BOOK REVIEWS

Private Nonprofits in a PublicSector Compendium

Michael Cortés

International Encyclopedia of Public Policy and Administration,edited by Jay M. Shafritz (editor in chief). 4 vols. Boulder,Colo.: Westview Press, 1998. 2,750 pp., $550 cloth.

THE concept of the private, nonprofit sector is ambiguous andevolving. Observers disagree about what the sector includes.When we speak of the private, nonprofit sector, are we talking

about the world of tax-exempt nonprofit corporations? Should wealso include the vast number of informal voluntary associations?What about individual voluntary service and philanthropy? Do weinclude the private donation of money, goods, and time to benefitpersonal friends and extended family, as long as there is no immedi-ate expectation of personal material gain? Should we include corpo-rate foundations whose grants are calculated to improve the imagesof for-profit companies? Or, at the other extreme, should we subsumethe nonprofit sector within the public sector, so that we view non-profits as part of a larger phenomenon of public and community ser-vice that also includes government?

Different authorities define the nonprofit sector in different ways.Some use the U.S. Internal Revenue Code and related law and legalprecedent to define the sector. Other theorists explain the sector interms of market failure and related economic concepts. Still othersdraw upon sociology, anthropology, or other disciplines or profes-sions as they define the nonprofit sector. The perspective of Smith,Shue, Vest, and Villarreal (1999), for example, is rooted in sociologyand cultural anthropology, which leads them to suggest that the def-inition of philanthropy by the dominant culture in the United Statesis biased against minority ethnic traditions of extended family andcommunity support.

As the title suggests, the new International Encyclopedia of Pub-lic Policy and Administration is about government and the public sec-tor. But to this reviewer’s pleasant surprise, the encyclopedia includesnumerous topics on the private, nonprofit sector. The editors andcontributing authors of this large, innovative work view the private,

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nonprofit sector from the multidisciplinary perspectives of publicpolicy and public administration. By implication, they view the non-profit sector as part of—or at least closely connected to—the publicsector. Entries in the encyclopedia include brief essays on obviousareas of overlap between the public and nonprofit sectors, includingadvocacy, interest groups, quasi-autonomous nongovernment orga-nizations, tax-exempt organizations, and third-party government.

But the encyclopedia does more than address overlaps betweenthe sectors. A significant number of entries are devoted to topics cen-tral to the field of nonprofit studies and management. Included, forexample, are entries on alternative funds, association management,charitable contributions, community power and control, communityand corporate foundations, ethics in nonprofit organizations, exec-utive directors, the National Society of Fund Raising Executives,neighborhood-based organizations, nonprofit entrepreneurship, theNonprofit Sector Research Fund, historical and philosophical foun-dations of philanthropy, religious organizations, and social welfareorganizations. A relatively long, nine-page article by StephenR. Block is devoted to boards of directors. Twelve separate articlesaddress aspects of volunteerism. There is even an entry on master’sdegrees in nonprofit management.

Thus, a significant share of the encyclopedia’s nine hundred arti-cles are on topics concerning the private, nonprofit sector. Amongthe 462 contributing authors are several widely recognized nonprofitscholars and practitioners. Among them are Elizabeth T. Boris,Jeffrey L. Brudney, John M. Bryson, Richard D. Heimovics, Warren F.Ilchman, Vic Murray, Michael O’Neill, J. Steven Ott, E. Samuel Over-man, Jacquelyn Thayer Scott, Jon Van Til, Dennis R. Young, and othernames familiar to readers of Nonprofit Management and Leadership.

These diverse nonprofit authorities bring to the work a diversityof ways of describing and explaining the sector. For example, con-tributing author Stephen R. Block devotes his article, “NonprofitOrganization,” to practical aspects of creating and managing tax-exempt corporations in the United States. Most of the essay is aboutprocedural issues, such as legal incorporation, establishment ofbylaws, and applying to the government for formal recognitionof tax-exempt status. Clive Archer, by contrast, takes a more aca-demic and comparative approach in his entry, “NongovernmentalOrganization.” Most of Archer’s essay is devoted to the historical evo-lution of nongovernmental organizations since biblical times andtheoretical issues concerning the relationship of nongovernmentalorganizations to different forms of government.

