Volume 2, Issue 2

This note provides an overview of Volume 2, Issue 2 of Nonprofit Policy Forum.

This paper examines the central role played by immigrant nonprofit organizations in the fight for Comprehensive Immigration Reform (CIR) in the City of Philadelphia from 2009-2010. Relying on sixteen months of ethnographic research (April 2009-August 2010), including over seventy interviews of nonprofit, public, and private sector leaders, this paper explores how immigrant nonprofit organizations participated in the one-year lifecycle of the Reform Immigration for America (RI4A) campaign in Philadelphia. Furthermore, the paper analyzes the institutional legacy the campaign left on these organizations, as they continue to promote immigrant integration and engage in political advocacy at the local level. Finally, the paper shares lessons learned from the Philadelphia-based campaign as immigrant coalitions throughout the United States grapple with the prospect of immigration reform amid political polarization and an uncertain economic climate.

Indigenous sovereignty has been both expanded and restricted in the current self-determination era of federal Indian policy in the United States. This has allowed both the expansion and strengthening of indigenous governments, as well as the continued successful efforts to restrict and regulate these sovereign indigenous nations. The existing models of governance, development, and planning fail to adequately account for these challenges to the fundamental legitimacy of indigenous governments. I propose the model of the ‘indigenous shadow state’ based around community land trusts and other indigenously-controlled nonprofit organizations, as a complementary model, to compensate for these challenges as a means of ensuring the long term viability of indigenous social and political institutions. I discuss how a community land trust can be utilized to perform the role of a government and serve the long term needs of its citizens in the areas of housing, economic development, and land reclamation. I also briefly discuss how this model can be applied in the urban context.

The active involvement of European citizens became a new form of democracy in the Treaty of Lisbon of 2009 by the introduction of a whole new chapter dedicated to this purpose. There is an article that obligates the Commission to give serious consideration to the demands of one million citizens from a significant number of Member States. The treaty also provides for a better role of NGOs such as foundations and associations. However, there are uncertainties concerning the definition and the nature of the concept of civil society of which NGOs may be regarded as typical. The European Union gives as leading principle of civil society the concept of voluntariness. Currently, the legal typology of NGOs in the European Union is determined by national laws of the Member State. The present forms of NGOs show great differences regarding formal requirements. There is a variety of legal forms available in EU Member States for public benefit organizations as typical civil society organizations. In the concept of European Union governance there are different concepts about which role civil society could or ought to play in Europe’s governance structure. One of these concepts is that the European Union cooperates with the national civil society institutions through partnership agreements. However, the European Union provides no indication of ways to measure whether an organization can be considered as a public benefit organization. Also, the supervising competences in the EU Member States are different. As a result of these the participatory democracy in the EU does not reflect the power of Europe’s civil society.

This paper investigates the use of open source, idea competition platforms to catalyze citizen participation. It specifically focuses on an initiative of Ashoka’s Changemakers, an innovative international nonprofit to develop this capacity to leverage modest philanthropic resources and inspire citizens to offer ideas about solutions to public problems. Drawing upon theory from collective action, we empirically examined how project design affects contribution to forty-seven projects held from 2004 to 2011. The analysis reveals the number of contributions is higher when the projects are highly visible, when specific skills are required, and when outcome measures are specified in participants’ proposals. This analysis gives support to existing theory about online engagement and considers implications for policy, practice and future research about use of and design of open source platforms in public affairs.

Organizations representing the nonprofit, public, and private sectors often collaborate to enhance capacities while addressing complex, interconnected problems. Using the framework of Bryson, Crosby, and Stone, processes used to support successful collaboration are explored empirically through a multiple sector arrangement involving 15 nonprofit, public, and private organizations. Findings are offered to augment the framework to incorporate organizational interests and leveraging resources. Implications for the study and practice of public management are discussed.

In what is likely the first systematic attempt to analyze the nonprofit sector’s ability to answer accountability questions through self-regulation, editors Mary Kay Gugerty and Aseem Prakash have assembled a fascinating series of case studies, essays, and quantitative studies from around the globe. This volume will be immediately useful for both scholars and teachers as it sets the table for future research and provides material that can be incorporated into existing courses on nonprofit management and governance.

In Italy, the third sector includes six main sets of civil society organizations: Voluntary organizations, social cooperatives, NGO, associations of social advancement, foundations, and social enterprises. Typical of the Italian third sector is recognition of the dual nature of its organizatons: those performing a redistributive function and those performing a productive function.