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This chapter provides a comparative analysis of the scale, scope, and role of the nonprofit sector in the New York and Los Angeles regions. In both regions, the nonprofit sector plays important roles in health and human services, education, arts and culture, environmental protection, and many other areas of social, cultural, economic, and other needs. Yet while the nonprofit sector in both cities is in large measure a function of diverse demands for health and human services, arts and culture, and other quasi-public goods and services, both cities have developed nonprofit sectors that differ in size and composition. It is argued that nonprofit sector-government relationships at the local level help account for these differences.

Health care differs from many other industries in that most production takes place in the nonprofit sector. Little is known about the economic forces which determine productivity in the nonprofit sector, especially compared to that which is known about the for-profit sector. There, productivity analysis is well developed, especially through recent work stressing the endogenous determination of technical change. This chapter analyzes the incentives which generate productivity differences between nonprofit and for-profit firms, focusing on some empirical differences between nonprofits and for-profits in mixed industries. It predicts that, when both types coexist, nonprofits are larger and less efficient, but nevertheless become more numerous than for-profit firms under competitive conditions. In other words, nonprofits drive out for-profit firms through competition, although they exhibit higher marginal and average costs. Another prediction is that, contrary to property rights theory, nonprofits invest more in cost-reducing research and development than for-profits, holding other factors, such as third-party insurance contracts, constant. The chapter also discusses some broad patterns in the productivity differences between nonprofits and for-profits in the long-term care industry in the United States.

This chapter examines the development and infrastructure of the third sector in the United States. The third sector in the United States is conceptually related to democratic values and is seen as playing an essential role in providing services, as well as in organizing and generating political diversity and engendering social capital. Three institutional logics are widely visible in the U.S. third sector: activism, bureaucracy, and professionalization. This chapter first provides an ovcerview of the legal structure of the nonprofit sector in the United States before discussing funding, legitimacy, and evaluation in the third sector. It also considers the issue of professionalization in arts organizations as well as the dramatic and increasing presence of professionalization, at times in conflict with activism. To illustrate how some of these dynamics play out in practice, the chapter looks at a number of cases, including the Women's Intercultural Center, Prize4Life, Farm Fresh Rhode Island, and Schooner SoundWaters.

This chapter focuses on the late twentieth-century rise of conservative philanthropic activism. The story of conservative movement philanthropy can contribute to the ongoing revision of the notion that nonprofit organizations, and philanthropy specifically, should be understood as part of a blurrily bounded “third” or “independent” sector that is somehow above particularism, politics, ideology, or identifiable “interests” other than the “public interest” or the “common good.” It is suggested that the rise and extraordinary success of conservative philanthropic activism offers a way of reframing the narrative of privatization in the nonprofit sector as more than simply a reaction to government devolution or the demise of the liberal New Deal welfare state. The chapter seeks to raise questions about how we might think about “bringing the market back in” to our own understanding of the nonprofit sector.

This chapter starts by drawing attention to its roots in particular areas of service provision, namely healthcare, education, housing, public utilities, social control facilities, and defraying government expenditure. It proposes that the contemporary strategic significance of charity is growing in all leading common law jurisdictions. Also, it studies the significance of the nonprofit sector for government as the locus for generating social capital, serving as a conduit for consolidating civil society, and promoting responsible civic engagement. This chapter finishes with the theory that the existence of a thoroughly negotiated understanding between government and the sector is probably a prerequisite for any subsequent managed transfer of public benefit service provision from government to charity.

This chapter examines the development and infrastructure of the third sector in France. The nonprofit sector in France (also referred to as the “social economy”) emerged out of an ideological struggle between the Catholic Church and republicanism over the rights of the individual. Until 1901, individuals had few legal opportunities to even associate in groups; associations were only permitted under specific conditions set by the government. The genesis of the French social economy has been marked by a strong statist presence in which the institutional logic of bureaucracy was most prominent. After providing an overview of the legal structure and evolution of the French third sector, this chapter considers the French social economy as well as funding in the third sector. It also presents case studies to illustrate the tendency of the French nonprofit sector to move from a strong statist position to a solidaristic and activist approach.

This chapter examines the effects of the various charity law reform processes, and characterizes the novel areas of social needs targeted by legislators. It contemplates the idea that the nonprofit sector generally is in the process of being reshaped. It then reflects on charities and trading; the effect on market dynamics of government's preferment of charities; the jurisdictional variance in extent to which governments fund charities; the resulting more competitive position of favored charities; and the consequences for unfavored charities and other nonprofits. Furthermore, this chapter evaluates the type of trading to which charities and others in the nonprofit sector are now being drawn, and considers the effect of commercial competition upon charities.

The encounter of the New Deal with the world of private charity was not one of progressive evolution or succession but rather an intensified contradiction followed by a novel synthesis that would develop into the nonprofit sector of the postwar decades, nurtured both by expanded tax exemptions and multiplying “partnerships” with government. Thus, the limits of the New Deal project of state-building established the foundations for a postwar regime in which a newly named “non-profit sector” would be deeply implicated in governance and individual philanthropy, and in which volunteering would be central to the performance of good citizenship. Although conflicts over the relation of public and private relief persisted, there was a marked convergence between the organizational practices and personnel of private charity and public agencies.

This chapter chronicles the Reagan administration's elimination of Comprehensive Employment and Training Act (CETA), and its massive cutbacks on funding for community programs in the 1980s, which marked a turning point for the NCNW and for wider progressive activism. As federal funding became scarce and highly restrictive, activists increasingly relied on foundations and the nonprofit sector. However, foundations were also influenced by the ascendancy of conservative critiques of social programs and implemented their own requirements for evaluation; in the practice of random assignment research, one person seeking services would have to be turned away for each person receiving them in order to have a “control group” against which to measure program effectiveness.