Lionel Prouteau

Informal, Unorganized Volunteering

Informal volunteering, or helping individuals in a way not coordinated by an organization, is the most common type of human helping behavior but one of the least studied. The psychological motives for informal volunteering are similar to those for formal volunteering, but income and socio-economic status do not affect informal volunteering. Informal volunteering is common in both wealthy and poor countries, and welfare state service provision does not crowd out informal volunteering. Little is known about the individual and social benefits of informal volunteering, and the state of knowledge is not yet complete enough to inform policy. However, using existing informal helping networks can make development and other projects more effective. Future research should collect better data on informal volunteering, particularly longitudinal and comparative data.

Conducive Macro-Contexts Influencing Volunteering

This chapter reviews research on variables that affect rates of formal volunteering in various sets of territories (nations, provinces/states, counties/districts, communities), usually doing multilevel statistical modeling that simultaneously controls relevant, respondent-variables at the level of individuals. Most attention is given to country-level variables regarding macro-context effects. Results have been less consistent than at the individual level of analysis. At the country level, volunteering rates (referring hereinafter always to formal volunteering/FV) tend to be higher for nations with stronger current democracies, longer time as democracies, more welfare state expenditures per capita, higher and more Protestant religiosity, higher levels of average education, and higher gross domestic product (GDP) per capita. But being part of the Eastern (former communist) Bloc in Europe is a negative factor. In communities, often with inconsistent results, ethnic–racial heterogeneity has negative effects. Special methodological issues are discussed.

CHANGES IN THE PUBLIC FUNDING OF FRENCH VOLUNTARY ASSOCIATIONS: EVIDENCE, PROSPECTS AND CHALLENGES

In France a considerable share of the resources of voluntary associations traditionally came from the public purse. In recent years, however, these resources have undergone significant changes. This article is intended to document and analyse these changes. It shows that the public funding for voluntary associations has risen more slowly than the number of applicants. In parallel, a repositioning among the public funding bodies has led to an increasing role of certain levels of sub-national governments while a substitution of public contracts for grants has taken place. The article emphasizes the gradual trend towards the privatization and marketization of associations resources induced by such changes. Various effects that may arise from this new context in the medium term are considered. Particular emphasis is placed on the increasing impact of local government policies on the dynamic of the voluntary sector.

The French Nonprofit Sector: A Literature Review

This article deals with the literature on the French nonprofit sector ( NPS ). A preliminary part is devoted to presenting and discussing the characteristics that shape the approaches to this sector in France. We stress the strong influence of legal categories on the sector’s definition and, in this context, the importance of the status inherited from the 1901 Act on contracts of association. This raises a problem for a more analytical approach to the sector, because the diversity of the nonprofit organizations ( NPO s) regulated under this Act risks being overshadowed. Indeed, not all NPO s regulated under the 1901 Act are voluntary associations as understood by English-speaking people. The largest NPO s are voluntary agencies, usually with paid staff, and lacking memberships (Smith, 2015a, 2015b). In this first part, we also underline the primacy accorded in France to the concept of the social economy, which has today become the social and solidarity economy ( SSE ), over that of the nonprofit sector. The SSE , whose recognition from the public authorities has increased over the last few decades, includes, but is not limited to, the NPS , since cooperatives and mutuals (mutual aid groups) have to be added.In the second part, the article outlines some landmarks in the history of the French NPS . French NPO s were for many years objects of suspicion, arbitrariness and repression on the part of the public authorities and this persisted until the 1901 legislation on contracts of association was enacted. However, this hostile context did not prevent the sector from having a richer existence than is sometimes admitted. The 1901 Act marked a very significant moment in the history of the French NPS , since it finally enshrined freedom of association in French law. Although the history of the French NPS since this Act is yet to be written, our literature review highlights some aspects of its contemporary development and it addresses a topic that merits particular attention in France—namely the interpenetration between certain NPO s and the public authorities. Indeed, such an interpenetration may affect the autonomy of the former by rendering them instruments of the latter. The fear of an instrumentalization by government is a recurring problem among NPO s.This literature review also focuses on empirical studies of the sector, placing a particular emphasis on the more recent ones. These French studies basically adopt two types of approach. The first is concerned essentially with the NPO s and focuses its attention on their economic importance, whether measured in terms of financial resources, employment, or, less frequently, added value. This is undoubtedly the dominant approach in the literature on the subject. In doing so, a great deal of emphasis is placed on large organizations. Voluntary associations managed solely by volunteers are treated as insignificant and the less formal part of the NPS is unaddressed. The second approach investigates the kinds of individual participation the sector engenders by examining the various forms it takes, such as membership of NPO s or voluntary work. In this respect, research shows a relative stability of association membership over the past three decades but volunteering is still only partially documented, as are cash donations.This review ends with the analysis of the challenges that NPS faces in a context characterized by the increasing constraints on public funding, changes in the nature of such funding with a substitution of contracts for subsidies, an increased competition among NPO s as well as between NPO s and for-profit enterprises. Such a context has forced NPO s to increase their degree of organizational professionalization and certain NPO s increasingly use management instruments applied in for-profit enterprises. This raises questions about their specificities and their raison d’etre , and these questions lead researchers to pay more attention to the governance systems of NPO s. The article concludes that, despite the advances in research on the French NPS , some aspects—like formal volunteering and the role of voluntary associations—are still understudied, while others—like informal groups and informal volunteering—are almost totally ignored.

Wage differentials between conventional firms and non-worker cooperatives: Analysis of evidence from France:

The aim of this article is to investigate the wage differentials between conventional firms and non-worker cooperatives, which has seldom been done in the literature to date. Using French administrative data, the determinants of these wage differentials are analysed. This investigation is carried out across all industries and is then repeated for the banking industry. Taking all industries into account, conventional firms offer lower wages than cooperatives. Most of this pay gap is explained by differences in the characteristics of the employees, jobs and companies. If the focus is narrowed to firms in the banking industry only, it becomes clear that conventional firms pay higher wages than cooperatives but that this gap is explained solely by differences in characteristics. However, their impact is weakened somewhat by differences in the value attributed to these characteristics, which work in favour of employees in cooperatives.

Prevalence Rates of Associations across Territories

This chapter reviews research on incidence–prevalence–exit (demise) rates of membership associations (MAs) across sets of geographic territories of varying scope, with a main focus on explaining MA prevalence rates (frequencies of associations in a territory). Basic changes in the economic structure/system of societies explain the four, global, associational revolutions in human history over the past 10 millennia (Smith 2016b). The determinants of prevalence vary across levels of analysis, but sheer population size is always a major determinant of greater absolute MA prevalence. Other important influences on MA prevalence at the level of nations include gross domestic product (GDP) per capita, average level of formal education, extent of civil liberties, government expenditures per capita, MA density in prior time period, prevalence of association-support infrastructure organizations, and experience with democracy (Schofer and Longhofer 2011; Smith and Shen 2002).