This paper explores the relationship between neighbourhood level density of civil society organisations (CSOs), diversity, and deprivation. We compare the UK and Sweden, two countries with different civil society traditions and welfare state regimes. We use data on formal civil society organisations to examine whether diverse neighbourhoods have lower levels of civil society infrastructure. In the UK, contrary to what could be expected from Putnam's assertion that diversity has a negative effect on trust, thus limiting civil society activities at the neighbourhood level, we observe a positive relationship between the density of CSOs and diversity. In Sweden, we find different patterns. First, we observe a negative correlation between CSO density and diversity. Second, we find lower density of formal CSOs in areas with high diversity and high economic disadvantage and higher density in areas characterised by low diversity and high disadvantage.

Volunteering is associated with health-promoting benefits for both recipients and volunteers and may contribute to a more inclusive society. However, studies have shown a persistent pattern of social inequality among those who volunteer, and immigrants participate as volunteers less than the majority population. To date, approaches for recruiting immigrant populations have not been sufficiently examined, even though multicultural societies are becoming increasingly diverse. This study investigates how recruitment is carried out in voluntary organizations and how volunteers who are involved in recruitment reflect on the inclusion of citizens with immigrant backgrounds. Qualitative interviews were conducted with 18 volunteers and three employees with recruitment responsibility at five voluntary organizations engaged in welfare and community-related activities in a semirural district in Norway. Our findings show that different structural factors and individual aspects of the recruiter influence the recruitment of immigrants as volunteers. Large-scale organizations are more professionalized and more directed by fundings and frameworks and demand more qualifications due to their volunteer tasks. This might make inclusive recruitment more challenging. Small-scale organizations have more flexibility and less professionalized volunteer activities, making recruitment more inclusive. In addition, if the small-scale organizations are minority driven, it seems to positively influence the recruitment of immigrants through increased diversity sensitivity and more connections with immigrants through their social network.

Ample survey research and content analysis has established that NGO internet presence is qualitatively weak and characterized by the dominance of asymmetrical communication. We argue that the emergent communicative and social paradigm of on-line interaction forms what could be defined as a wicked problem. NGOs, seen as a ‘sender’ of information, may well face a crisis of accountability determined by the very nature of the media; whereas the NGOs’ ‘information receivers’ often are deprived of the very possibility of stakeholder relatedness. In the internet-based/on-screen ‘universe’, information and electronic flow are assumed to be continual, which supersedes the entity logic crucial to NGO accountability and legitimacy. In designing their social media presence, NGOs may, therefore, face an impossible challenge.

Informed by Stéphane Vial’s analysis of the nature of on-line interactive media, we evaluate these conundrums. Then, inspired by Lucas Introna and Fernando Ilharco, we question the dialogic potential to ‘screen-being’. While the shift from an ‘actor-centric’ to ‘flow-oriented’ paradigm of ‘screen-being’ is inherent to digital communication, it destabilizes the entity-grounded accountability of NGO legitimacy. Hence, we end with explicating the risks to dialogic relatedness of ‘sceen being’ for NGOs. By so doing, we challenge the oft vocalized perspective that NGOs ‘just’ have to increase their digital communications in order to improve their relations with various stakeholders.

Research confronting inequality in volunteering has mostly focused on the attribution of its benefits to different groups and communities, with little attention paid towards fundamental factors that shape such inequalities and how these intersect with volunteering opportunities. This paper highlights the importance of volunteering for young refugees in Uganda, as a means of both learning new skills and earning a livelihood. However, evidence suggests that not everyone has equal access to these opportunities, with inequalities primarily distributed along the lines of language, gender and education. The paper provides a critical examination of the kinds of volunteering organised and promoted by state actors and civil society organisations with a particular focus on access to volunteering opportunities and the ways they can produce inequalities among young people. Based on data drawn from a study among young refugees from South Sudan, Burundi, Somalia and the Democratic Republic of the Congo in four settings in Uganda, the paper explores issues of access to opportunities as a core premise around which these inequalities are shaped. It demonstrates that rather than address social inequality, the obfuscation of these experiences in how volunteering is organised only serves to reinforce the status quo.