Some of today’s scholars of the nonprofit sector hold degreesfrom, or academic appointments at, schools of public policy, publicadministration, or public affairs. Those academics, along with someof their current and former students, may be gratified to discover theinclusion of the private, nonprofit sector in an encyclopedia onthe public sector. This reviewer is among them.

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The editors andcontributing

authors of thislarge, innovative

work view theprivate, nonprofitsector from the

multidisciplinaryperspectives of

public policy andpublic

administration

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Some of us trained in public policy analysis argue that the sym-biosis between nonprofits and public policy merits greater attention.Nonprofits are both legitimated and constrained by public policy.The nonprofit sector is rife with advocacy groups and think tanksthat influence or shape public policy. The fortunes of nonprofit ser-vice agencies, competing for government contracts to implementpublic policy, rise and fall with public spending, as Salamon (1995)and others have shown us. The nonprofit sector includes ambitiousvolunteers striving to improve the workings of government throughgrassroots initiatives and community problem solving featuringpublic-private collaborations (National Civic League, 1998).

Not everyone appreciates the symbiosis. Some academic andprofessional schools of policy analysis, political science, and publicaffairs seem slow to recognize nonprofit scholarship and training asessential to understanding and improving the public sector. Byincluding such a variety of nonprofit topics, the editors of the Inter-national Encyclopedia of Public Policy and Administration seem to sug-gest that nonprofit managers and leaders should receive professionaltraining in public sector subjects as well as nonprofit management.

The editors also seem to suggest that policy analysts and publicadministrators should know more about the nonprofit sector. Butrather than speculate on the editors’ views, this reviewer will con-fess to his own zeal on the subject. Schools of public policy and pub-lic administration could have a stronger claim to nonprofit studiesthan do schools of management and business administration—wereit not for narrowly conceived curricula and research programs atsome schools and departments specializing in the public sector.

My principal disappointment with the encyclopedia is its failureto exploit its inclusion of the nonprofit sector when addressing theproblem of disadvantaged and oppressed minorities in democracies.The United States is among those nations with a growing proportionof low-income minorities with relatively poor life prospects. The dis-parity will continue, due largely to the failure of public policymak-ers and administrators to ensure equal educational opportunity forthe nation’s children. For example, by the year 2050, Latinos willconstitute one out of four U.S. residents (U.S. Bureau of the Census,1996). Despite their above-average labor force participation rates,one-fourth of Latinos in the United States live in poverty (U.S.Bureau of the Census, 1998). Latinos’ economic disadvantages willpersist well into the twenty-first century, due in no small measure tothe fact that Latino youth have the nation’s largest high schooldropout rate (U.S. Bureau of the Census, 1999, table A). Of theLatino youth who do complete high school, only 16 percent con-tinue on to college and earn a bachelor’s degree (Federal InteragencyForum on Child and Family Statistics, 1997, p. 92).

In the encyclopedia, minority issues are generally confined toarticles on employment discrimination. I found no discussion ofproblems faced by minorities in other arenas of public policy and

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A significantshare of the

encyclopedia’snine hundredarticles are on

topicsconcerning the

private,nonprofit sector

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administration, such as education, health, housing, and criminal jus-tice. An article by Cynthia Y. Jackson addresses “equitable deliveryof services” in rather general terms. But I did not find discussion ofthe inevitable tension in a constitutional democracy between major-ity rule and minority rights. The discussion, had I found it, wouldhave been even better had it also considered the complication of thattension by inequitable distribution of resources and opportunitiesin the for-profit, nonprofit, and public sectors. I was especially sorrynot to find mention of the essential role that the nonprofit sectorplays in helping to identify and resolve that tension.

The editors can easily be forgiven for ignoring a reviewer’sfavorite topic. Any encyclopedia, no matter how massive, cannot pos-sibly include everything anybody might want. In further defense ofthe editors, scholarship on public sector roles of minority nonprof-its is in short supply. For example, although we know that Latinoemployment rates in the nonprofit sector are lower than in the for-profit and public sectors, scholars have yet to explain why. The emer-gence of the Latino nonprofit sector in the United States has onlybegun to be documented, and its involvement with the public sectorremains to be explored (see Campoamor, Díaz, and Ramos, 1999;Gallegos and O’Neill, 1991).

