely less on grassroots mobilization and more on institutional support and a robust implementation framework.

Third sector organizations (TSOs) increasingly operate in culturally diverse and politically unequal contexts in which global welfare models intersect with local traditions, knowledge systems, and institutional frameworks. This article develops a postcolonial approach to analyzing these dynamics by conceptualizing TSOs as “Third Spaces” in the sense of Homi K. Bhabha. It brings postcolonial theory into dialogue with approaches to organizational hybridity and argues that TSOs can be understood as hybrid contexts in which cultural, organizational, and political-economic dynamics intersect. Drawing on interdisciplinary literature and illustrative examples from Latin America, Africa, Asia, the Middle East, and Europe, the article demonstrates how TSOs mediate between local knowledge and global governance structures, negotiate competing accountability regimes, and produce forms of cultural translation shaped by unequal power relations. The framework contributes to third sector research and highlights practical implications for context-sensitive and culturally grounded social welfare.

Protecting beneficiaries’ privacy in fundraising has become a common practice in real-world charitable campaigns. However, empirical research directly examining how such privacy protection influences individuals’ donation behavior remains unexplored. This research compares different face anonymization techniques (partial-face and full-face anonymization) with no anonymization on donation amount, and explores the mediating roles of empathy and credibility, as well as the moderating role of need for cognition (NFC). We conducted two studies and used ANOVA and bootstrap analysis to assess these effects. The results showed that partial-face anonymization leads to better donation amounts compared to full-face and no anonymization, with this effect mediated by empathy toward beneficiaries and the perceived credibility of nonprofit organizations. Additionally, the comparative effect of partial-face versus no anonymization is significant for donors with high NFC but not for those with low NFC. Our findings offer several implications for charitable platforms, nonprofit organizations, and beneficiaries.

There are long-standing concerns about unevenness in the distribution of voluntary organizations across local areas, reemphasized by the sector’s role in responding to the pandemic. Using longitudinal data on a subset of voluntary organizations across six census periods (1971–2021), we estimate growth trajectories in the number of charities per capita for local authorities across England and Wales. We assess whether the shape of these trajectories is associated with an area’s demographic and geographic characteristics, including its level of material deprivation, ethnic composition, and regional location. We reveal sizeable and enduring differences between local authorities over time, driven by a homogenous growth trajectory for all areas. Our findings suggest that national efforts are needed to address inequalities in the distribution of charitable organizations, as well as reverse recent declines in the per capita density of these organizations.

How did the climate movement, so strong and dynamic after 2018 face such a sharp backlash even in eco-minded democratic environments? To answer this question, this article analyses political strategies and the media discourse regarding climate activism in Austria. Drawing on theoretical notions of changing civic spaces and civil society capture, we illustrate how delegitimization lays the groundwork for multiple forms of repression. Ultimately, activists and civil society scale back their activities, while public support diminishes. Methodologically, we take a mixed-methods approach and combine interviews with civil society representatives with a quantitative analysis of newspaper articles. Our contribution is twofold: first, we validate and expand upon the civil society capture model through empirical investigation; second, we enrich the social movements literature by analyzing the conditions and effects of repression.

Face-to-face (F2F) fundraising is employed by nonprofit organizations all around the world. We systematically review 50 years of literature on this technique, focusing on door-to-door and street fundraising, two types that allow for reaching a large, randomly assembled, and heterogeneous group of people, who typically have no personal relationship with recruiters. We provide both a quantitative and qualitative synthesis of 67 articles published in international peer-reviewed academic journals. Our review identifies several recurring research themes, integrates these into a F2F fundraising framework, and delineates articles based on this framework. We classify research themes into two categories: F2F fundraising outcomes (e.g., new donors, donation amount) and factors related to actors or contexts of campaigns affecting these outcomes (e.g., donors’ preferences, persuasion techniques). Articles in this review mainly focus on factors related to actors or context affecting outcomes, with this category being five times more often the primary focus compared to F2F fundraising outcomes. Finally, we create evidence-based guiding questions for fundraising professionals, uncover gaps in existing knowledge, and provide recommendations for future research agenda.

