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[Palgrave handbook of volunteering, civic participation, and nonprofit associations-2016

 

Editors-in-Chief: Prof. David Horton Smith, Boston College, USA;

National Research University, Higher School of Economics, Russia;

University of East Anglia, UK; Tsinghua University, China.

Prof. Robert A. Stebbins, University of Calgary, Canada. 

Managing Editor: Dr. Jurgen Grotz, University of East Anglia, UK.]

Chapter 2: Theories of Associations and Volunteering

David Horton Smith (USA), with Stijn Van Puyvelde (Belgium).

A. INTRODUCTION This chapter reviews key theories relevant to the other chapters. We distinguish among Macro-Theories that deal with the nature of the nonprofit sector as a whole, Meso-Theories that explain aspects of nonprofit associations as organizations, and Micro-Theories that explain membership and participation by individuals as volunteers or that explain pro-social behavior more generally. We discuss (I) the nonprofit sector and the incidence-prevalence of associations within it; (II) conventional all-volunteer associations, distinguishing local (grassroots) associations from supra-local associations (state/province, regional, national, and transnational associations); (III) conventional paid-staff associations; (IV) deviant voluntary associations (DVAs); (V) membership, civic participation, and volunteering by individuals; (VI) general human behavior by individuals, with applications to sociality and association volunteering; and (VII) prospects of developing a general theory of nonprofit sector phenomena.

B. DEFINITIONS

This chapter accepts the definitions of concepts and terms in the Handbook Appendix. The key definition for the entire Handbook is that an association is “A relatively formally structured nonprofit group that depends mainly on volunteer members for participation and activity and that primarily seeks member benefits, even if it may also seek some public benefits” (see Appendix, pp. 2384-2385). In addition, associations use the associational form of organization, defined (ibid. pp. 2385-2386) as “a manner of operating a group that usually involves having official members who are mostly volunteers, some elected formal nonprofit leaders, often a board of directors with policy control, financial support mainly from required annual dues (but may also include donations, fees and occasionally grants), often one or more committees as part of the leadership, and regular face-to-face meetings attended by active official members and informal participants.”

In large, supra-local associations, the face-to-face meetings may be infrequent, as in annual conferences or less frequent meetings. Telephone and computer-mediated conference calls as virtual meetings are increasingly replacing face-to-face (in-person, real) meetings, especially for leaders of supra-local associations.

In addition, we note that when analyzing nonprofit associations, one must distinguish all-volunteer associations from paid-staff associations, where the latter involve one or more paid staff individuals. Local all-volunteer associations, also known as grassroots associations, are locally based, significantly autonomous, volunteer-run, formal nonprofit groups that use the associational form of organization (Smith 2000:ix). Supra-local all-volunteer associations are similar to grassroots associations, except for having a larger territorial base or scope. Such associations are one kind of supra-local nonprofit group, defined by Smith, Stebbins, and Dover (2006:223) as a “nonprofit group that serves a territory larger than a local community, such as a state, province, region, or nation” or a world region or the whole world.

We further distinguish conventional, mainstream associations from unconventional, fundamentally deviant associations. Deviant voluntary associations (DVAs) are defined as local or supra-local voluntary associations having one or more goals, or normative means of achieving one or more goals, that violate current moral standards and norms of the surrounding society. For additional definitions of terms and concepts, see the Handbook Appendix and Smith et al. (2006).

In addition, voluntary associations need to be distinguished carefully from Volunteer Service Programs (SVPs; Smith 2015b; see also Handbook Chapter 15). Where associations are relatively or completely independent collective entities (groups or organizations), VSPs as collective entities are always dependent on some larger, parent organization, which effectively owns them. Where associations are nearly always parts of the nonprofit sector, VSPs by contrast are usually parts of that sector but may instead be parts (actually departments) of businesses (e.g., a volunteer program in a for-profit hospital) or government agencies (e.g., a volunteer program in a government operated and owned national park). This distinction between associations and VSPs becomes especially important when we consider volunteering and volunteers, who can participate in either kind of context. Although there are similarities between associational and service program volunteers, there are also important differences (see Chapters 15 and 16).

Volunteering is defined in the Appendix, based on Smith et al. (2006), but here is a more recent, alternative definition by Smith (2016a), based partly on Cnaan (2004) and Cnaan and Park (2016). “Volunteering is (a) a noncompulsory, voluntary (free will) activity or effort that is (b) directed by an individual toward a person, people, or situations outside one’s household or close family that is (c) intended to be beneficial to another person or persons, group/organization, the local community, the larger society, and/or the ecosystem at some scale of magnitude, (d) with the activity being unpaid (unremunerated) financially or in-kind to the full, current, market value of the activity performed, leaving a net cost to the volunteer.”

Definitions of terms and concepts are an important part of theory. There have been very few published attempts to define the full range of terms and concepts in the field of voluntaristics or altruistics (see Smith 2013 for the introduction of these terms), as a new way to refer to the entire field of Nonprofit and Voluntary Sector Research using a single word, as for nearly all academic disciplines. Salamon (1997) made a relatively early attempt at defining terms, but we do not know how many terms/concepts were defined there. The next major attempt was by the Donors Forum of Chicago, published in Volume 2 of the three-volume encyclopedia edited by Burlingame (2004:533-541). This set of 96 concepts/terms focuses entirely on philanthropy and foundations. Hence, terms like associations, volunteer, and volunteering are excluded.

Anheier and List (2005) made a more comprehensive attempt the next year. This volume had extensive inputs from advisory committees and contributors from many nations (see pages vii to x). The resulting Dictionary defined “about 348 conceptual terms” (page xiv). Nevertheless, no references are given to lodge the definitions in the research and theory of our field. Instead, a brief, select bibliography of 43 items is presented at the end of the book.

By far the most comprehensive document is A Dictionary of Nonprofit Terms & Concepts (Smith et al. 2006). This reference work defines 1,212 terms and concepts found to be useful in past research and theory on the nonprofit sector, with cross-references to an additional 555 terms (for a total of 1,767 terms included). The entries reflect the importance of associations, citizen participation, philanthropy, voluntary action, nonprofit management, volunteering, volunteer administration, leisure, and political activities of nonprofits. They also reflect a concern for the wider range of useful general concepts in theory and research that bear on the nonprofit sector and its manifestations in the United States and elsewhere. This dictionary supplies some of the necessary foundational work needed for a general theory of the nonprofit sector (see the book review by Jeavons 2008). C. HISTORICAL BACKGROUND

The relevant theories of associations, civic participation, and volunteering have generally been recent in historical origin. Those discussed here have all been constructed since approximately 1950, and most have appeared only in the past couple of decades. By theory, we mean more than just general or specific talk or writing about a subject. We refer to a clear set of five or more propositions about how some phenomenon occurs or operates. Similar but smaller sets of propositions (one to four) we will term models.

D. KEY ISSUES:

(I) MACRO-THEORIES: THE NONPROFIT SECTOR AND ITS ASSOCIATIONS