This study examines how performing diaspora philanthropy in the country of origin (Morocco) and the experience of integration and inclusion in the country of residence (Netherlands) influences the sense of belonging amongst cross-border diasporic philanthropists. The examination combines theories on migration, cross-border diasporic philanthropy and the sense of belonging. Based on a qualitative exploration of the perspectives and motives of individual cross-border diasporic philanthropists (N = 30), the analysis reveals a profile of cross-border diasporic philanthropists for whom country of residence serves as a positive reference, due to the constant experience of inclusion. They use their country of residence as a reference for social change in their country of origin. This generates a sense of belonging amongst diasporic philanthropists. The findings of this study contribute to the existing literature on the sense of belonging within diasporic communities and cross-border diasporic philanthropists, thereby enhancing understanding of motivations for diasporic philanthropy.

Nonprofit community service federations (CSFs) leverage collaborative relationships with community stakeholders and their own direct economic activity to impact local community outcomes. Under the Collective Impact Framework, CSFs influence community outcomes mainly by acting as backbone organizations, which provide central program support and fiscal management services for a nonprofit network of stakeholders and serve as a grantmaking fiscal intermediaries. There remains no standard approach to evaluate impact on community outcomes. Economic impact analysis has been underexamined in academic literature as an approach to community outcomes evaluation. This paper presents a case study of the United Way of Southwest Alabama (UWSWA) to demonstrate the use of economic impact as an outcomes measurement for use in collective impact program evaluation. Economic impact assessment using conventional input–output methodology provides a broad measure of the economic influence of the UWSWA on indicators of regional economic activity such as output, value-added, earnings, and employment. This study uses a 3-year (FY2017-FY2020) sample of financial data supplied by UWSWA to estimate its scope and scale of economic activity. The case of UWSWA demonstrates how economic impact analysis may complement other impact evaluation methods. The paper finds UWSWA generates substantial positive economic effects on its service region through both its grantmaking and business operations.

Events such as pandemics, natural disasters, and other social issues reveal societies’ increasing reliance on voluntary unpaid workers. However, there is a decline in people’s willingness to volunteer with established organisations. While management research has shown that leadership plays a major role in motivating and retaining paid employees, further investigation is needed to understand how leadership motivates volunteers. This paper integrates leadership literature into a widely adopted volunteer motivation model through a narrative review, aiming to distil precise leader behaviours that could be used to fulfil or trigger people’s motivation to perform unpaid work. Our goal is to draw clear conceptual links between the different facets of leader behaviours and volunteer motivation and highlight the role of leadership in triggering and fulfilling volunteer motivation and therefore sustaining vital volunteer workforces. Limitations of our chosen approach, implications, and future research directions are discussed.

Fiji’s multi-ethnic society is historically characterised by low levels of inter-ethnic trust and a segregated civil society, typified by low participation of youth, the poor, ethnic minorities, and less literate members of society. How does this actually existing civil society shape the social transactions, value subjectivities, norms and habits of citizenship bred through volunteering and other forms of civic engagement in these contexts? Drawing on data from a mixed method study on youth volunteering in Fiji, this paper interrogates prevailing normative assumptions on volunteerism’s role in retooling civic renewal and citizenship. Being socially situated, the outcomes of youth volunteering vary. Specifically, youth volunteering in organisations that value inclusion has midwifed progressive citizenship values; while, participation in bonding type civil society reproduces exclusionary citizenship, social disparities and patterns of discrimination and privilege. The implication is that for volunteerism to produce desired progressive citizenship values and attitudes, civic organisations transmitting such values need to be specifically focussed on progressive goals.

This research analyzes the relationship between board composition and web transparency in nonprofit organizations (NPOs). The board is conceived as a governance mechanism that not only monitors management but also gives voice to all stakeholders and considers accountability—and, more specifically, web transparency—as a key instrument for the NPO’s legitimization. To conduct this study, we manually built a database from the CVs of 793 directors of 67 Spanish non-governmental development organizations and we use fuzzy set comparative qualitative analysis (fsQCA). Our results indicate that board composition (size, independence, gender diversity, and presence of directors with financial or NPOs’ expertise) influences transparency and that, depending on the organizational size and legal form, there are different board configurations that lead to high transparency. Generally, NPOs should include experts in nonprofit sector and more female members on their boards to increase transparency.

