Project: COMPARATIVE NONPROFIT SECTOR / UNITED NATIONS NONPROFIT HANDBOOK PROJECT

Sponsors: Atlantic Philanthropies, Ford Foundation, Inter-American Development Bank, Ministry of Social Affairs (Denmark) , C.S. Mott Foundation, David and Lucile Packard Foundation, Sasakawa Peace Foundation, Skoll Foundation, United Nations Volunteers , UN Development Programme, and others
Status: In process
IPS Staff: Lester M. Salamon, Helen Stone Tice, S. Wojciech Sokolowski, Megan Haddock, Mimi Bilzor, and Christopher Doyle

Purpose and Approach
The Comparative Nonprofit Sector/United Nations Nonprofit Handbook Project seeks to create a system for generating reliable statistical data on the civil society sector, philanthropy, and volunteering in countries throughout the world; to analyze such data; and to make the results available on a broad basis. The project grows out of the increased need for basic information about civil society organizations as a result of the dramatic "associational revolution" and reappraisal of the roles of the market and the state that have taken place over recent decades. To meet this need, the Comparative Nonprofit Sector Project has mobilized a network of Associates and generated data in over 40 countries. Working with the UN Statistics Division, project staff formulated a Handbook to guide national statistical agencies in maintaining these basic data as part of regular national economic statistics. We are now working to implement this Handbook in 30 target countries and make the resulting data available to policymakers, the press, scholars, and the public at large.

Results
This project has increased the visibility of the civil society sector in policy debates worldwide. In the process, it has contributed to numerous tangible policy changes, from a liberalization of basic nonprofit law in Japan to shifts in the treatment of civil society organizations in the work of the European Commission. More recently, it prompted the adoption by the UN Statistical Commission of a new Handbook on Nonprofit Institutions in the System of National Accounts, which is currently being implemented in 26 countries. Center staff have developed guidance materials for the project and hosted training workshops for implementing countries. Seven countries have already produced the nonprofit "satellite accounts" recommended in this Handbook.

Selected Publications

Salamon, L., et. al. (2004). Global Civil Society: Dimensions of the Nonprofit Sector, Volume II. Bloomfield, CT: Kumarian Press. Summary available at www.jhu.edu/ccss/pubs/books.

U.N. Statistics Division (2003). Handbook on Nonprofit Institutions in the System of National Accounts. New York: United Nations. Available at www.jhu.edu/ccss/unhandbook.