The Nonprofit FAQ

Approaches to the History of Nonprofits

On 5/23, David Hammack (dch3@po.cwru.edu) sent the following post
to
ARNOVA-L:

I have edited a READER on the development of the Nonprofit Sector in
American Society for Indiana University Press; I hope to get a final
version of the whole project to them in the next two or three weeks.
Meanwhile I have edited and prepared introductions for the following
materials.

[The contents of Hammack's READER have been
moved to the end of this
post]

David C. Hammack

Benton Professor of History

Department of History

Case Western Reserve University

10900 Euclid Avenue

Cleveland, Ohio 44106-7107

(Order http://www.amazon.com/dp/0253214106/?tag=internetnonprofi">Making the Nonprofit Sector in the United States: A Reader from Amazon.Com. A royalty will be paid that will help maintain
this site.)

Peter Dobkin Hall (peter.d.hall@yale.edu) responded to Hammack's
message as
follows:

I think its worth mentioning the difference of approach between
David
Hammack's READER and the HISTORY OF PHILANTHROPY & VOLUNTARISM that
I am
completing. I question whether one can make post hoc attributions of
collective identity to a domain of institutions which had no
consciousness
of themselves as a "sector" before the 1970s. When we look at
economic,
technological, and organizational developments in terms of their
subsequent
history, we risk constructing false continua, distorting the
motives,
perceptions, and actions of historical actors, and, portraying the
past as
the present writ small. More seriously, in terms of the history of
nonprofitdom, such an approach risks exaggerating the importance and
centrality of private sector/"nonprofit" institutions, ignoring both
the
rich diversity of institutional practices and downplaying the
significance
of public institutions and public philanthropy and voluntarism.

Devolution calls attention to the questionable nature of the
nonprofit
sector concept as an analytical framework. In particular, it calls
our
attention to the tendency of firms to migrate across sector
boundaries (to
change ownership forms) with changes in economic, political, and
legal
conditions. In our own time, we see the massive migration of
voluntary
health care providers from nonprofit to for-profit and the
impressive
migration of religious organizations from being mutual benefit
entities to
being service providers. In the not too distant past (before 1950 or
so),
most arts and culture organizations were for-profit entities -- but
firms
migrated into the nonprofit domain with the creation of pertinent
tax
incentives, the proliferation of grantmaking foundations, and the
establishment of the national arts and humanities endowments. As to
hospitals, in the 1920s, only about a quarter were nonprofit (with
the
balance more or less equally divided between government and
proprietary);
by 1970, more than half were nonprofit, a third governmental, and a
mere
12% proprietary. And then there's the whole issue of the shift of
nonprofits from being donative/voluntary entities to being
commercial
enterprises operated by management professionals (i.e., are
"nonprofits"
the same thing as "voluntary associations"?).

The point here is to stress that what we call the "nonprofit sector"
changes constantly in scale and scope -- and, for this reason,
trying to
write its history from the standpoint of what it happens to be at
the
moment is an intellectually questionable enterprise. (For example,
had
Hammack done his reader a decade ago, odds are that religious
organizations
would not have been considered as extensively, if at all).

Doing it David's way is, of course, a great deal easier than the
alternative -- which requires the inclusion with a far broader range
of
voluntary organizations, many of which, like political parties and
labor
unions, are no longer considered part of the "nonprofit sector"
(though
historical personages like George Washington. Thomas Jefferson, and
A. De
Tocqueville certainly counted them as "self-created societies" and
"voluntary associations").

One more point: we might well ask ourselves why we as scholars
studying
"civil society," the "nonprofit/Third/Independent" sector, or
whatever you
want to call it, are willing to limit our attention to
"philanthropic"
giving rather than looking at the broader spectrum of donative
behavior
which included political contributions and private gifts to public
institutions. Why do we limit our attention to 501(c)3 and 4
organizations
in the broad range of nonprofits? Why don't we pay more attention to
hybrid
entities like endowed public libraries, public universities, and
parks? It
seems to me that this limitations of view are not only artificial
but
intellectually indefensible.

I think the scholars who identify with the nonprofits research
community
really need to ask themselves whether their job is to supply
justifications
for the organizational status quo or to engage the complexity of the
past
in order to suggest the diversity of possible future outcomes -- a
future
in which nonprofit organizations as we know them may well not exist.
Chroniclers of nonprofits and other contemporary institutions and
institutional arrangements would do well to heed Stephen Jay Gould's
arguments against the "canonical" accounts of biological evolution :

we are forced to pay an almost intolerable price for each
major
advance in knowledge and power -- the psychological cost of
progressive
dethronement from the center of things, and increasing
marginality
in an uncaring universe. . . . We cannot bear the central
implication
of this brave new world. If humanity arose just yesterday
asd a small
twig on one branch of a flourishing tree, then life may not,
in any
genuine sense, exist for us or because of us. Perhaps we are
only an
afterthought, a kind of cosmic accident, just one bauble on
the
Christmas tree of evolution.

The old chain of being would provide the greatest comfort,
but we now
know that the vast majority of "simplet" creatures were not
human
ancestors or even prototypes, but only collateral branches
on life's
tree. . . . I cannot understand our continued allegiance to
the
manifestly false iconographies of ladder and cone except as
a desperate
finger in the dike of cosmically justified hope and
arrogance.

[WONDERFUL LIFE: THE BURGESS SHALE AND THE NATURE OF HISTORY
(Norton,
1989), pp. 44-45].

