Reimagining Nonprofits

Eva Witesman is an Associate Professor at the Romney Institute of Public Service and Ethics and Academic Director of the Ballard Center for Social Impact at Brigham Young University. An institutional theorist who studies the nonprofit, public, and private sectors, she serves as incoming chair for the Public and Nonprofit division of the Academy of Management. Curtis Child is an Associate Professor and Chair of Sociology at Brigham Young University. He has published widely on nonprofit organizations and is a member of the Association for Research on Nonprofit Organizations and Voluntary Action.

• 1. An invitation to rethink the nonprofit sector Curtis Child and Eva Witesman; 2. An overview of nonprofit sector theories Curtis Child; 3. The prevalence of traditional nonprofit sector theories in research Megan LePere-Schloop and Rebecca Nesbit; 4. What makes good nonprofit sector theory? Eva Witesman; 5. Sector theorists should consider how social values determine unmet needs Ruth K. Hansen and Gregory R. Witkowski; 6. Sector theorists should embrace a social economy perspective Laurie Mook and John R. Whitman; 7. Sector theorists should expand three-failures theory to include the family sector and varied forms of government Richard Steinberg, Eleanor Brown and Liza L. Taylor; 8. Sector theorists should beware the nonprofit industrial complex Ana Clarissa Rojas Durazo; 9. Sector theorists should be inclusive of muslim and non-western perspectives Shariq Siddiqui; 10. Sector theorists should revisit the role of information George E. Mitchell and Jason Coupet; 11. Sector theorists should borrow epistemologies Elizabeth A. Castillo; 12. Nonprofits as organizational actors Patricia Bromley and Heitor Santos; 13. Nonprofits as enablers of multilayered representation Catherine E. Wilson; 14. Nonprofits as facilitators of national self-development Ada Ordor; 15. Nonprofits as part of an engineered social economy Meeyoung Lamothe, Jiwon Suh, Misun Lee, Hee Soun Jang, Bok Gyo Jeong and Seongho An; 16. Nonprofits as shaped by the ruling party Ming Hu and Yung-Pin Lu; 17. Nonprofits as sources of regime stability Yulia Skokova and Irina Krasnopolskaya; 18. Nonprofits as creators of transformative symbolic reality Robert W. Ressler; 19. Nonprofits as distributors of toll goods Eva Witesman; 20. Nonprofits as agents of moral authority Robbie Waters Robichau and Kandyce Fernandez; 21. Conclusions Eva Witesman and Curtis Child.

'A welcome addition to the nonprofit field. Reimagining Nonprofits takes its departure from ten 'seminal' theoretical perspectives on the 'what' and 'why' of the nonprofit sector and then examines the current relevance of these perspectives. The volume pays particular attention to the 'why' – the sector's promises and potentials as well as its shortcomings and dark sides – and to alternative perspectives that become particularly important when examined in international contexts.' Kirsten A. Grønbjerg, Director, Indiana Nonprofits Project, and Distinguished Professor, O'Neill School of Public & Environmental Affairs, Indiana University, Bloomington