Scholarship on volunteering often highlights transformations in civic engagement and their implications for democracy and social cohesion. This article examines one influential perspective—the discourse of change in volunteering—emphasizing declining participation, shifts in organizational preferences, and changing forms of engagement. We critically review this discourse with attention to the Scandinavian context and compare its claims with empirical evidence on formal volunteering in Sweden from 1992 to 2024. Drawing on cross-sectional survey data, we analyze trends in the scope, structure, forms, and values of volunteering. Contrary to narratives of decline or radical transformation, our findings indicate relative stability. To interpret these findings, we apply the theoretical perspective of the “reversed social engine” and argue that resilience offers a valuable yet underexplored lens for understanding civil society. This perspective shifts attention from change to stability as a phenomenon warranting further study.

This article examines the recent dissolution of H-Coop, South Korea’s first feminist-oriented consumer cooperative, founded in 1989 by a women’s organization. Initially established to promote gender equality and civic participation through daily practices such as consumption, H-Coop played a symbolic and pioneering role in the Korean cooperative movement. However, despite its ideological significance, the cooperative experienced long-standing business stagnation, mounting financial deficits, and management challenges, ultimately leading to its closure in 2025. Drawing on qualitative research methods, this study explores H-Coop’s collapse within the broader discourse on cooperative failure. This article critically engages with existing theoretical frameworks, mainly developed in the Western European context, while also considering the unique historical and socio-cultural context of the cooperative movement in South Korea. This study has two implications. First, through the case of H-Coop, the study assesses the applicability of existing theoretical explanations and considers new insights into the failure of cooperatives in the contemporary Korean context. Second, analyzing the challenges and eventual failure that H-Coop has experienced over the years offers valuable and meaningful insights not only for practitioners within Korea’s cooperative sector but also for cooperative stakeholders globally.

Nonprofit organizations are expected to collaborate with peers to advance social good while simultaneously competing for scarce resources such as funding, volunteers, and legitimacy. This paradox of “coopetition” has been explored structurally, but less is known about how nonprofit employees themselves communicate these tensions. Drawing on 82 hours of meeting data from a mid-sized U.S. nonprofit, this exploratory study examined moments where employees explicitly discussed both collaboration and competition. Constant comparative analysis revealed three themes that represent communicative mechanisms through which employees made the tension between collaboration and competition manageable: framing coopetition as benefiting the community, admiring and replicating others’ practices, and setting boundary conditions on collaboration and competition. These findings demonstrate how nonprofit employees in meetings reframed both collaboration and competition as community-oriented while also setting boundaries around when and how each occurs. Competitive talk became acceptable through communicative mechanisms including moral reframing, allowing employees to reconcile competition with nonprofit norms. This research offers nonprofit leaders insight into how everyday meeting talk shapes collaboration and competition, illustrating how employees can acknowledge competitive realities while preserving legitimacy and a shared sense of mission. Theoretically, this study extends paradox theory by examining how the collaboration–competition paradox is communicatively managed in organizational meetings.

Is it possible to build a global organization based on the model of a social movement? We analyze Project ECHO (Extension for Community Healthcare Outcomes), an entity with over 4 million participants in 193 countries, which claims to have operated with a social movement-like structure for over two decades. In so doing, it has achieved significant scale in addressing an entrenched social problem: the lack of specialized healthcare and social services in underserved communities. Utilizing interviews and other qualitative data sources to develop an analytic case study, we identify four features in Project ECHO’s model that collectively appear to enable it to balance mission, legitimacy, permanency, and scale, to a greater degree than either a social movement or a traditional third-sector organizational model might. Its organizing structure may enable operation with a permanence social movements lack, while reducing some challenges organizations often face in simultaneously maintaining mission and stakeholder legitimacy at lasting global scale.