Peter Dobkin Hall

Research Scientist & Acting Director

Program on Non-Profit Organizations

Yale University

Peter Dobkin Hall's narrative of the growth of the nonprofit sector can be found in the lead essay of The Jossey-Bass Handbook of Nonprofit Leadership and Management (2004) and in his Inventing the Nonprofit Sector (Johns Hopkins, 1992). (Order the http://www.amazon.com/dp/0787969958/?tag=internetnonprofi">The Jossey-Bass Handbook of Nonprofit Leadership and Management or "http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0801842727/internetnonprofi"
>Inventing from Amazon.Com. A royalty will be paid that will help maintain
this site. A recent paper of his is online; see "Philanthropy, The Welfare State, and the Transformation of American
Public and Private Institutions, 1945-2000," at
http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?cfid=415743&cftoken=93885160&abstract_id=262652)

CONTENTS

David Hammack, Making the Nonprofit Sector in the United States

One. Colonial Theory: Established Churches

1. The Statute of Charitable Uses, 1601.

2. The Elizabethan Poor Law, 1601.

3. Brother Juan deEscalona, Report to the Viceroy of Mexico on
Conditions at Santa Fe, 1601.

4. John Winthrop, A Model of Christian Charity, 1630.

5. Virginia General Assembly, Laws Regulating Religion, 1642.

6. Hugh Peter and Thomas Weld, New England's First Fruits,
1643.

7. Claude Jean Allouz, S.J., Account of the Ceremony Proclaiming
New France, 1671.

Two. Colonial Reality: Religious Diversity

8. Inhabitants of Flushing, Long Island, Remonstrance Against the
Law Against Quakers, 1657.

9. Roger Greene, Virginia's Cure, 1662.

10. William Penn, The Great Case of Liberty of Conscience, 1670.

11. Cotton Mather, Bonifacius: Essays to Do Good, 1710.

12. William Livingston, Argument Against Anglican Control of King's
College (Columbia), 1753

13. Charles Woodmason, Journal of the Carolina Backcountry, 1766-67.

14. Benjamin Franklin, Autobiography: Recollections of
Institution-Building, 1771-84.

Three. To The Constitution: Limited Government and
Disestablishment

15. John Trenchard and Thomas Gordon, Cato's Letters: Arguments
Against a Strong Central Government, 1720.

16. Isaac Backus, Argument Against Taxes for Religious Purposes in
Massachusetts, 1774.

17. Thomas Jefferson, Virginia Act Establishing Religious Freedom,
1785.

18. James Madison, The Federalist, No. 10, 1789.

19. The Constitution of the United States, excerpts, 1789 and The
First Amendment, 1791.

Four. Voluntarism Under the Constitution

20. Lyman Beecher, Autobiographical Statement on the 1818
Disestablishment of the "Standing Order" in
Connecticut, 1865.

21. The Dartmouth College Case: Daniel Webster, Argument Before the
U.S. Supreme Court, 1818; Chief Justice
John Marshall, Decision, and Joseph Story, Concurring Opinion,
1819.

22. Alexis deTocqueville, Political Associations in the United
States, 1835, and Of The Use Which Americans
Make of Public Associations in Civil Society, 1840.

Five. Varieties of Religious Nonprofits

23. Organized Activity Among Slaves: Henry Bibb, The Suppression of
Religion Among Slaves, 1849, and Daniel A.
Payne, Account of Slave Preachers, 1839.

24. Robert Baird, The Voluntary Principle in American Christianity,
1844.

25. Peter Dobkin Hall, Institutions, Autonomy, and National
Networks, 1982.

26. Jay P. Dolan, Social Catholicism, 1975.

27. Arthur A. Goren, The Jewish Tradition of Community, 1970.

Six. Nonprofit Organizations as Alternative Power Structures

28. Suzanne Lebsock, Women Together: Organizations in Antebellum
Petersburg, Virginia, 1984.

29. Kathleen D. McCarthy, Parallel Power Structures: Women and the
Voluntary Sphere, 1990.

30. W. E. B. Du Bois, Economic Cooperation Among Negro Americans,
1907.

Seven. Science, Professionalism, Foundations, and Federations.

31. Debate Over Government Subsidies: Amos G. Warner, Argument
Against Public Subsidies to Private
Charities, 1908; Everett P. Wheeler, The Unofficial Government of
Cities, 1900.

32. David Rosner, Business at the Bedside: Health Care in Brooklyn,
1890-1915, 1979.

33. Frederick T. Gates, Address on the Tenth Anniversary of the
Rockefeller Institute, 1911.

34. David C. Hammack, Community Foundations: The Delicate Question
of Purpose, 1989.

35. John R. Seeley et al, Community Chest, 1957.

36. David L. Sills, The March of Dimes: Origins and Prospects, 1957.

Eight. Federal Regulation and Federal Funds

37. Pierce v Society of the Sisters: William D. Guthrie and Bernard
Hershkopf, Brief for Private Schools; Justice
McReynolds, Decision of the U.S. Supreme Court. 1925.

38. Debate Over a Nonprofit Organization in Mississippi: Senator
John Stennis and Attorney Marian Wright,
Testimony on the Child Development Group of Mississippi and the Head
Start Program, 1967.

39. The Filer Commission, The Third Sector, 1974.

40. Steven Rathgeb Smith and Michael Lipsky, The Political Economy
of Nonprofit Revenues, 1993.

41. Rust v. Sullivan: Chief Justice William Renquist, Decision of
the U.S. Supreme Court 1986.

(Order "http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0253334896/internetnonprofi"
>
Making the Nonprofit Sector in the United States : A Reader
from Amazon.Com. A royalty will be paid that will help maintain
this site.)

Reposted with format improvements 1/25/99 -- PB