April 29, 2004 | Read Time: 1 minute
Third-Sector Development: Making Up for the Market
by Christopher Gunn
Nonprofit organizations and cooperatives can play an important role in revitalizing poor neighborhoods—especially in areas where for-profit companies and governments are unable, or unwilling, to get involved, writes Christopher Gunn, a professor of economics at Hobart and William Smith Colleges, in Geneva, N.Y. He says that a “new generation of entrepreneurial” nonprofit groups are developing projects that create jobs, produce goods and services, and reinvest profits into poor neighborhoods.
His book profiles more than 25 organizations that have worked to improve local economies. The groups’ efforts include opening museums that increase tourism, cooperatives that provide high-quality child-care services, and credit unions that offer an alternative to pawn shops and loan sharks for people seeking financial services. In assessing food, health-care, and housing organizations, Mr. Gunn looked for such attributes as how the groups assist in providing living-wage jobs, minimize harm to the environment, generate assets that remain in the neighborhood, and help other local groups prosper.
The book also describes tax and regulatory issues affecting economic-development projects.
Publisher: Cornell University Press, Sage House, 512 East State Street, Ithaca, N.Y. 14850; (607) 277-2211; fax (800) 688-2877; http://www.cornellpress.cornell.edu; 232 pages; $45 cloth, $18.95 paper; I.S.B.N. 0-8014-8881-8.
