The Evolution of the Israeli Third Sector: A Conceptual and Empirical Analysis

The expansion and development of the nonprofit sector worldwide in the 1980s and 1990s did not bypass Israel, and, as in other countries, sparked an interest for study to uncover its characteristics and major features. The Israeli population—both Jewish and Arab—has a rich tradition of voluntaristic activity on the individual as well as on the collective (organizational) levels, mostly in the communal context. The modern welfare state created new opportunities and new challenges for such activity within the broad framework of the nonprofit sector. This article aims to review the development of the nonprofit sector in Israel and analyze it within existing nonprofit theories. It takes a historical perspective in looking at its evolution, in light of political, social, ideological, and economic changes in the world and in the country. It discusses the development of policy and government involvement on the one hand and the unique features of Israeli philanthropy, both Jewish and Arab, on the other. It analyzes Israel’s civil society and social movements, as well as social entrepreneurship and their expression in the Third Sector. The article also covers the development of research and education on the Third Sector; it includes a review of research centers, databases, journals, and specific programs that were developed by Israeli universities. Finally, this article summarizes the characteristics of the nonprofit sector in Israel.

Self-Help/Mutual Aid Groups and Peer Support

English-language social and behavioral science research into US self-help/mutual aid groups and nonprofit organizations (e.g., Alcoholics Anonymous, Parents Without Partners, or bereavement groups) is reviewed. The review begins in the 1960s and proceeds into the new millennium, when institutionalized self-help/mutual aid was co-opted and renamed “support groups” by professionals. SHGs are intentionally created, single-issue, voluntary member-run mutual benefit groups that value the authority of lived experience, are cost-free, and where peers give and receive help from each other. Research attention expanded to European and Asian research in the 1990s, but has now switched to mental health peer support.

Korean Nonprofit/Non-Government Sector Research: A Literature Review and Analysis

Discourses on the nonprofit sector and civil society have elevated awareness of the significant growth of the sector’s roles and responsibilities since the early 1990s in South Korea (hereafter simply Korea). The nonprofit sector has played significant roles in promoting economic progress and democracy in Korea. Based on extensive empirical research and government statistics, this article presents the nature of the Korean nonprofit sector from various angles, including terminology, history, legal frames, size and dimensions, financial resources, changes in philanthropy and volunteer cultures, and social economic perspectives. In addition, the authors discuss contemporary issues for the nonprofit sector based on changes in the social environment. In discussing the magnitude of the Korean nonprofit sector, this article makes three arguments. First, we confirm that the Korean nonprofit sector has rapidly grown in multidimensional aspects as the legal systems for the nonprofits have developed in Korea since World War II. The growth has been accelerated by strong government supports and initiatives. Second, we argue that lack of conceptual frameworks to identify the nonprofit sector and lack of a centralized administration system have hindered fully catching up on the nature of the nonprofit sector in Korea. Multiple legal frameworks and excessively complicated governing systems for the nonprofit sector have inhibited understanding the size and dimensions of the Korean nonprofit sector. This article further diagnoses the financial structures and the contemporary issues for the Korean nonprofit sector, discussing key suggestions for developing it.

Nonprofit Finance: A Synthetic Review

The field of finance is concerned with the management of money and how and where such funds are acquired and used. This article reviews the broad literature on finance related to nonprofit and voluntary organizations, identifies gaps in knowledge, and proposes potential avenues for future researchers. It examines in detail the sources of funds for nonprofit organizations, especially nonprofit agencies—including issues around revenue portfolios and interactions, the uses of these funds—with an emphasis on incentives faced by nonprofit organizations around financial disclosures, the benefits and problems of slack resources and profits, and issues of capital structure in nonprofit organizations.

Arts Nonprofits—Associations and Agencies: A Literature Review

An association is “a relatively formally structured nonprofit group that depends mainly on volunteer members for participation and activity and that primarily seeks member benefits, even if it may also seek some public benefits” (Smith, Stebbins, & Dover, 2006, p. 23). The arts that give birth to these organizations can be classified as either fine art or entertainment art. Every art association is embedded each in its own art world and its own social world. Members of these association are mostly amateurs or hobbyists in their art.Publications on arts-related amateur, hobbyist, professional, and mixed-member associations are reviewed. Their prime mission is to foster, present, and sometimes chronicle the art that its members prize. Many of these works report on the structure of the associations as well as on the recruitment, artistic development, deployment of artists, dissemination of their art, and retention of their members. Also reviewed is a selection of publications bearing on what could be called “arts consumption clubs,” or groups such as book clubs, dance clubs, and jazz clubs established to generate interest in a given art. Some of the publications reviewed center on associational management, use of volunteers, and financial base of the group.