Nevertheless, omission of the issue of nonprofit and public sec-tor interaction concerning minorities in a democratic society seemsunfortunate. Perhaps the omission results from the editors’ treatmentof democracy in general. The encyclopedia has no entry on democ-racy as such. Related subtopics, such as accountability in democraticsystems, bureaucracy as a threat to democracy, direct versus repre-sentative democracy, and so on, are scattered throughout the four-volume work under main headings like “accountability,” “authority,”and “communitarianism.” But little attention is given to the essen-tial role of nonprofit organizations and voluntary associations in fuel-ing and lubricating the inner workings of democracy.

Several articles come close to doing so. James F. Gilsinan’s shortarticle on advocacy addresses relations between government, inter-est groups, other advocates, and individual citizens. An article byRichard D. Heimovics on advocacy organizations summarizes classi-fications and restrictions on nonprofit advocacy imposed by nationaltax law in the United States. Alex Sekwat’s article defines and classi-fies interest groups and their tactics. But none focuses on the essen-tial role of nonprofits in addressing the inevitable dilemma ofdisadvantaged and oppressed minorities in a constitutional democ-racy featuring majority rule.

The editors can be credited for helping to broaden readers’ con-ception of public policy and administration to include the nonprofitsector. It seems unfortunate that vital interaction between the pub-lic and nonprofit sectors concerning minority rights and democraticgovernment was not addressed. Realization of equality under the lawdepends not only on constitutional design, political culture, policy,

328 CO RT É S

Academics, alongwith some of their

current andformer students,may be gratifiedto discover theinclusion of the

private, nonprofitsector in an

encyclopedia onthe public sector

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and administration but also on such essentially nonprofit activitiesas community organizing and advocacy by disadvantaged andoppressed minorities. By including nonprofit topics in their com-pendium, the editors of the International Encyclopedia of Public Pol-icy and Administration encourage readers to give further considerationto the role of nonprofits in the workings of democracy.

MICHAEL CORTÉS is assistant research professor of public policy and direc-tor of the Program on Nonprofit Organizations at the Graduate Schoolof Public Affairs, University of Colorado, Denver.

References

Campoamor, D., Díaz, W. A., and Ramos, H.A.J. (eds.). NuevosSenderos: Reflections on Hispanics and Philanthropy. Houston: ArtePúblico, 1999.

Federal Interagency Forum on Child and Family Statistics. America’sChildren: Key National Indicators of Well-Being. Washington, D.C.:Federal Interagency Forum on Child and Family Statistics, 1997.

Gallegos, H. E., and O’Neill, M. (eds.). Hispanics and the NonprofitSector. New York: Foundation Center, 1991.

National Civic League. The 1998 All-America City Yearbook. Denver:National Civic League, 1998.

Salamon, L. M. Partners in Public Service: Government-NonprofitRelations in the Modern Welfare State. Baltimore: Johns HopkinsUniversity Press, 1995.

Smith, B., Shue, S., Vest, J. L., and Villarreal, J. Philanthropies in Com-munities of Color. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1999.

U.S. Bureau of the Census. Resident Population of the United States:Middle Series Projections, 2035–2050, by Sex, Race, and Hispanic Ori-gin, with Median Age. Washington, D.C.: U.S. Bureau of the Cen-sus, 1996. [http://www.census.gov/population/projections/nation/nsrh/nprh3550.txt (Sept. 1999)].

U.S. Bureau of the Census. The Hispanic Population of the UnitedStates: March 1997 (Update). Current Population Reports, no. P20-511. Washington, D.C.: U.S. Bureau of the Census, 1998.[http://www.census.gov/prod/3/98pubs/p20-511.pdf (Sept. 1999)].

U.S. Bureau of the Census. School Enrollment: Social and EconomicCharacteristics of Students, October 1997. Current PopulationReports, no. P20-516. Washington, D.C.: U.S. Bureau of theCensus, 1999. [http://www.census.gov/prod/99pubs/p20-516.pdf(Sept. 1999)].

PR I VAT E NO N P R O F I T S I N A PU B L I C SE C T O R CO M P E N D I U M 329

My principaldisappointment

with theencyclopedia is

its failure toexploit its

inclusion of thenonprofit sectorwhen addressingthe problem ofdisadvantagedand oppressedminorities indemocracies

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