Nonprofit Employment Is on the Rise Around the Globe, Study Finds

Nonprofit groups in 35 countries employ the equivalent of about 40 million full-time workers, including some 22

million paid workers and more than 190 million volunteers, says a new report. The organizations collectively generate about 5 percent of the countries’ gross domestic products.

The latest phase of a multiyear study by researchers at the Johns Hopkins University shows the growing influence of civil society by adding data on 13 countries, mostly in the developing world, to statistics previously compiled for 22 other countries, principally in the industrial Northern Hemisphere.

“The nonprofit sector is a potent presence, not only in the developed countries of Europe and North America but also in the developing countries of Africa, the Middle East, and South Asia,” said Lester M. Salamon, who directs the Johns Hopkins Center for Civil Society Studies, which is conducting the study.

With the addition of Egypt, Italy, Kenya, Morocco, Norway, Pakistan, Philippines, Poland, South Africa, South Korea, Sweden, Tanzania, and Uganda, the Comparative Nonprofit Sector Project now affords a truly global perspective on civil society, Mr. Salamon said, and shows that a massive upsurge of organized private voluntary activity is under way in virtually every part of the world.

Variations by Country

Nonprofit activity is much more prominent in some countries than in others, however. In the Netherlands, for example, nonprofit groups employ 9.2 percent of the work force, and volunteer labor increases the sector’s share of the labor force to 14.4 percent. At the other end of the scale, nonprofit work accounts for just 0.4 percent of Mexico’s economic activity.

Nonprofit work exceeds 10 percent of economic activity (including volunteer labor) in three countries — the Netherlands, Belgium, and Ireland — with the United States coming in fourth with 9.8 percent. The percentage falls below 5 percent in 23 countries. The average for the 35 countries is 4.4 percent.

The relative absence of nonprofit activity in developing countries, Mr. Salamon said, reflects in part the informal way in which people in those regions help one another, relying on clan or village networks rather than on formal organizations.

Use of Volunteers

The study also highlights the extent to which civil society in various countries relies on volunteers. On average, volunteers account for 38 percent of nonprofit activity in the countries studied. Yet the range is from nearly 76 percent in Sweden down to less than 3 percent in Egypt.

Across the globe, more than half the income of nonprofit organizations is earned from fees charged for their services. Government grants, contracts, or other forms of support account for an additional 35 percent, on average, leaving just 12 percent of income in the form of private philanthropy.

Reliance on earned income is highest among nonprofit groups in developing countries like Argentina, Brazil, Colombia, Kenya, Mexico, Peru, and the Philippines, the report said, and lowest among organizations in European countries like Belgium, France, Germany, Ireland, the Netherlands, and Britain, all of which get more than half their income from the government.

Education Is Top Field

Education employs more nonprofit workers than any other field, accounting for 23 percent of those who work in the sector. Social services and cultural groups (each at 19 percent) and health care (14 percent) are the other major fields of employment.

But here, too, large differences exist from one country to another. Economic-development work accounts for just 8 percent of the work force over all, but employs about one in five nonprofit workers in Kenya, South Africa, and Uganda. Cultural groups have a particularly strong presence in Central Europe, where they were one of the few types of nonprofit organization that were permitted to exist under Communism.

Role of Communications

In the developing countries of Central Europe, the Middle East, and the Southern Hemisphere, the growth of civil society in recent years has been more robust than in any other region, the study suggests.

Among the reasons it cites are progress in communication technologies, growing frustration with governments’ approaches to social and economic development, and new efforts to improve lives in rural areas.

But civil-society organizations in those regions face many obstacles, the report notes, including relatively low levels of government support, lingering attachments to traditional forms of social assistance based on family and clan relationships, and historical constraints that have served to repress the development of independent nonprofit organizations.

Copies of the report, “Global Civil Society: An Overview,” are available from the Center for Civil Society Studies Publications, Johns Hopkins Institute for Policy Studies, Wyman Park Building, Fifth Floor, 3400 North Charles Street, Baltimore, Md. 21218-2688; (410) 516-4617; fax (410) 516-7818; e-mail cnp@jhu.edu. The cost is $12, plus shipping and handling fees of $5 for the United States and Canada, and $9 elsewhere.