Determinants of Individual Prosociality and of Collective Social Solidarity-Cohesion: A Literature Review

The foundations of volunteering, charitable giving, voluntary associations, voluntary agencies, and other aspects of the Voluntary Nonprofit Sector (VNPS) collectively and individual voluntary action lie in various aspects of human nature and human societies. These may be referred to variously as altruism, morality, ethics, virtue, kindness, generosity, cooperation, social solidarity, and prosociality. Such foundations of the VNPS, and specifically of social solidarity and prosociality, are the subjects of this literature review article/book. The central goal here is to provide a comprehensive and interdisciplinary theoretical framework for understanding, explaining, and predicting such phenomena, based on two versions of the author’s S-Theory.

Toward an Institutional Theory of Community and Community Associations: a Review

This article argues the position that the symbolic sense of community is a product of action by associations and larger community-based organizations. It draws on a theory from urban sociology called “the community of limited liability.” In the past this theory, first articulated by Morris Janowitz, has mostly been used to argue that residents living in a local neighborhood feel a sense of identification with that area to the extent that the symbolism of that neighborhood has been developed. This article extends Janowitz’s theory to apply to local associations and their efforts to create activities, movements, and products that encourage residents to expand their sense of symbolic attachment to a place. We argue that this organizational method has long been used by local associations but it has not been recognized as an organizational theory. Because associations have used this approach over time, communities have a historical legacy of organizing and symbol creating efforts by many local associations. Over time they have competed, collaborated, and together developed a collective vision of place. They also have created a local interorganizational field and this field of interacting associations and organizations is dense with what we call associational social capital. Not all communities have this history of associational activity and associational social capital. Where it does exist, the field becomes an institutionalized feature of the community. This is what we mean by an institutional theory of community.

A Review of Deviant Nonprofit Groups: Seeking Method in Their Alleged ‘Madness-Treason-Immorality’

