The social demand of transparency in nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) has increased. This is due to their social and economic impact and the incidences of fraudulent behavior by some international NGOs managers. In this regard, an improved and abundant dissemination of information by NGO is essential. The Internet is considered a strategic communication tool in such dissemination. Following an explanatory research line, this article aims to identify the influence of the factors “organizational size”, “organizational age”, “public funding”, “legal form”, “internationalization”, “board size”, and “board activity” in the dissemination of web page information. The results show that only the factors of “organizational size”, “public funding,” and “organizational age” are statistically significant.

Despite the fact that churches are still important sources of social capital in the Netherlands, the ongoing secularization of Dutch society has as yet not resulted in a drop of non-religious volunteering. In order to account for this apparent paradox, panel data are used to test the hypothesis that non-religious volunteering is in part an aftereffect of the religious socialization today’s volunteers enjoyed as youths. The following research question is addressed: To what extent does a religious socialization in Christian families during adolescence, independent of individual and collective religious characteristics, determine non-religious volunteering later in life? Results show that collective religious characteristics, i.e. being active in a religious community and religious affiliation, are the most important determinants in this respect. However, next to the effects of these collective aspects, also an independent effect of a religious socialization on non-religious volunteering is found. Especially a religious socialization which is not too strict was found to be influential on adult non-religious volunteering.

This paper considers dangers and pitfalls associated with a range of oversight options and scenarios, including self-regulation, government regulation, donor monitoring and community participation. The paper outlines the blind spots and sources of potential bias associated with each of these oversight mechanisms. Examining the Ugandan case study we find that perceptions of corruption and ineffectiveness tarnished the reputation of the sector, but at this stage the proposed peer review mechanism and stricter government regulation are unlikely to improve NGO sector outcomes. Government regulation is anticipated to be ineffectual due to poor design and insufficient resource allocation, but both of these factors may be attributable to the underlying political motivations. Similarly, not much is expected from the peer review mechanism because participation is voluntary, offers few benefits and the list of guidelines is too long and contains too many vague and intangible quality standards. The paper argues for more empirical research to inform the design of oversight mechanisms and to monitor the impact of self-regulation and government regulation on the NGO sector. This may also help to expose and limit opportunistic interventions by government, often thinly concealed under the conceptual cloak of accountability and oversight.

In deciding the means, levels, and targets of taxation and spending across third-sector organizations, governments seeking to increase social welfare should use fiscal concepts and indicators that can detect and grade the welfare consequences of their decisions. On these terms, charity, as its meaning has originated and evolved in common law, is a deficient fiscal concept: it is neither teleological nor gradational, and therefore can offer no guidance on how to design and differentiate the fiscal treatment of third-sector organizations in ways that could increase social welfare. In general, the national governments of Australia, Canada, England and Wales, India, and Singapore treat uniformly the third-sector organizations whose purposes comply with the legal meaning of charity. In order to reform and differentiate that treatment with the prospect of increasing social welfare thereby, governments should start by dispensing with charity as a fiscal concept.

Faith-based organizations (FBOs) have long played a role in international development, and are increasingly involved in environmental sustainability initiatives. Despite these contributions they have, until recently, been largely ignored in scholarship and by secular agencies. This article adds to the growing recognition of FBOs, exploring the identity and function of FBOs doing environmental and development work in Kenya through document review, qualitative questionnaires and participant observation. A diverse group of FBOs with varied identities and engaged in a broad range of activities revealed several strengths and challenges of faith-based environmental and development work. Of particular note is the key role churches and faith-based agencies can play in effecting sustainable and holistic change in Global South countries, due to their rootedness in the community, the social capital they help to produce, and the respect they receive from the people.

This study examines whether transformational leadership influences organizational culture that furthers NGOs’ effectiveness. It also examines whether transformational leadership at the top directly influences NGOs’ effectiveness. Further, it tests whether NGO effectiveness improves the programme outcomes in terms of health, income, education, and happiness of villagers. Data were collected from 312 NGOs in Jharkhand state (India). Transformational leadership, organizational culture, and NGO effectiveness were assessed from NGO personnel using standard instruments, and programme outcomes on health, income, education, and happiness were evaluated from villagers using wooden cubes. Findings reveal that transformational leadership builds organizational culture that furthers NGO effectiveness. Transformational leadership does not influence directly NGO effectiveness but it enhances NGO effectiveness promoting organizational culture. Furthermore, NGO effectiveness improves the outcomes of programmes undertaken by NGOs in terms of better health, income, education, and happiness of beneficiaries.

