THE THIRD SECTOR IN THE SOCIAL CRISIS OF OUR AGE

JON VAN TIL, RUTGERS UNIVERSITY, USA

GABOR HEGYESI, ELTE UNIVERSITY BUDAPEST, HUNGARY

 

Paper presented to ISTR/EMES conference, Barcelona, July 2008

 

ABSTRACT

For the past quarter-century, the field of voluntary action/nonprofit organization/third sector/civil society research has been dominated by a paradigm that focuses on organizations certified as tax-exempt by the United States Internal Revenue Service  and subject to an inability to distribute economic assets.  This definition has facilitated large scale empirical research, but has dropped from visibility a wide range of important community-based voluntary and nonprofit organizations, including, in the U.S. some 9 million grassroots organizations and a wide range of cooperative and mutual benefit organizations.

In recent years, a critical literature has developed that challenges this dominant conception.  This literature has taken form in Europe under the leadership of the EMES Research Network, and employs a more expansive conception of the third sector than does the conventional American view.  In this paper, that expansive conception is explored and refined, the argument being that what’s of value in the third sector far exceeds the contributions of tax-certified nonprofit organizations.

Five  major points are made in this paper:

1)    The four major sectors in society are in flux:  government, business, and the family are losing capacity while the third (nonprofit, voluntary) sector is called upon for greater strength.

2)    While the third sector is called upon to  be more community-oriented and active in problem definition and resolution, it is also under strong pressure to be more “business-like” and “entrepreneurial”. 

3)    These pressures lead to definitions of the sector that exclude many important organizations:  grassroots organizations, cooperatives, religious organizations.

4)    Funders and other potential supporters of third sector activity often find themselves stymied in an effort to identify organizations that make a genuine difference.

5)     As the social crisis of our time deepens, nonprofit leaders may be called to exert societal leadership, and choose between neutrality, selective intervention, and outright advocacy.

 

INTRODUCTION

 

As we move into the new millennium, it appears to many that both democracy and civil society are in decline (Cf. Alperovitz 2006, Bruyn 2005, and Fukuyama, 2006).  The futurist Michael Marien (2006, 2) notes that a

large number of recent books have ‘democracy’ in the title, and point to some serious complaint.  Unfortunately, the facets of this complex development are deeply disconnected, and the styles range from dispassionate analysis to very passionate polemics….Put the dots together and something ugly is emerging.  A macrohistorian (Lukacs, 2005) views a decline of democracy toward populism and a rise of criminality.  Social scientists describe syndromes of corruption (Johnston, 2006), rising political inequality (Jacobs and Skocpol, 2005), and recent decline of transparency (Roberts, 2006). 

In those societies we know the best--the United States, the Republic of Ireland,  the United Kingdom,  Hungary, and the nations of Central Asia—democracy is under siege, with electoral processes under challenge (in the U.S. and Northern Ireland), widening social inequalities affecting individual capacity, and social peace threatened by variety of para-political organizations. 

In many seemingly advanced societies in the new millennium, the needs of  residents are served by four major institutional sectors.  Each of these sectors is contained within its own organizational silo, though each actively transacts with each of the others:  business, government, the informal sector of kin and consanguinity, and the third (or voluntary, or nonprofit, or nongovernmental, or independent/interdependent, and so on).

Each of these institutional silos is surrounded by a set of educational and training institutions that putatively prepare individuals for careers in these sectors:  business schools, schools of public administration, schools of religion, education, and family life, and a variety of programs designed to train third sector leaders.  But, as we all know, these four institutional sectors have been subject to fundamental changes in recent years.  Government, the pillar of the first sector, has steadily withdrawn from many of its formerly assumed welfare responsibilities, replacing relatively robust welfare states with the “farewell state” of the 21st century.  In such a state, concrete assistance is replaced by hearty exhortations to work hard and succeed, but little direct aid is provided to advance these aims.

The second sector, business, has fared little better.  Although certain times and places, including Japan in the late 20th century, exhibited booming information-technology driven growth, the usual picture involves the few amassing obscene levels of wealth while the middle and lower classes struggle with declining economic chances.  The “end of (good) work”, as depicted by Jeremy Rifkin, has become a standard throughout the Western world, as vividly brought home in the streets of Paris in the Spring 0f 2005.