This long Voluntaristics Review2 (VR 3.5–6) article and book focuses on the deviant form of Nonprofit Groups (NPGs), mainly volunteer-based associations, but occasionally paid-staff-based nonprofit agencies. A Deviant Nonprofit Group (DNG) is defined as “a Nonprofit group that deviates significantly from certain moral norms of the society” (Smith, Stebbins, & Dover, 2006, p. 68). The aim is to develop and present an empirically grounded theory with eighty-three hypotheses about many of the key analytical features or operational characteristics of DNGs, usually voluntary associations with memberships and often run by volunteers, not nonprofit agencies without memberships and usually run by paid staff (Smith, 2017a). The total theory may be termed a Grounded General Theory of DNG Operation-Structure. The document is based on an extensive review and qualitative content analysis of about 260 published research documents representing twenty-five common-language purposive-goal types of DNGs (vs. analytical-theoretical types, which do not exist in detail). Moral norms are the broad, emotionally charged directives concerning what is customarily right and wrong, by which members of a community or society implement their institutionalized solutions to problems significantly affecting their valued normal way of life (see Stebbins, 1996, pp. 2–3). These norms indicate in a general way what the community (it may be local, regional, national, or international) expects by sociocultural custom of its members in particular areas of social life and what it considers rejections of those expectations. Thus, moral norms stand apart from other kinds of expectations such as ordinances, regulations, customs, and folkways in general. Deviating (near synonym: deviance) is defined as rule-breaking, and sometimes is a crime in a specific society at a specific time in its history, but not always. Such deviation, deviance, or rule-breaking of specific actions by a DNG (or any individual or group) is highly variable both through historical time in a given society and also across societies or nations at a given historical time (Smith, 2017b). Deviance or rule-breaking is present in the nonprofit sector (NPS), just as in all other sectors of human society (Smith, 2017a), although less frequently studied in the NPS than for other societal sectors (Smith, 2011). Essentially, this present document attempts to bring some systematic theoretical order to the disorder-chaos of a highly varied set of Deviant Nonprofit Groups/DNGs that heretofore has been seen as composed of disparate, unrelated types of groups—a jumble or chaos. All these DNGs are rather consistently alleged (at least initially) by many or even most people in their societies of origin, when known to non-members-outsiders, to be different, strange, deviant, crazy, insane, mad, dangerous, sick, selfish, cruel, stupid, weird, wild, evil, ungodly, sinful, unnatural, treacherous, subversive, seditious, criminal, bad, evil, immoral, and so on. Summarizing briefly the most stigmatizing epithets for nearly all DNG types studied here, DNGs and their leaders and members generally are often accused of madness-treason-immorality, because their perceived deviance is emotionally troubling to conventional adults in the society. As such, in the eyes of their own society, DNGs are often stigmatized and labeled very negatively by many, often most, people in a given society who are DNG outsiders-non-members at a given time (e.g., a period of at least ten years from the DNG’s de facto origin date, if the DNG existed for that long, sometimes for much longer). A wide range of negative terms (epithets) may be used to describe a DNG, summarized here as mad (crazy)-treacherous-immoral, as well as various other negative traits or factors being alleged regarding the DNG and its leaders and/or members. Yet there is often little systematic evidence for these stigmatizing epithets or negative traits alleged about DNGs, except for a few DNG types (e.g., Revolutionary DNGs, Terrorist DNGs, Guerrilla DNGs, Coup d’État DNGs). This common lack of concrete evidence for stigmatizing statements about any given DNG suggests that the allegations are mainly emotional statements, rather than factual statements, based mainly on fast-thinking (see Kahneman, 2011). By definition, DNGs and their leaders and members believe in and take actions that involve serious rule-breaking in their own society (i.e., violating current moral norms and rules). However, the stigmatizing of these beliefs and actions by non-members, including the general public and the government, is often much exaggerated, or even simply false. Over time, especially decades, the deviant actions may (and often do) tend to seem less and less serious in the given society, as societal-consensual definitions of social deviance can change and have done so markedly over historical time (e.g., Smith, 2018b; Winck, 1991). However, the foregoing should not be taken to mean that all DNGs are innocuous. As suggested above, some DNG types can be immensely harmful to people and property, such as the revolutionary DNGs, terrorist DNGs, guerrilla DNGs, and coup d’etat DNGs noted. Yet other types of DNGs also sometimes do substantial harm, such as the rest of the broader DNG analytical category, Deviant Political Resistance & Liberation Groups, including also WWII Underground Nazi-Resistance Groups, Vigilante Groups, Citizen Militias/Paramilitary Groups, and Political Parties (Deviant). Similarly, the broader DNG analytical category, Deviant Anger & Violence Groups, includes DNG types that often cause serious harm—Hate Groups, Motorcycle Outlaw Gangs, and Delinquent Youth Gangs. Even some DNGs in the broader DNG analytical category of Deviant Religion & Worldview Groups, can do substantial harm—obviously, Massacre/Mass Suicide Groups, but also medieval Heresy Groups (Christian) subject to the Catholic Church’s Inquisitions, as well as some Cults/New Religions (Deviant), Deviant Science DNGs, and some Sects (Deviant). The author is doing something analogous to what the first systematic, theoretical botanist did when s/he went into the jungle/forest and tried to see commonalities among the great variety of apparently different forms of plants present there. Here, the equivalents of plants are the many different DNG types, and the commonalities discovered are now expressed in the many empirically grounded hypotheses formulated by the author over the course of this research effort, with the first fifty-one hypotheses formulated much earlier, in 1994, but not investigated regarding empirical support by qualitative content analysis until done here (Smith, 1996b). These source documents were chosen as typical examples of a newly constructed set of twenty-five purposive or goal types of DNGs, described here. As the reader will see, the present grounded theory review and content analysis seeks the empirical operating methods and structures of these twenty-five DNG types—the method in their alleged madness-treason-immorality, or other stigmatizing epithets. The terms mad and madness are not meant as clinical or psychiatric terms; similarly, the terms treason and treachery are also used loosely, as with immorality or bad/evil. Instead, these are vague and imprecise, common language (vernacular) terms expressing negative emotion, bandied about carelessly and loosely when English-speakers really dislike and are disturbed by the beliefs and especially by the alleged or actual actions or a person or group. Such terms are ways that other people strongly disfavor and stigmatize certain beliefs, values, actions, or inactions by specific persons or groups. In this content analysis process of much published research on DNGs, the author is seeking two useful scholarly outcomes: Develop and derive meaningful generalizations as empirically grounded hypotheses for future more careful, systematic, and, if feasible, quantitative testing with a better sample of DNGs so as to build a body of valid grounded theory about DNGs. Assess whether each such grounded theory hypothesis finds any empirical support in a fairly comprehensive but haphazard sample of at least 100 specific DNGs of twenty-five common-language purposive or goal types. All of the grounded hypotheses developed and reported here in this review were supported by empirical evidence for at least one (often two) of the two or three specific DNGs of 25 DNG types studied, as described in source documents that were content analyzed. Indeed, all such hypotheses were supported by most of the twenty-five DNG types studied, giving significant qualitative validity to the author’s Grounded General Theory of DNG Operation-Structure. Such empirical support suggests that these hypotheses are valid at least sometimes for many DNG types and deserve further investigation, hopefully in more quantitative studies with better sampling of DNGs, countries, and historical time periods. Taken collectively, the many empirically grounded (supported) hypotheses of the present theory can be seen as a new theoretical paradigm for studying NPGs that helps bring analytical order to a previously chaotic realm of dark side or deviant NPS phenomena.