University of California | School of Social Welfare | Center for Social Services Research | Berkeley, CA 90720 | www.mackcenter.org


 

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Building the Knowledge Base of Nonprofit Management:

A Searchable Database



One Does What One Can

Abstract

One of the problems that continues to plague the study of all aspects of voluntarism is that the relevant research literature is spread across such a diverse range of journals and other sources that no researcher can hope to regularly monitor all of it. To see what was currently being researched, I reviewed a fairly wide variety of key sources published in the 198Os. In addition to selected books related to voluntary associations and nonprofits, they included: -The Journal of Voluntary Action Research -The Citizen Participation and Voluntary Action Abstracts -The Social Science Citation Index -The Social Sciences Index -Working Paper Series distributed by the Non-Profit Organizations program at Yale. Research-In-Progress compilation published by Independent Sector. I was impressed with the number and diversity of topics currently being studied. Never has research on voluntary associations and nonprofits been stronger. We are currently seeing significant research on such previously ne¬glected topics as: -Comparisons of nonprofit and proprietary health organizations -Work on women's voluntary organizations and studies of women's participation In associations and nonprofits -Studies of voluntary association participation by senior citizens -Industrial democracy/worker participation studies -Explorations of government/third sector interrelationships -A real outpouring of research on economic aspects of nonprofit sector behavior. At the same time, it is clear that a number of significant aspects of the third sector have not received the attention they deserve. By far the most common type of research on voluntary associations is individ¬ual-level research on such topics as characteristics of participants in associations, correlates of participation, motivation of members, or participation on special issues. Less common are studies that take the organization as the unit of analysis.

Journal

Nonprofit and Voluntary Sector Quarterly

(1985)
vol14 no2 pages7-9

Categories

  1. Classification and Research  
  2. Classification and Mapping