Within the informal sector, the inability of many families to deal with the rigors of raising hale and whole children remains serious, and the cost of incarcerating a rising population of convicted criminals continues to mount.

In such a time of crisis, the third sector is turned to in a variety of new ways and relations, resulting from such disparate motives as desperation, innovation, and creative accounting.  Thus emerge a bewildering range of partnerships, a flourishing of subcontracted relations between the state and the third sector, and a fervent if not always realized hope that a combination of philanthropic giving, voluntary service, and informed citizen action  can replace the declining resources provided by the public purse.

This mention of the major activities of the third sector—giving, serving, and acting—leads to the major point of today’s activity, and my strong belief that citizen action requires thoughtful planning and preparation.  The giving and getting of moneys from foundations and other nonprofit organizations, for instance, requires thoughtful planning, a respect for relationship, and a determination to complete the tasks involved.  The organization of effective service provision by volunteers requires sophisticated recruitment, careful training, and an ability to match the skills of volunteers with the needs of clients.  And the mounting of effective citizen campaigns requires the ability to map the action, to engender respectful participation, and to assure participants a reasonably high probability that their actions will have an effect.

Economist Christopher Gunn identifies the third sector as denoting "a mix of nonprofit and cooperative economic organizations and their activities" (p. 2).  This definition extends the realm of the third sector well beyond its conventional definition by the legal term of the "nondistribution constraint"--that is, an organization whose assets do not return to its owners in the event of its demise.  Gunn carefully assembles his conception of the third sector as a "hybrid" that includes organizations which share characteristics, in some cases, with for-profit or governmental organizations.  He proceeds to identify four major categories of such organizations:  1)  Public benefit and service providers with a primary focus on such interests as health, education, social and legal, civic, arts and cultural, religious, and research activities; 2)  Funding intermediaries such as federated funders, foundations, and financial intermediaries; 3)  Member-serving organizations with a focus on fraternal, social or recreational purposes, labor union, business and professional activity, politics, and political action; and 4) Mutual benefit and cooperative organizations such as credit unions, providers of mutual insurance, and consumer, workers' and agricultural and other co-ops.

Over the past 15 years, the noted scholar of nonprofit organizations Lester Salamon writes, the nonprofit sector has behaved in a resilient fashion.  It has grown steadily, marketed itself to paying customers, successfully pursued public funds, taken advantage of a "revolution in charitable fundraising", expanded venture activity, adopted the "enterprise culture", developed "new business partnerships", built a "nonprofit infrastructure", and met the competition from both business and governmental sources.    The major risks facing the sector are now:  Confronting a "growing identity crisis", dealing with "increased demands on nonprofit managers" and an "increased threat to nonprofit missions", coping with the "disadvantaging of small agencies", and assuaging the "potential loss of public trust". 

 

Putting the pieces together, Salamon concludes that the "task ahead" for the nonprofit sector involves achieving a "better balance" between the sector's "distinctiveness imperative" (by rethinking community benefit, improving public understanding, and making needed shifts in public policy) and its "survival imperative" (capitalizing the sector, increasing "buy-in by third-party payers", and encouraging private giving).  "Some such adjustments are needed, that America's nonprofit institutions require broader support in preserving the features that make them special," (p. 87) Salamon concludes.

 

Sirianni and Friedland take as their focus in The Civic Renewal Movement a range of organizational efforts in the contemporary United States.  They identify a dizzying variety of such movements, which they present and discuss under five principal headings:  1)  civic environmentalism; 2)  community youth development and K-12 civic education; 3) healthy communities; and 4) public journalism and civic communications.

 

The authors contend that these movements are inter-related, but argue that they would benefit from a clearer recognition of their interdependence.  In italics, they write:  The civic renewal movement attempts to weave these various movements and innovations into a larger tapestry that can enable democratic work to become broader and deeper....Without a broad movement linking democratic work across institutional systems, innovation may progress in some areas but will likely stall or remain invisible in others and fail to inspire action on the scale needed to revitalize our democracy.  Unless we can bring these discrete movements into a more dynamic relationship with each other, it is unlikely we will be able to counter those powerful institutional and cultural forces in our society that tend to undermine citizen power and capacity for self-government” (pp. 4-5).