Resource acquisition is important for social enterprises’ resilience. Prior studies have explored social enterprises’ hybridity and resource acquisition outcomes, but have ignored funders’ heterogeneity. This paper examines how the identities of both social enterprises and financial resource providers are associated with financial resource acquisition. We specifically study how social enterprises’ social and financial identities are related to the acquisition of financial resources. Using an international entrepreneurship database (2014–2019), we find that social enterprises receive financial support from equity investors in a similar way as pure for-profits, while social enterprises receive less support from philanthropic donors, compared to pure nonprofits. We discuss the implications for social entrepreneurship research and practice.

Churches have a hard time defending their moral values in the political sphere of an ever more secular and liberal Western Europe. A largely neglected means of navigating this crisis is through the Church’s role as a charitable provider during the implementation of morality policies. This paper examines this type of church involvement from a cross-national and cross-sectoral perspective. We describe the activities of Protestant churches in four morality policy areas in three European countries: Germany, England, and Denmark. The variation in religious engagement observed in these areas and countries appear to be driven by the churches’ room to maneuver and their policy congruence with state goals, whereas governance capacities are secondary. Thus, the provision of social services can still serve as a means by which Protestant churches can exert moral authority, especially if these social services are related to moral issues.

This study explores how citizens develop a sense of commonality by investigating the motivations that underlie their environmental activism. Our theoretical framework is based on engagement theory, from which we derive three fundamental components (i.e. cognitive, affective, and behavioural). Data derived from explorative fieldwork and in-depth interviews with engaged citizens and public servants provide the empirical grounding. Set in Brussels, Belgium, we focus on two cases that involve green spaces earmarked for future development and have been contested by citizens who have expressed various ecological and political demands. We find that the cognitive, affective, and behavioural dimensions are fundamental to understand environmental activism. In addition, we show that personal values are relational in nature and that indignation and anger are identified as pivotal for collective action. Also internal/external efficacy is important to understand citizens’ engagement. Citizens’ motivational components exhibit a robust form of entanglement that highlights a more complex mode of city-making, a finding that may inform environmental policies.

This paper uses non-traditional approaches to predict why volunteers remain in or quit a non-governmental organisation position. A questionnaire featuring 55 predictors was conducted via an online survey mechanism from March to May 2021. A total of 250 responses were received. The subsequent data analysis compared logistic regression and artificial neural network results, using machine-learning interpreters to explain the features which determined decisions. The results indicate greater accuracy for neural networks. According to the logistic regression results, intrinsic motivation, volunteering through an NGO and the age of volunteers influenced the intention to remain. Moreover, NGOs that offered online volunteering opportunities during the COVID-19 pandemic had higher rates of intention to remain. However, the neural network analysis, performed using the Local Interpretable Model-Agnostic Explanations (LIME) method, indicated the need to consider different predictors to those identified by the logistic regression. The LIME method also enables the individualisation of the explanations of predictions, indicating the importance of considering the role of volunteers’ feelings in both quit and remain decisions, which is something that is not provided by traditional methods such as logistic regression. Furthermore, the LIME approach demonstrates that NGOs must address both volunteer management and experience to retain volunteers. Nonetheless, volunteer management is more critical to stop volunteers quitting, suggesting that volunteer integration is crucial.

Community organizations aim to promote social and environmental justice but can still reproduce injustice in their participatory and decision-making processes. To understand how that may be the case, we examine the testimonies of volunteers and citizens involved in community organizations in the province of Quebec, in Canada. These individuals, all from minority backgrounds, describe their experiences of epistemic injustice, which corresponds to situations where they are limited in producing or transmitting knowledge in social interactions. In that sense, epistemic injustice hinders their engagement in their respective organization. This article analyzes how experiences of epistemic injustice shape social interactions. It also provides concrete solutions to help organizations promote epistemic justice among their own membership.

In this study, we examine the relationship between the density of nonprofits from five different subfields in a municipality and its socioeconomic indicators using available data from Brazil in the years of 2015 and 2016. The literature on nonprofit density is relevant in enhancing the understanding of the role of the nonprofit sector, evaluating its efficiency, and responding to the increasing demand for accountability. However, researchers have criticized the lack of sample representation in studies on this topic, which are mostly concentrated in large US cities. Using pooled OLS regression models, we show that Brazilian municipalities with better levels of development in terms of education, health, and employment and income have a greater number of nonprofit organizations in their territory. Our results partially support interdependence theory by highlighting the availability of resources as an important driver of nonprofit density.

