September 9, 1999 | Read Time: 6 minutes
Around the world, more than one person in four donates time to non-profit organizations,
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according to a new study of non-profit activities in nearly two dozen countries.
The aggregate work of such volunteers, in fact, adds the equivalent of 10.6 million full-time jobs to the non-profit economies of those countries. That figure is more than half of the total number of paid workers — nearly 19 million people — who are employed by non-profit organizations.
The crucial work done by volunteers in many countries is one of several aspects of the non-profit landscape that have come into clearer focus with the publication this month of a statistical almanac documenting voluntary activities in 22 countries.
“We have ratcheted up a very significant notch our ability to understand and portray this sector internationally,” says Lester M. Salamon, director of the Johns Hopkins Center for Civil Society Studies and the almanac’s principal author.
The almanac is the latest in a series of publications that Mr. Salamon and his colleagues have produced stretching back more than a decade. Their common theme: Voluntary, non-profit activities are larger and much more influential parts of the economies of many countries than is commonly acknowledged.
In a summary version of the almanac published last fall, the authors pointed out that the non-profit sectors of the national economies of the countries grew at more than three times the rate of their overall economies from 1990 to 1995 (The Chronicle, November 19). In 1995, such activities formed a $1.1-trillion industry, the researchers said.
The new publication augments those numbers by pointing out the additional impact of volunteers and religious congregations.
It notes that 28 per cent of the populations of the 22 countries, on average, donate their time to non-profit organizations. What’s more, in the 16 countries for which data on religious congregations were compiled, such activities added 1.5 million full-time positions to the total.
Countries profiled in the almanac are clustered in several regions: Western Europe (Belgium, Finland, France, Germany, Ireland, the Netherlands, Spain, and the United Kingdom), Central and Eastern Europe (the Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland, Romania, and Slovakia), Latin America (Argentina, Brazil, Colombia, Mexico, and Peru), and other developed countries (Australia, Israel, Japan, and the United States).
The next phase of the project will expand coverage to 20 additional countries, primarily in Africa, the Middle East, and South Asia — three regions that previously have been excluded from the study because of a lack of funds to collect the data. Support from several foundations and government agencies has made it possible for the almanac’s next edition, scheduled for publication in two years, to include information on such countries as Egypt, India, Jordan, Kenya, Kuwait, Lebanon, Morocco, Pakistan, the Philippines, South Africa, South Korea, Tanzania, Thailand, and Uganda, plus several countries in regions already covered, including Norway, Russia, and Venezuela.
The current almanac shows differences among the initial 22 countries, and profiles the history, scope, and nature of voluntary activities within each country.
Non-profit employment in the countries studied ranges from a high of 12.6 per cent of the overall economy of the Netherlands, for example, to a low of 0.4 per cent of the economy of Mexico. The average size is 4.8 per cent; in the United States, which is commonly thought to have a highly developed non-profit sector, the figure is 7.8 per cent — less than in Ireland, Belgium, or Israel.
Countries also show significant variation in organizations’ sources of revenue. Mexican non-profit groups, for example, earn 85 per cent of their income and get just 9 per cent from the government. In Belgium and Ireland, by contrast, government provides 77 per cent of non-profit revenue.
Among other findings:
* In Argentina, despite its long history of Roman Catholic charities, sports clubs, neighborhood associations, and other voluntary organizations, the non-profit world has come to be recognized as a single entity only very recently. Non-governmental organizations that emerged during the 1970s have staked out positions independent of the authoritarian state, but still lack reliable support, face many management challenges, and operate amid complex and ambiguous regulations.
* In Australia, non-profit organizations have “never been less secure,” the almanac says. Volunteering and non-profit membership are declining. Businesses are competing with — and in some cases displacing — non-profit groups in areas like insurance, sport clubs, and social services. And government policies have reduced or eliminated many special privileges such groups once enjoyed.
* In Israel, non-profit organizations have flourished along with the expansion of the welfare state, which is committed to supporting private health care, education, and social services. In 1995, government provided nearly two-thirds of the revenue for all non-profit activities, compared with about half of such revenue in 1991. The growing diversity of Israel’s population contributed to the growth of non-profit organizations.
* In the Netherlands, voluntary activities have flourished in the absence of a strong central government, and non-profit activities now form a larger share of its economy than is the case in any other nation profiled in the almanac. A long tradition of private initiative and the segmentation of society along religious and political lines has prompted the creation of many schools, hospitals, labor unions, and other groups with political or religious affiliations, many of which receive government support. But pressure to reduce government support for social services is focusing new attention on other sources of revenue.
* In Romania a decade after the fall of Communism, the non-profit sector “remains an extremely fragile organism,” the almanac notes, and employs less than 1 per cent of the population. A third of all non-profit workers are employed in recreation or culture — both areas that were among the few outlets for social activity to have been encouraged by the Communist regime. But in the face of the country’s overwhelming environmental and humanitarian needs, many non-profit organizations must also cope with public mistrust or indifference.
Though the countries vary greatly in the size and composition of their non-profit activities, Mr. Salamon observes, most are alike in one respect: Non-profit groups are still not widely recognized as a distinct class of organizations. In fact, many countries continue in their economic statistics to classify the majority of such groups as either businesses or government entities — which tends to minimize their role and to distort information about entire national economies.
Mr. Salamon’s hope is that the national statistical offices in those countries will eventually collect data on non-profit activities and publish them as part of their regular economic statistics. At the request of the United Nations, he and his colleagues are now preparing a handbook on non-profit organizations that, if adopted by the United Nations, is likely to accelerate that transition.
Copies of Global Civil Society: Dimensions of the Nonprofit Sector are available from the Center for Civil Society Studies, the Johns Hopkins Institute for Policy Studies, 3400 North Charles Street, Baltimore 21218-2688. The price is $34.95 each, plus $5 postage for one book and $2 for each additional book. More information is available by e-mail at jh_cnpsp@jhu.edu.