 

TOWARD A COMPREHENSIVE THEORY OF THE THIRD SECTOR

 

The third sector stands on the cusp of developing comprehensive theory that applies to its structure and functioning in more than America or Europe alone.  Previous work by Salamon and associates, as well as that of  the EMES Research Network, has established strong regional bases for third sector theory.  But the time may have arrived for a synthesizing theory to integrate the "sector" focus of American scholarship with the "continuum" emphasis of European studies.  This paper essays such a synthesis, based on the following:

 

·                PARADIGMS AS WAYS OF UNDERSTANDING.  In which we are reminded that organized knowledge, or "science", moves in schools, and that what is most important is often what is least mentioned, recognized, or challenged.  We consider Kuhn's view of  paradigms, Gladwell's  work on tipping points, and the metaphor of "tectonic shift" as applied to third sector studies by Van Til.

 

·                THE NONPROFIT CANON.  In which we examine the most influential work of the past quarter-century on the role of the nonprofit sector:  the writings of Lester Salamon and his associates at Johns Hopkins University.  We probe for the major points in this canon, search for contradictions, examine for growth. 

 

·                THE TURNING OF THE WHEEL.  In which we note that other voices have interpreted the nonprofit world at variance with the Canon.  In particular here, we focus on the work of social theorist Roger Lohmann, himself at work revising his influential 1992 book, The Commons.  Work of several other authors, including Jeremy Rifkin, is also subject to critical review.

 

·                AN OVERT CHALLENGE.  In which we note that an overt challenge to the Canon, perhaps echoing other frustrations with American thought and policy, has begun to issue from several corners of the European continent.  In particular, we focus on the work of the EMES Research Network, as led by the German Adalbert Evers, the Frenchman Jean Louis-Laville, the American born Swede Victor Pestoff, and the Catalan Isabel Vidal.

 

·                TOWARD A THEORY OF THE THIRD SECTOR.  In which we take our stand and develop our own theory of the third sector for new Millennium.  We begin with topological efforts, following the work of Pestoff, Evers, Billis, and Paton.  We decide if the time has come to choose a universal theory, or whether Europe and the U.S. each need its own.  We ask new questions, form new conceptions, move toward new understandings.

 

One may productively  begin by reviewing the classic conceptual schema presented by Talcott Parsons (1966).  Parsons saw society as structured around the provision of four basic functions:  adaptation, goal-attainment, integration, and latent pattern-maintenance (or culture).  The great institutions of society—1) the economy, 2) the state, 3) the voluntary, and 4) church, home, and family—were seen to develop, respectively, around each of these four functions and their related institutions.  This schema is illustrated in Figure 1, below.

 

 

To be sure, a number of social theorists have observed that the third sector overlaps with the other sectors, and that the boundaries are often blurred between the sectors (Cf. the writings of Van Til, Pestoff, Evers, Billis, and Paton, among others).  In a recent dissertation, Crossan (2007) establishes the validity of the continuum between social and economic organizations, in both theory and empirical research.         Crossan’s work suggests that other continua be explored within the map of social institutions, as illustrated by Table 2.    Six possible continua may be identified, as shown in Figure 2.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Organizing society as a network of relationships, however, flies in the face of the obvious presence in society of the myriad of organizations identified as businesses, governmental bodies, and voluntary/nonprofit organizations—not to mention families, churches, and other organizations of kin and consanguinity.  Perhaps the continuum idea should be seen as something to be added to the sectoral model, as a kind of antithetical challenge to the thesis of sector.  Perhaps, then, a synthesis may be found in an overlay of the two models, as shown in Figure 3. 

 

 

 

DILEMMAS IN THIRD SECTOR  PARTICIPATION

 

In the concluding paragraph of his study of Third Sector Development, Gunn wrestles with the dilemma that the third sector contains organizations whose interests inevitably conflict with each other, and whose actions represent contesting solutions to society's problems.  He clearly hopes that "anticapitalist protest" issuing from the third sector will be able to "transform" citizen anger "into an anti-capitalist movement of the kind that social democracy never was"  (p. 187), but also recognizes that a more realistic goal may be to "help answer the question, Which way is forward?" (p. 188).

