Incorporated but Not IRS-Registered: Exploring the (Dark) Grey Fringes of the Nonprofit Universe

Listings of Internal Revenue Service (IRS)-registered and state-incorporated nonprofits for the same region may differ for a variety of reasons. Using Indiana as a case study, we first describe the distribution of nonprofits across these two listings. We then present findings from a small telephone survey of incorporated nonprofits that are not registered with the IRS for Indiana to explore whether they are excluded from the IRS-listing for statutory, technical, or compliance reasons. We consider several aspects of state incorporation status: date of incorporation and whether active status has been maintained or not. We conclude that researchers need to pay careful attention to the limitations of the IRS registration system when wishing to examine the dimensions of the nonprofit sector at local, state, or regional levels. Our finding, that some nonprofits fail to maintain active incorporation status, points to significant problems of nonprofit capacity

Evaluation Research and Institutional Pressures: Challenges in Public-Nonprofit Contracting

This article examines the connection between program evaluation research and decision-making by public managers. Drawing on neo-institutional theory, a framework is presented for diagnosing the pressures and conditions that lead alternatively toward or away the rational use of evaluation research. Three cases of public-nonprofit contracting for the delivery of major programs are presented to clarify the way coercive, mimetic, and normative pressures interfere with a sound connection being made between research and implementation. The article concludes by considering how public managers can respond to the isomorphic pressures in their environment that make it hard to act on data relating to program performance.This publication is Hauser Center Working Paper No. 23. The Hauser Center Working Paper Series was launched during the summer of 2000. The Series enables the Hauser Center to share with a broad audience important works-in-progress written by Hauser Center scholars and researchers

Voluntas Symposium: Comments on Salamon and Sokolowski’s Re-conceptualization of the Third Sector

With their “Beyond Nonprofits: Re-conceptualizing the Third Sector”, Salamon and Sokolowski have made an important contribution to the ongoing debate on how to define the third sector. This Voluntas symposium brings together the comments of five leading scholars both supportive and critical of the new definition. The comments are based on a debate held at the conference of the International Society for Third Sector Research, in Stockholm in 2016

Reconceptualizing the Third Sector: Towards a New Consensus

The field of nonprofit sector studies has recently continued to expand and change in response to new innovations and changed thinking. Social enterprises, social cooperatives, social economy, social movements, civil society have all surfaced as alternative conceptualizations. Sadly, a clear conceptualization has not evolved at a pace sufficient to take adequate account of these new developments or with sufficient clarity to identify the commonalities underlying the new entrants. As a result, the field is in danger of splintering into warring factions defending different portions of the terrain, with some focusing exclusively on traditional nonprofit institutions and others embracing one or another of the alternative institutional and individual manifestations. Fortunately, however, a group of scholars working under the umbrella of the European Union’s Third Sector Impact Project (TSI; see: thirdsectorimpact.eu) has fashioned a consensus conceptualization of the Third Sector that goes well beyond the widely recognized definition of nonprofit institutions included in the UN Handbook on Nonprofit Institutions in the System of National Accounts by embracing as well some, but not all, cooperatives, mutuals, social enterprises, and individual behaviors, and does so in a way that meets demanding criteria of comparability, operationalizability, and potential for integration into official statistical systems. The purpose of the proposed Roundtable is to provide ISTR members an opportunity to review this emerging consensus definition and to consider its suitability as a foundation for data gathering and third sector research in regions around the world. The principal focal point for this session will be the Working Paper from the TSI project entitled “The Third Sector in Europe: Toward a Consensus Conceptualization” by Lester M. Salamon and S. Wojciech Sokolowski (TSI Working Paper Series No. 2. Seventh Framework Programme (grant agreement 613034), European Union. Brussels: Third Sector Impact, 2014. Available at: thirdsectorimpact.eu/documentation/tsi-working-paper-no-2-third-sector-europe-towards-consensus-conceptualization/). In addition to Dr. Salamon, the Roundtable will feature comments by Dr. Jacques Defourny of the University of Leige in Belgium, Dr. Naoto Yamauchi of Osaka University in Japan, Dr. Lucas Meijs of Erasmus University Rotterdam in the Netherlands, and Dr. Kirsten Grønbjerg of Indiana University. Each participant will discuss the application of the proposed conceptualization in his or her respective region

Foundations of Feminism: How Philanthropic Patrons Shaped Gender Politics

Although recent research has documented the contributions of philanthropic foundations as "patrons" of the major identity movements, scholars know very little about the specific ways foundations have influenced these movements' development and impact. This study examines the role of foundations in shaping the U.S. women's movement of the 1960s-1980s, in particular the role that foundations played in deciding which of its claimsmakers-and by extension, its claims-would be sustained. Copyright (c) 2007 by the Southwestern Social Science Association.