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 paper examines the present state of voluntary associations in Estonia—their resources and fields of activity. First, the paper discusses two possible functions of nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) in the postsocialist social change: the opening up of participation channels complementary to those of representative democracy and the support to the state in fulfilling social welfare functions. A view stressing the latter function of the voluntary sector has hitherto dominated Estonian domestic political discussion. The actual capacity of Estonian NGOs is assessed on the basis of previous research and the results of a mail survey (779 responding organizations). The resources of the respondents are smaller than expected. Resources differ greatly between urban and rural associations, and between NGOs representing different fields of activity. The paper concludes with a discussion of the empirical findings and of the need for further research.

In Latin America, the emergence of a series of civil society initiatives aimed at citizen engagement for social accountability and democratization in local governance has been a novelty since the 2000s. One of these initiatives is the Latin American Network for Fair, Democratic and Sustainable Cities and Territories, which congregates over 70 initiatives in 10 countries. This article describes and analyzes the nature of civil society initiatives, their repertoires of actions, and their incidence in processes of transparency and accountability, citizen participation, public policies, and local governance. The research was conducted between 2012 and 2016, including a questionnaire with 23 initiatives in 8 countries, interviews, participant observation, and document analysis. The results show the emergence of cross-sectional and systemic accountability, counting on collaboration and co-production of information and control between citizens and government agencies.

We present and test a model examining the role of organizational and psychological resources that enable employees’ high-quality service provision in public safety jobs. Through a two-study design conceptualized in the principle of reciprocity of social exchange theory, we recruited 120 firefighters and 119 police officers and found that service quality was positively associated with their trust in the administration, training, and staffing sufficiency. We also found that police officers’ prosocial motivation, as a psychological resource, amplifies the relationship between trust in administration and service quality. The beneficial role of prosocial motivation in police officers’ service quality appears to counter recent research suggesting that prosocial motivation has a dark side in demanding contexts. Our findings contribute to and highlight essential connections between distinct resources that positively impact the service quality of firefighters and police officers in dangerous and emotionally demanding job roles.