 

Among the dilemmas that call out for careful examination here are those identified by the organizers of the current conference:

 

Ø              What are the principal tensions between representative and participatory democracy, and how might they best be harmonized?

Ø              What are the most effective ways of managing conflicts within  nations challenged by historic rifts between diverse groups of citizens?

Ø              What approaches will productively engage marginalized groups whose actions come close to precipitating street violence?

 

Let us consider each of these dilemmas in a bit more detail, and see how their resolution might be advanced in a contemporary nation like Hungary.  First, the issue of balancing representation and participation.  This dilemma forces us to ask questions like:  How much democracy should we want?  How much do we need?   The answer to such questions, we would suggest,  is straightforward:  A modern society requires both representation and participation, and the advantage belongs to participation.

 

To be sure, a representative system may provide acceptable policy outcomes in times of stability and calm.  But when real issues of contesting visions and interests appear (which is to say, almost always), simple representation will not suffice.  There is no substitute for “active” (Cf. Etzioni) and “strong” (Cf. Barber) democracy in the modern State. 

 

Fortunately, a variety of new methods and techniques of participation have been developed to assist in the advance of participatory democracy in contemporary society.  John Gastil and William N. Keith present a number of these approaches in The Deliberative Democracy Handbook, a reader that mixes review articles on the varieties of theory and practice with cases on field experiences where deliberative democracy is brought to bear.  In the introductory chapter, the co-editors observe that deliberative democracy is a social movement that seeks to recall an “oft-forgotten unitary tradition represented by town meetings and the pursuit of consensus” (p. 7).  Among its most prominent forms are the deliberative poll (described by James Fishkin in ch. 5), National Issues Forums organized by the Kettering Foundation (see ch. 3), study circles (ch. 14), citizens’ juries (chs. 7 and 8), and a variety of efforts to engender electronic dialogue on the web (ch. 15). 

 

The Handbook presents statements by such major thinkers in the field as Jane Mansfield, Fishkin, and David M. Ryfe, as well as informative field studies of practice in Philadelphia, Australia, Western Colorado, Brazil, New Jersey and Virginia.  In a final chapter, the co-editors identify a set of “new frontiers” for public deliberation, which include the facilitation of “dialogue”, the search for “cultural accommodation”, and the creation of “cross-cultural dialogue and deliberation”(pp. 282-286).

 

Harold F. Saunders  identified and codified the social technology of “sustained dialogue” while serving in a variety of State Department roles in the 1970s; it was Saunders who built the search for “cultural accommodation” and “cross-cultural dialogue and deliberation” into his work in citizen diplomacy in the American-Soviet “Dartmouth Seminar”; and it is the same Saunders who established the contemporary campus-based movement for sustained dialogue across racial lines.

 

In his new book, Politics is About Relationship, Saunders extends his earlier work in A Public Peace Process (1999) to the development of a theory of sustained dialogue to a level of higher abstraction.  His earlier work described the stages through which a process of sustained dialogue proceeds (coming together; mapping, naming and framing; deliberating and setting a direction; scenario-building; and acting together).  Politics is About Relationship fleshes out the centrality of the relationship concept in the resolution of human conflicts.  To Saunders, relationship involves an “invisible, yet powerful, moving in the ‘space between’” individuals and groups (p. 63).

 

Saunders applies his theory to the central concepts of  social science:  identity, interests, power, perceptions, and interactive processes.  To take one important example, he writes: “Power often emerges from political relationships.  Events in East-Central Europe in 1989 dramatized that the power to generate change sometimes lies with those who have no raw power.  Power emerged from the relationships among people who challenged government on grounds of legitimacy, and those in authority decided not to use force in the circumstances that citizens, in part, created” (p. 73). 

 

Chapters in his book range widely over his experiences developing and observing sustained dialogue and public deliberation in such widely varying places as South Africa, Tajikistan, and West Virginia.  Skillfully linking theory and practice, Saunders joins such contemporary social theorists as Roger Lohmann  and the reviewer  in noting the importance of social space (what Lohmann (2006) calls “the commons” and Van Til, 2000 refers to as  “third space”) as critical to the building of  good and well developed societies.

