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.

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.

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.

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.

This article examines the role of Women’s Councils in Poland as emergent forms of institutionalized grassroots activism operating at the intersection of civil society and local governance. Established organically as advisory bodies to local authorities, these Councils seek to influence local decision-making by embedding feminist principles into policy debates, despite the nonbinding character of their recommendations. Emerging within a broader context of intensified civic engagement, Women’s Councils have developed agendas addressing a wide range of social and economic issues affecting local communities. Drawing on survey data and focus group interviews, the study analyses their formation, organizational structures, and perceived impact on local governance processes. The findings demonstrate how Women’s Councils translate feminist perspectives into everyday governance practices. By amplifying civic voices within formal decision-making arenas, they contribute to more inclusive and participatory forms of local governance, offering insights into how grassroots initiatives sustain advocacy within institutional contexts.

There is limited research into the experiences and impact on wellbeing, of laypersons informally supporting people seeking asylum (PSA) within the United Kingdom. This study addresses this topic within the context of the Bibby Stockholm barge. An interpretivist philosophical paradigm and qualitative strategy were employed. A combination of purposive and snowball sampling was utilized in recruiting nine participants aged 50–80, six male and three female, and all of Caucasian ethnic origin. Data were collected using semi-structured one-to-one interviews and analyzed using Thematic Analysis. Three themes emerged. First, Participants situated their motivations to volunteer within the context of social justice, informed by previous life experiences, personal morals and a reaction to the sociopolitical context PSA are forced to navigate. Second, volunteers’ experiences reflected the interactions of community. To this end, community is considered as an ever-changing “machine” where processes such as welcoming, loss and belonging form the cogs, which drive its evolution. Finally, volunteers described the way their experience affected their wellbeing—the wellbeing equation. Overall, volunteers described an overwhelmingly positive experience and provide accounts of experiencing increased wellbeing. However, volunteers also faced challenges damaging to wellbeing, employing protective mechanisms to mitigate these. This relationship between volunteering with PSA and wellbeing is summarized in the development of a revised conceptual framework contextualizing the effects of volunteering on volunteer health and wellbeing. The future application of this framework across different voluntary fields may improve understanding of what it means to volunteer and thus universal volunteer retention and outcomes.

Women volunteer more than men, yet it remains segregated by gender, with female volunteers underrepresented in maritime search and rescue (SAR) particularly in leadership roles. A cross-sectional online survey of 209 females volunteering in operational SAR with the Royal National Lifeboat Institution sought to understand their characteristics, motivations and improvement strategies. There was a lack of diversity with most white, highly educated, working full-time and in the top half of the index of multiple deprivation. Only half had previous maritime experience, most were crew and few held leadership positions. Respondents were motivated by giving back to the community, increasing self-esteem. Volunteers benefitted from role modeling although wanted equally demanding operational roles as men. Respondents demanded more women in SAR and female friendly equipment. Three internally coherent volunteer profiles emerged: civic; maritime; skills/career. While changes were ongoing, challenges relating to gender discrimination remained. Women reshape gendered security spaces through high-risk volunteering.

The importance of the third sector has been recognized by academia and policymakers. However, little is known about the geography of third sector associations. This issue is of central importance as the third sector is increasingly expected to play a role in solving local societal challenges. Here, the geography of the third sector is investigated at the municipal level in Finland using quantitative data and statistical analyses. The results show that socio-economically less advantageous and rural regions host the most third sector associations per capita. This creates a conundrum. On the one hand, there are abundant numbers of third sector associations in rural regions that could step in to address local societal challenges. On the other hand, rural regions are among the most poorly locally resourced, casting doubt on the future of their operations.

Philanthropic organizations, as crucial intermediaries between the government and society, significantly contribute to public service delivery. This study examines how organizational features influence their effectiveness, especially exploring the impact of professional capacity and organizational resources. Based on the panel data of 259 philanthropic organizations in Shanghai from 2010 to 2022, we use two-way fixed effects models to examine the impact of professional capacity, financial scale, and annual income on public service delivery, as measured by the number of charitable projects, project expenditures, and the number of beneficiaries. The finding shows that professional capacity notably improves public service delivery. We also find that financial scale moderates the relationship, while annual income mediates it. The results advocate that policies should facilitate capacity building and resource support altogether to maximize philanthropic organizations’ contributions to public service delivery.

The civil society organizations (CSOs) in Bangladesh that came into the limelight for their activities during the COVID-19 pandemic are relatively new. Their formation, platform building, support expansion, fundraising, and coordination took place within the virtual network. Moreover, this new generation of civil society is engaged in digital advocacy. Under these new circumstances, it has become important to undergo a systematic study on this new generation of CSOs. The present article has conducted a content analysis of the websites (105) and Facebook pages (20) of sampled CSOs that have registered with the NGO Affairs Bureau of Bangladesh from 2011 to 2021. Their digital activities have been analyzed under four broad headings, namely, information and transparency, participation, networking, and mobilization. It has been found that although a few CSOs have come into the limelight for their digital performance, 81% of the CSOs are not using any official website. CSOs that are active on digital platforms are mostly concerned with providing information about themselves rather than engaging in online advocacy or mobilization. Among the different types of CSOs, youth groups have been found to be the most active users of Facebook, whereas service-providing NGOs and environmental CSOs have been observed to be disinterested in utilizing the digital facilities. Though digital culture has already taken root in the socio-political and economic life of Bangladesh, the CSOs seem to be in a transitional phase of digitalization, and their efforts to advocate for and deliver services through the digital space are at an initial stage.