This report summarizes the dire straits of the current blood supply and identifies a number of factors which contribute to this situation (low percentage of the population who donate regularly, increasing number of factors which preclude a willing donor from donating, short shelf life of donated blood, lack of a synthetic substitute). The current situation is gleaned from a literature review and the results suggested that a new source of donors (people aged 17–25) be examined to see if they might provide a way to end the shortage. A pilot survey was conducted with undergraduate students at East Carolina University and the results were surprising and encouraging. Students reported that they are donating at from 3 to 5 times the rate of all age groups. Developing an effective way to communicate with people as they reach the age to donate may be the critical step to be taken.

The calls for NGO accountability have grown louder in recent years, some based on genuine concerns to help improve their performance and others on a desire to muffle their advocacy activities. Using a comprehensive analytical framework, this article finds that current accountability approaches prioritize accountability to boards and donors and give weak accountability to communities despite strong NGO rhetoric to the contrary. The article recommends the development of accountability mechanisms managed by NGO coordination bodies and focused primarily on accountability to communities to improve NGO performance and protect them from politically motivated attacks.

Transnational Muslim NGOs are important actors in the field of development and humanitarian aid. Through micro-sociological case studies, this article provides new empirical insights on the organizational identity of some of these NGOs. Using the post 9.11. aid field as a window through which to explore transnational Muslim NGOs, the article analyzes the ways in which two of the largest Muslim NGOs Islamize aid and the kinds of Islam they construct in this process, discussing how this relates to their position in the contemporary aid field. The Saudi Arabian International Islamic Relief Organization and the British Islamic Relief serve as emblematic examples of transnational Muslim NGOs today, each presenting different ways of understanding Islam: One promotes an all-encompassing Islam, embedded in almost all aspects of the organization; while the other demonstrates a quasi-secular Islam, most often relegated to the personal sphere. Likewise, the two organizations Islamize aid in different ways, based on different interpretations of the Global War on Terror and mainstream development discourses. The article concludes that the positions of the two NGOs are best understood as poles in a continuum, stretching from an embedded Islam, encouraging a thoroughly Islamized aid and blocking integration into the field of mainstream development and humanitarian aid, to an invisible Islam, accompanied by an almost secularized aid and facilitating integration into the aid field.

NGO/NPO effectiveness remains a prominent concern for scholars and practitioners, but the literature on this issue is increasingly fragmented along disciplinary lines. We address this problem by presenting a comprehensive and interdisciplinary review of the literature on NGO and NPO effectiveness using citation analysis. In order to uncover commonalities across disciplines concerned with similar questions, we deploy a structured literature review using snowball sampling within citation networks. This approach limits author biases, fosters an interdisciplinary perspective, and adds a different methodological approach to conventional content-based literature reviews. Our review uncovers three trends: (1) there is broad scholarly consensus that unidimensional measures of effectiveness are not useful—even though such measures are commonly used by NGO/NPO rating agencies; (2) the scholarship on NGO/NPO effectiveness is dominated by conceptual works, while empirical studies remain rare; (3) a consensus on how to operationalize effectiveness remains elusive. These results suggest that progress in our understanding of NGO/NPO effectiveness requires enhanced efforts at crossing disciplinary divides, adding empirical analyses, and increasing attention to develop shared categories and methodologies.

The importance of associations in contemporary democratic societies is out of the question. Still, there is a need for a new approach that considers them as a specific and singular organization type, different from business firms and government agencies. There is also a need to evaluate their performance. Based on case studies and diverse theoretical insights, this article lays out some criteria for assessing the effects on associational performance of cohesion, decision-making and relation to environment.

This article examines how international resources can be used to strengthen local support for civil society initiatives in China to improve the circumstances of poor and vulnerable populations. It identifies ways in which international resources have strengthened civil society in other countries, such as enhancing access to financial resources, building capacity of leaders and organizations, reducing sector fragmentation, building public legitimacy and improving cross-sector relations. It examines the characteristics and special circumstances facing civil society in China, arguing that institutional constraints are particularly problematic. Then it explores how international resources might be applied to each of the problem areas identified given the constraints of the Chinese context. Finally the article articulates five principles that might guide international donors for building more local support for civil society activity in China.

Increasing societal heterogeneity, changing demographics, and increasing public debt and fiscal constraints have recently challenged traditional “regime” approaches to welfare state development. Some scholars argue, against this background, that welfare states might plausibly move out of their “regime container” by opting in favor of similar solutions and responses. This potential trend toward “convergence” might, furthermore, be facilitated by the widespread use of new public management ideas and techniques for “reinventing government” by adopting market solutions to public problems. This article investigates whether such trends of convergence can be identified by comparing three different countries each traditionally looked upon as belonging to different welfare state regimes: Denmark, Germany, and the United States. More specifically the article looks at one important segment of welfare state activity, namely social services and related health care. To further focus the analysis, special attention is devoted to the changing role played by the third sector in delivering services. The research design, thus, differs from most comparative welfare state research. Instead of analyzing a broad set of quantitative indicators in a large number of countries, it is scrutinized how some of the same problem pressures and policy ideas are being interpreted and implemented in a small number of countries within one policy area. The analysis reveals that trends of convergence—conceptualized along four dimensions: ideas, regulation, mix of providers, and revenue mix—can be identified across the three cases, though this does not mean that the market share of nonprofit providers becomes the same. The study also reveals that fundamental aspects of state–nonprofit relations persist despite trends of convergence.