 

The second major dilemma, finding ways of resolving deep-seated conflicts in society, has preoccupied Harold Saunders throughout his career.  In his new book, Politics is About Relationship, Saunders extends his earlier work in A Public Peace Process (1999) to the development of a theory of sustained dialogue to a level of higher abstraction.  His earlier work described the stages through which a process of sustained dialogue proceeds (coming together; mapping, naming and framing; deliberating and setting a direction; scenario-building; and acting together).  Politics is About Relationship fleshes out the centrality of the relationship concept in the resolution of human conflicts.  To Saunders, relationship involves an “invisible, yet powerful, moving in the ‘space between’” individuals and groups (p. 63).

 

Thirdly, we come to the issue of assuring that direct forms of democratic expression do not produce incivility and uncivil outcomes.  Peterson and Van Til observe that:

 

The principle of “civic responsibility” is characterized by mutual obligation and responsibility evidenced by universally accepted and equally enforced “rule of law” resulting in social order and stability.  Strong and legitimate “civic responsibility” results in the practice of equity, justice and non-violent conflict resolution.  In “civil society” the “rule of law” is applied fairly and consistently to all members of society.  No one is exempt from being held accountable to the law.   No one is above or beyond the law….

 

In “civil society” social institutions and associations provide a context for divergent individuals and groups to come together negotiate, mediate, and  resolve conflict through peaceful, nonviolent means.  Social institutions give groups and individuals access to the law and empower them to fairly enforce impersonal, equitable laws in socially transparent ways.

 

One way to assure that the processes of civil society remain characterized by civility is to keep the idea of “relationship” in the fore.  As former President Bill Clinton recently observed, “When the real battlefield is the human heart, civil disobedience works better than suicide bombing, fighting your opponents with respect and reason works better than aspersion and attack.”

 

Michael Gecan concludes his book with a powerful chapter that analyzes “three public cultures”:  market, bureaucratic, and relational.  The third of these cultures, he explains, has as its basic member institution “the voluntary association”.  Its dynamic “is created by leaders who initiate and deepen and multiply effective public relationships.  These leaders know, consciously or unconsciously, that their ability to act depends on the number and quality of relationships that they and their colleagues can muster and sustain….Their bottom line is not profit and loss, or clients served, but expanding pools of reciprocity and trust among people who can act with purpose and power” (p. 163).

 

It is incumbent on the relational sector to behave with civility, and, similarly, to hold to account the leaders of market and bureaucratic organizations to such behavior.  Without such civility, a society will sink into the morass, as Clinton notes, of “aspersion and attack”.

 

IDENTIFYING  ORGANIZATIONS THAT MAKE A DIFFERENCE

The determination of performance quality is a vexing issue in the study of third sector/nonprofit/civil society organizations.  Organizations in this sector vary widely in their auspices, purposes, sources of support, and quality of performance.  In addition, variation in organizational productivity may not relate directly to the level of financial support provided by donors for the support of organizational activity.

 

In an effort to determine the relationship between donor support and organizational effectiveness, a study was conducted of nonprofit organizations within the civil society of Hungary.  A 3% sample was identified and surveyed, representing 850 nonprofit organiazations.  Organizations predominantly supported by national and local government funding were eliminated from the sample.

 

Two dimensions were identified for analysis in the study:  1)  the level of financial support available to the organization, and 2) the demonstrated capacity of the organization to conduct its activity in concordance with accepted ethical and professional norms.  These dimensions yielded four categories of organization for identification and analysis:  1)  Well funded organizations demonstrating high levels of ethical and professional activity; 2)  Poorly funded organizations demonstrating high levels of ethical and professional activity; 3) Well funded organizations demonstrating inadequate levels of ethical and professional activity; and 4) Poorly funded organizations demonstrating inadequate levels of ethical and professional activity.

 

The major conclusions of the research indicate:  1)  Quality of organizational performance does not necessarily assure adequacy in levels of support; 2)  Donors often provide support to organizations that do not demonstrate acceptable capacity in their ethical and professional activity.

