The Resilient Sector Revisited: The New Challenge to Nonprofit America

(Paperback, Second Edition)

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Today America's nonprofit sector, long a critically important part of the nation's social and economic fabric, is more important than ever. Economic woes and cutbacks in public services have put additional burdens squarely on the nonprofit sector's shoulders, exacerbating the sector's longstanding "conflicting multiple identities" as not-for-profit organizations operating in a for - profit market economy, relying heavily on volunteers but expected to meet often-exacting professional standards - part of the private sector yet serving public purposes. As Lester Salamon explains in his second edition of "The Resilient Sector", America's nonprofit organizations are caught in a force field, buffeted by four rather different impulses - voluntarism, professionalism, civic activism, and commercialism - that are pulling it in rather different directions. Understanding this force field and the factors shaping its dynamics thus becomes essential to understanding the future of individual organizations and of the nonprofit sector as a whole. To date, far too little attention has been paid to these developing tensions.Salamon explains how and why they developed and how they interact with one another in the ongoing battle for the soul of America's nonprofits.

Author Bio

Lester M. Salamon is a professor at the Johns Hopkins University, where he is director of the Center for Civil Society Studies and was founding director of the Institute for Policy Studies. Acknowledged as one of the premier experts on the nonprofit sector in the U.S. and around the world, he has written a number of books, including Partners in Public Service (Johns Hopkins University Press), Rethinking Corporate Social Engagement (Kumarian), and Tools of Government (Oxford).