Information and knowledge have re-emerged as essential resources in the fight against poverty, with new opportunities for their dissemination seen to empower the poor and the agencies that work with them. While optimism is high, little empirical evidence exists as to the actual effect of these changes within localized development contexts. This article contributes to overcoming this lacuna by exploring the role of local non-government organizations (NGOs) in Uttarakhand, North India. It examines how the promotion of information and knowledge as development goods have changed the way NGOs understand poverty and their own roles within the sector. I propose the metaphor of NGOs as ‘peddlers of information’ to draw attention to the current emphasis on awareness, sensitisation and assemblage of information about the grassroots as the primary—and in many cases only—development work NGOs undertake. This metaphor provides an analytical device through which to assess the roles of NGOs in immanent and intentional development.

Advocacy networks are coalitions of movements and organizations that in recent years have gained unprecedented levels of influence through their soft power strategies. They have become key political actors in local, national and international arenas. Research on their performance and role within today’s information society has been developed by academics from different disciplines. Some of these analyses, however, seem to portray them as a new actor within an already-existing structure. This article argues that the network structure of these associations requires for a multifaceted and multidisciplinary approach in order to better understand how they are changing the political and social landscape. In order to achieve this purpose, this article is divided in two parts: the first one offers an overview of existing literature on the subject from different disciplines and at different scales, while the second part puts forward a framework to consider all relevant spheres of these networks for better analyses. As will be noted in the literature review, most of the case studies have been carried out from a clear disciplinary focus with its own set of categories and focus on preferred dynamics. This approach reduces the density of the networks by portraying them as other already-known institutions. One example of this is that of scales of action, usually defined as local, national, international or transnational. By focusing solely on the arena of direct influence, other interactions that may be central to the network are thus ignored or minimized. In order to disentangle such misrepresentations, it is suggested here to consider five dimensions of analysis in the study of advocacy networks: (1) scales of action and interaction, (2) cultural contexts and legacies, (3) network logic, (4) discourse production and contestation and (5) institutional ecosystem. By considering the implications of all five of them, it is proposed here, accounts may yield more comprehensive analyses of how these webs of civil society groups are transforming the political landscape.

A major shift in the climate for the solicitation of charitable donations in the United States occurred in the second half of the twentieth century. Starting with legislation passed by the Legislatures of New York and Massachusetts in 1954 and eventually including 40 largely similar laws in force today, state governments grew to playing a predominant part in the regulation of appeals for public support for charitable activities. State regulators, voluntary oversight and advocacy groups, accounting standards-setting bodies, and the data-collection activities of the Internal Revenue Service all influenced the development of the body of regulations which now shape the process of seeking support for nonprofits’ work. This article summarizes the effect of earlier innovations in the field of fundraising and then examines the interplay of public and private actors in the course of the creation of the present regulatory climate.

This article aims to increase understanding of how the institutional model of a (neo) corporative state meets new forms in a changing civil society. This objective is accomplished by analyzing two case studies of Swedish organizations entering into the field of government-subsidized popular education: one youth organization and one Muslim organization. The institutionalist concepts isomorphism, isopraxism, isonymism, packaging and translation are used to analyze these. Empirically the article is based on qualitative analysis of interviews, observations and written documents. It is concluded that the translation of popular education as an organizational concept in these cases is characterized by coercive and mimetic isomorphism, isopraxism and isonymism to an extent that hinders development in the popular education field. There are also examples of emerging packaging changing the relationship between state and civil society. That issue, however, requires further qualitative research, as does the influence of corporatism on civil society organization in general.

Peer-to-peer microfinance connects philanthropic citizens with poor entrepreneurs in the developing world, offering new ways to channel charitable contributions. Although the literature suggests that donors’ perceptions of effectiveness affect charitable giving, very little is known about what types of projects individuals perceive as more effective. Using data from Kiva.org, this article presents evidence on the relative popularity of competing development projects. We present estimates of the impact of publicly visible project characteristics on funding speed. Assuming that Kiva lenders are motivated by poverty alleviation, the results shed light on individual philanthropists’ perception of project effectiveness. Knowing this can help practitioners design fundraising strategies more effectively, especially for projects that are inherently less popular.