 

The principal implication of the study involves the potential of alerting potential donors to the desirability of supporting organizations that can be identified objectively as high capacity and effective in their practice.  An index indicating unfunded organizational capacity is suggested as a tool to be provided to prospective funders.  This index might serve as a vital bridge between the needs of prospective funders and high-capacity third sector organizations seeking the financial support to extend the impact of their work.  The Social Innovation Foundation is identified as the bridging nonprofit organization capable of maintaining the index and communicating broadly with potential donors within Hungarian society.

 

RESPONDING TO THE SOCIAL CRISES OF OUR AGE

If we view the full range of the voluntary sector, we find a panoply of organizations whose programs and wishes differ greatly among themselves.  In the United States, as perhaps in Hungary as well, a bitter political division between the “blue” areas (critical of the neo-conservative government) and the “red” areas (fiercely loyal to a regime determined to advance national interests in an aggressive fashion) is reflected in similar differences in values and orientation among churches, think tanks, advocacy organizations, and a wide range of other voluntary associations.

When one contemplates the often bitter struggles over opinion, power and control in the contemporary United States, what choices present themselves to nonprofit leaders?  We see third sector leaders and participants wrestling with the choice among three possibilities:  neutrality, selective intervention, and outright advocacy.

Neutrality argues that politics is, and ought to be, distinct  from nonprofit action.  The job of nonprofits, defenders of this position argue, is to serve the needs of persons requiring assistance, without regard as to why they are in need.  Funding for such services comes from where it can be found.  The unfortunate will always be with us; no money should be seen as hopelessly tainted; and, in any case, 'taint never enough of it to meet all the needs of society.

Selective intervention says that sometimes lines have to be drawn.  If too many beaten wives appear at the door, or too many hungry kids whose parents can't find work, or too many bodybags flown back from a military adventure overseas--questions must be asked.  After all, among the core values of voluntarism are participation, self-actualization, and even social justice.

Outright advocacy argues that sometimes enough is too much.  Band-aids are fine for minor injuries, but if it's cancer, major surgery is needed.   There are, after all, abortion clinics some will  picket and others protect, electoral processes some will seek to  enlighten and others to influence, and enough corporate greed and malfeasance for many to reveal and others to conceal--so many conflicting wrongs in the eyes of so many divergent reformers, zealots, and defenders of what is seen to be right.[1] 

The book is thus a call for relationship among organizations and associations, as is  Michael Gecan’s Going Public (2002), subtitled “an organizer’s guide to citizen action.”  Gecan details a meeting of a set of community leaders with a powerful city board in New York.  The meeting was scheduled for the Blue Room in City Hall, and to board was accustomed to sitting in plush chairs on a raised dais.  Citizens petitioning the board were seated in eight “rickety wooden chairs” below.  On the day of the meeting, Gecan’s group arrived twenty minutes early, and entered the empty room.  “The fifteen chairs beckoned. We occupied every chair and the entire dais.”

When the board members entered, they sought to claim their usual seats, but were told that the senior citizens, already seated up front, should surely not be moved.  The board chair then “slowly, reluctantly, lowered himself onto one of the wooden chairs.  It creaked a bit.  His staff followed his lead.  I have never seen five more uncomfortable men.  They weren’t just physically uncomfortable, they were politically uncomfortable.  They were having the tables turned on them, literally, and they couldn’t figure out how to respond” (p. 60).   Once the press got wind of the turning of the tables, there was coverage, and six months later, the board president realized he has learned what was being built that day:  “Recognition.”

To Gecan, as we noted above, the third sector is about “relationship”, whether  based on consensus in values or a recognition of conflict in interest.  If the latter, Outright Advocacy may be chosen as the tactic of choice in the relationship between the powerful and the numerous.  And if that choice is made, it will come as no surprise if some donors threaten cuts in their giving to some nonprofit organizations, if some board members are pressured to conform to realities of political and economic power and control, if some leaders find the stress upon their position increasingly troublesome.  

In a recent handbook comparison of six cases of grassroots organization, we (Van Til, Hegyesi, and Eschweiler, 2006) arrived at three conclusions about the significance of grassroots movements within the third sector:

1)             Ideas count.  It’s not that social movements always get things right, because obviously the ideas that some movements seek to advance often conflict with those held passionately by adherents of other movements.  No, what’s important here is that effective, powerful, and ultimately successful movements are fueled by ideas that make sense to their members as well as to many in the broader public citizenry.

