The Voluntary City
The Voluntary City

Author: David T Beito

Publisher: Independent Institute

Published: 2015-11-23

Total Pages: 658

ISBN-13: 1598132326

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Assembling a rich history and analysis of large-scale, private and voluntary, community-based provision of social services, urban infrastructure, and community governance, this book provides suggestions on how to restore the vitality of city life. Historically, the city was considered a center of commerce, knowledge, and culture, a haven for safety and a place of opportunity. Today, however, cities are widely viewed as centers for crime, homelessness, drug wars, business failure, impoverishment, transit gridlock, illiteracy, pollution, unemployment, and other social ills. In many cities, government increasingly dominates life, consuming vast resources to cater to special-interest groups. This book reveals how the process of providing local public goods through the dynamism of freely competitive, market-based entrepreneurship is unmatched in renewing communities and strengthening the bonds of civil society.

Voluntarism, Community Life, and the American Ethic
Voluntarism, Community Life, and the American Ethic

Author: Robert S. Ogilvie

Publisher: Indiana University Press

Published: 2004-06-18

Total Pages: 292

ISBN-13: 9780253110206

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"This is a major contribution to the literature on social participation and voluntary action. It is the first systematic ethnographic study I know that treats volunteers and the institutions they create." -- John Van Til, author of Growing Civil Society "Students and faculty interested in the issue of homelessness will find the book instructive... Recommended." -- Choice Why do people volunteer, and what motivates them to stick with it? How do local organizations create community? How does voluntary participation foster moral development in volunteers to create a better citizenry? In this fascinating study of volunteers at the Partnership for the Homeless in New York City, Robert S. Ogilvie provides bold and engaging answers to these questions. He describes how volunteer programs such as the Partnership generate ethical development in and among participants and how the Partnership's volunteers have made it such a continued success since the early 1980s. Ogilvie's examination of voluntarism suggests that the American ethic is essential for sustaining community life and to the future well-being of a democratic society.

Voluntary Sector Organizations and the State
Voluntary Sector Organizations and the State

Author: Rachel Laforest

Publisher: UBC Press

Published: 2011

Total Pages: 187

ISBN-13: 0774821442

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In the early 1990s, voluntary organizations garnered little attention in Canadian policy circles, even though the federal government was simultaneously offloading its responsibility for essential services to the sector and cutting back their funding. Two decades later, the voluntary sector is a key public policy player in federal, provincial, and municipal politics. Rachel Laforest tells the story of how and why the federal government’s relationship with voluntary organizations changed at the end of the twentieth century. Drawing on interviews and insights from governance theory, social movement theory, and urban studies, she shows why the turnaround represented a significant shift in the way citizens and policy makers view the place of voluntary organizations in public policy. Members of voluntary organizations have struggled for a stronger voice in policy making and redefined their relationship to the federal government through key collaborations such as the Voluntary Sector Initiative and the National Children’s Initiative. This deft account of how a loose coalition of voluntary organizations was transformed into a distinct sector offers a new conceptual framework for explaining dynamic state - voluntary sector relations at all levels of government.

Politics and Partnerships
Politics and Partnerships

Author: Elisabeth S. Clemens

Publisher: University of Chicago Press

Published: 2010-11-15

Total Pages: 339

ISBN-13: 0226109984

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Exhorting people to volunteer is part of the everyday vocabulary of American politics. Routinely, members of both major parties call for partnerships between government and nonprofit organizations. These entreaties increase dramatically during times of crisis, and the voluntary efforts of ordinary citizens are now seen as a necessary supplement to government intervention. But despite the ubiquity of the idea of volunteerism in public policy debates, analysis of its role in American governance has been fragmented. Bringing together a diverse set of disciplinary approaches, Politics and Partnerships is a thorough examination of the place of voluntary associations in political history and an astute investigation into contemporary experiments in reshaping that role. The essays here reveal the key role nonprofits have played in the evolution of both the workplace and welfare and illuminate the way that government’s retreat from welfare has radically altered the relationship between nonprofits and corporations.