Today, America's nonprofit organizations seem caught in a force field, buffeted by four impulses—voluntarism, professionalism, civic activism, and commercialism. Too little attention, however, has been paid to the significant tensions among these impulses. Understanding this force field and the factors shaping its dynamics thus becomes central to understanding the future of particular organizations and of the nonprofit sector as a whole. In this second edition of an immensely successful volume, Lester Salamon and his colleagues offer an overview of the current state of America's nonprofit sector, examining the forces that are shaping its future and identifying the changes that might be needed. The State of Nonprofit America has been completely revised and updated to reflect changing political realities and the punishing economic climate currently battering the nonprofit sector, which faces significant financial challenges during a time when its services are needed more than ever. The result is a comprehensive analysis of a set of institutions that Alexis de Tocqueville recognized to be "more deserving of our attention" than any other part of the American experiment.

The Resilient Sector makes available in an updated form the concise overview of the state of health of America's nonprofit organizations that Johns Hopkins scholar Lester Salamon recently completed as part of the "state of nonprofit America" project he undertook in cooperation with the Aspen Institute. Contrary to popular understanding, Salamon argues, America's nonprofit organizations have shown remarkable resilience in recent years in the face of a variety of difficult challenges, significantly re-engineering themselves in the process. But this very resilience now poses risks for the sector's continued ability to perform the tasks that we have long expected of it. The Resilient Sector offers nonprofit practitioners, policymakers, the press, and the public at large a lively assessment of this set of institutions that we have long taken for granted, but that the Frenchman Alexis de-Toqueville recognized to be "more deserving of our attention" than almost any other part of the American experiment.

"Examines the private nonprofit sector and the tax-exempt institutions that make up this sector providing important services and benefits to all Americans, with histories behind different institutions and the forces and developments that have buffeted them and what they have done to retain their resilience"--Provided by publisher.

A comprehensive reference on the philanthropic sector includes articles on prominent people, events, associations, theories, legislation, and other relevant topics, along with a volume of source documents.

The public understandably assumes that since nonprofit organizations are established to do good, the people who run them are altruistic, and the laws governing nonprofits have reflected this assumption. This text argues that the rules that govern how nonprofits operate are inadequate.

Publishes interdisciplinary research on issues of Government and Policy with an international perspective. Committed to a broad range of policy questions, not just those related to government and public policy. Topics covered include nonstate agents, private-public collaboration, and NGOs (nongovernmental organisations). All areas of economic, social and environmental institutions, and policy are included. Disciplines from which papers are derived include political science, planning, geography, economics, law, sociology, and public administration.

Interest Group Politics presents a broad spectrum of scholarship on interest groups past and present. In a time of partisan parity, when control of Congress is always within reach of the minority party at the next election, interest groups have every incentive to keep the pressure on. And they do. But the imbalance of influence that tilts toward moneyed interests is one of the cornerstones of the political system. What does this mean for equal representation? In nineteen chapters, noted political scientists explore the role of money, technology, grassroots lobbying, issue advocacy advertising, and much more in interest group influence. Students will learn how the National Rifle Association has become one of the most effective lobbying groups in America, what opportunities the openness of the American political process has offered ethnic groups both within and outside the United States, how the role of interest groups in elections has changed (including 527’s), what effect religious organizations had in the 2004 elections, and how interest groups affect Supreme Court nominations.

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