2)             Grassroots participation drives the movement.  No matter how strong, appealing, or sensible an idea may be, it needs people to think about it, talk about it, and act upon it if a movement is to advance its goals of changing society…. 

3)             Organization is of lesser importance.  Movement organizations need not exist for their own sake.  Indeed, as our cases indicate, they appear and recede, rise and fall, disappear and are reborn.  Social movements are very different from businesses, or nonprofit organizations, or families.  They can be  temporary, recurrent, or ephemeral.  They may be led, staffed, and supported  by persons willing to give large amounts of time and energy for a limited period of time….

We concluded our paper by noting that “Grassroots movement activity, based on the righting of wrongs and the advance of justice in society, can be an important source of both individual meaning and social advance.  In the current moment, and such moments in the future, it will be good for both individuals and their societies to benefit from the gains of participation in their midst.  Grassroots social movements such as those we have considered in this chapter continue to serve as  sources of meaning, invigoration, and the building of a better society.” 

A final thought deals with leadership:  perhaps it will be a mixture of the most secure, and the most insecure, among us who will  raise and pursue visions of what can be created within and by third sector organizations:  the occasional far-sighted foundation executive or philanthropist, an outspoken member of a tenured faculty, a religious leader of vision and resolve, a nonprofit leader known for her determination to stand with those in need.   Taking positions of principle in society is not always easy, pleasant, or even welcome,  but these actions often form crucial contributions to the dialogue required if we are to clarify all sides of the domestic controversies of our times.  Whatever position is taken, our societies will be stronger if they are approached with values that third sector leaders, practitioners, and scholars might best learn to hold in common:  among them being assertion, justice, civility, transparency, freedom, and individual choice. 

 

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Pestoff, Victor A.  Beyond the Market and the State: Social Enterprises and Civil Democracy in a Welfare Society.  Aldershot: Ashgate, 1998.

Rifkin, Jeremy.  The End of Work, updated edition.  New York: Penguin, 2004.

Roberts, Alasdair.  Blacked Out: Government Secrecy in the Information Age.  New York: Cambridge University Press, 2006.

Salamon, Lester M.   America's Nonprofit Sector: A Primer.  2nd edition.  New York: Foundation Center, 1999.

_______, The Resilient Sector: The State of Nonprofit America.  Washington, D.C.: Brookings Institution Press, 2003.

Salamon, Lester M., and Helmut Anheier.  The Emerging Sector: An Overview.  Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University, 1994.

Saunders, Harold H.  Politics is About Relationship: A Blueprint for the Citizens’ Century.  New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2005. 

Sirianni, Carmen, and Lewis A. Friedland.  The Civic Renewal Movement: Community-Building and Democracy in the United States.  Dayton, OH: Kettering Foundation Press, 2005.

Smith, David Horton.  Grassroots Associations.  Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, 2003.

Van Til, Jon.  Mapping the Third Sector.  New York: Foundation Center, 1988.

­­­­­­­­­­­________,  Growing Civil Society.  Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2000.

________, "Review essay on Paradigm Contention."  Nonprofit and Voluntary Sector Quarterly, 2005 (forthcoming).

Van Til, Jon and Sally Bould Van Til. “Citizen Participation in Social Policy: The End of the Cycle?” Social Problems (Winter, 1970), pp . 313-323.

Van Til, Jon, Gabor Hegyesi, and Jennifer Eschweiler.  “Grassroots Social Movements and the Shaping of History.”  In Ram Cnaan and Carl Milofsky, eds.,  Handbook of Community Movements and Local Organizations, ch. 23, pp. 362-377, 2006.

Warren, Mark E.  Democracy and Association.  Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2000.

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Young, Dennis R.  If Not for Profit, for What?  Lexington, MA: D.C. Heath, 1983.

 

JON VAN TIL is Professor of Urban Studies at Rutgers University, Camden N.J. USA.  His email is vantil@camden.rutgers.edu   

 

GABOR HEGYESI directs the program in nonprofit organizations and civil society at the Eotvos Lorand University in Budapest.  His email is ghegyesi1@yahoo.com