In this study, we aim to investigate the much shrouded and problematic role of civil society organizations (CSOs) in conflict settings. We argue that to go beyond the “NGOization” of CSOs, there is a need to have a macro perspective of the interaction mechanisms between the shifting dynamics that CSOs play in development efforts. This lack of perspective impedes the ability of CSOs to navigate challenges in conflict settings because examining CSO dynamics independently will not be sufficient to develop effective solutions. Therefore, we investigated the interplay between dynamics in the case of Palestinian CSOs through our interactive framework, where we identified three main barriers faced by CSOs and eight interaction mechanisms between each of the dynamics and the barriers. Our framework appeals to policymakers and practitioners alike by offering practical implications emphasizing the role of locally led initiatives that mobilize communities to innovate and govern, with guidance from CSOs.

This research identifies conditions of intra- and cross-sector partnerships with nonprofit organizations that lead to social innovation development. Primary survey data were collected from a nationally focused sample of executive directors in Canada (n = 720) on two valid and reliable multifactor measures, including partnership dynamics for social innovation and human services social innovation. Results of a multivariate regression analysis found that the structure of engagement and clarity of outcomes in partnerships were found to significantly predict all three types of social innovation (including product-based, process-based, and socially transformative social innovations), while alignment of partnership outcomes was not predictive of any social innovation outcome. Results identify aspects of partnerships that are most supportive of nonprofit social innovation development and provide a measurement tool for partner actors to assess partnership dynamics that lead to the development and undertaking of socially innovative initiatives.

Though there is now a substantial body of research on the relationship between nonprofits and the state, examples from non-Western countries have been lacking in the nonprofit literature in English. This paper attempts to fill this gap using nonprofit cases in three key districts in Fukushima after the Great East Japan Earthquake. By focusing on these cases, this study captures the complex nature of the relationship between the nonprofit sector and state in Japan during a period of increased activity of both the nonprofit sector and the state. The idea of the nonprofit sector, state, and market as relatively separate and with different interests, influences discussions on themes related to the nonprofit sector (e.g., business-like behavior). The study suggests how the Japanese case can contribute in uncovering assumptions that are embedded in the existing understanding of the nonprofit sector, based primarily on Western examples.

The development of philanthropic foundations in China is constrained by both state corporatism and the ‘administrative absorption of society.’ In this study, we use the term ‘absorptive philanthropic governance’ to describe the process where absorption is combined with intentional space for collaboration within the governance of the philanthropic sector. This concept elucidates how these two elements interact and influence each other to achieve a balance with which civil society organizations retain the capacity for autonomous social initiatives, even under the corporatist state. The COVID-19 pandemic has highlighted these dynamics. Employing interviews and case studies of 13 philanthropic foundations active in China’s COVID-19 disaster relief, we delineate their institutional positioning and identify the unique agendas, mobilization strategies, and social objectives of each type of foundations. The findings reveal both the differentiation among foundations and the resilience of the civil society sector, suggesting that, despite the current heightened political control, the evolving patterns of philanthropic governance in China signal potential for civil society development in the future.

Cataract is the primary cause of treatable blindness in low- and middle-income countries. Due to limited resources, the public sector often fails to provide adequate services, resulting in long waiting times, low quality or significant quantity gaps. Nonprofits are crucial in providing supplementary or complementary funding and resources for affordable eye care and other public goods and services. This study evaluates costs and benefits of cataract surgery at the nonprofit Mexican Institute of Ophthalmology (IMO) using data from interviews conducted in 2022 to estimate its social return. For every peso invested, the average stakeholder receives a 12:1 return in improved autonomy, self-confidence, and reduced stress levels. Sensitivity analysis suggests a SROI ratio of at least 2:1 in the most restrictive scenario, increasing to 33:1 under more lenient assumptions. Measuring and communicating the social value of nonprofit activities is critical for optimizing resource allocation, enhancing accountability, and generating valuable insights into their effectiveness.