The Development of Bibliographies

One of the major obstacles to encouraging research o the independent sector is building a basic body of literature. The problems stem from the lack of key words to identify subjects dealing with philanthropy or nonprofit organizations in traditional bibliographical systems, such as the Library of Congress system or Dissertation Abstracts. To this end, finding the literature and identifying the key words under which such literature is classified across a variety of disciplines is an important activity in establishing the body of knowledge that already exists. Supporting and evaluating this literature in annotated bibliographies by topic and/or by particular discipline or area of study is another important activity, for research has shown that readily available bibliographies are valuable tools to stimulate research. Several bibliographies are in progress or have been published in the past five years.

Brian and Ann O'Connell produced an excellent bibliography as part of America's Voluntary Spirit (The Foundation Center, 1983). This bibliography lists publications on philanthropy, voluntary action, and nonprofit activity for the past 300 years.

Robert Bremner, author of American Philanthropy (1960) and member of the IS Research Committee, updates annually a key word system for identifying work on the nonprofit sector from the Union Catalog of Manuscripts. Copies of his work are available through Independent Sector.

Steven Wheatley of the American Council of Learned Societies is updating a bibliography on the history of philanthropy. This bibliography was originally commissioned as part of the Princeton Conference on the History of Philanthropy held in 1956. Part of the 1986 Spring Research Forum was devoted to celebrating that conference and its impact on the history of philanthropy, and IS is partially supporting the completion of this bibliography.

The Program on Non-Profit Organizations (PONPO) at Yale University also has supported bibliographical research. As part of its Working Papers series, it has produced bibliographies of research on management of nonprofit organizations; a bibliography on motivations for giving, primarily in the area of psychological research; and a bibliography of current research on philanthropy and the nonprofit sector abroad. Independent Sector has agreed to update this international bibliography as part of its Research-in-Progress series.

More recently, the Association of American Colleges has been supported by the American Association of Fund-Raising Counsel Trust for Philanthropy and other foundations to prepare a bibliography on philanthropy particularly for use by faculty and students interested in teaching and studying philanthropy at the undergraduate level. Philanthropy and Voluntarism: An Annotated Bibliography was published in June 1987 by the Foundation Center.

There are two bibliographical projects in progress at Independent Sector. The first is an annotated bibliography on the motivations for giving and volunteering, which is multidisciplinary in nature. The first purpose of this bibliography is to evaluate whether there are some generalizations that can be made about motivations for giving and volunteering. The second purpose is to determine what gaps exist in our knowledge about motivations, what areas of research hold the greatest promise for filling in those gaps, and what the priority projects are that ought to be part of a research agenda on motivations. Independent Sector has taken responsibility for running and coordinating this particular project because of its enormous importance, generally in providing ways in which giving and volunteering can be measurably increased in America. Some of the generalizations that emerge from a review of this research on motivations can be further tested in a series of national studies on giving and volunteering that IS is sponsoring over the next five years.

The second bibliographical study concerns the study and relationships of religious institutions to philanthropy. In an effort to stimulate research on a variety of issues relating to religion and philanthropy, IS staff members are compiling an initial bibliography on this topic. Other scholars who are working on the development of research agendas in this area are David Watt at Temple University, Ann Fraker at Indiana University, Robert Wuthnow at the Woodrow Wilson School at Princeton University, and David Hutchinson at Harvard University. These collaborative efforts should result in a published bibliography and an agenda for research developed by scholars in the field to stimulate interest in such research.

Although the Yale Program, in its series of books ranging from the Handbook on Nonprofit Organizations to international studies, is making an enormous contribution to the field by paying attention to both bibliographies and scholar evaluation of former and current research across a variety of topics and fields, several other bibliographical projects need to be encouraged. Through both PONPO's work and the work of new academic centers currently being started, such attention to bibliographies should provide scholars with reference points across a variety of topics relating to philanthropy, thus stimulating further inquiries more quickly. Until recently, scholars working on nonprofit sector research we forced to reinvent the wheel because bibliographical resources were not readily available. Furthermore, as such scholarship grows, researchers should be able to bring about improvement in the key words used in the major bibliographical search systems to allow scholars to access scholar work on philanthropy and the nonprofit sector more easily.

The Foundation Center is currently conducting a feasibility study to determine whether there is enough need to design a bibliographical system on publications about the independent sector. Should this project prove viable, it may be possible to build a key word system building upon bibliographical work currently completed or in progress that would be enormously useful to both scholars and practitioners interested in this field.

Developing a Growing Bookshelf on Philanthropy, Voluntary Action, and Nonprofit Activity [Top]

Several years ago, John Gardner, who chaired the Organizing Committee of IS, mentioned that studies of government and business filled enormous space on the shelves of most libraries, but studies of the independent sector barely filled one shelf. It is not enough to stimulate an interest in research on the independent sector; one must also encourage the publication of that research into books which take on a life of their own. Brian O'Connell remarked that when he was building the bibliography for The Board Member's Book, very few of the good books were still in print, and that most of the information on boards in the independent sector were written in what librarians call "ephemeral" literature. One of the major goals of Independent Sector's Research Program is to document the development of a basic body of knowledge on this sector. There is no more permanent, nor durable, form than published books on library shelves for use by other scholars and new generations of students.

Therefore, it has been a major concern at IS not only to provide publications that synthesize knowledge already available in a more permanent form, but to stimulate and encourage other scholars and organizations to become more concerned not only with the publication of current research, but also with the reprinting of former classics that are out of print and not readily available. During the past five years, increasing attention has been paid to the publication of books by IS, Yale's PONPO, and the Foundation Center. And the publication of books by researchers is an indication of the growing interest in the field.

Both the writing and the publication of books is a lengthy and expensive process. This is particularly true if the books address issues encompassing the whole independent sector and what this sector means and does. It is even more true in an area that has a long history, an enormous diversity of functions, but very little recent research. But good books on the sector cannot be written without good research. And good research, particularly in a neglected area of study, takes time. Several books are just being written as a result of research projects described in the 1982-1983 volume of Research-in-Progress. Of course, there have been numerous journal article and several hundred Working Papers over this period. After nine years, seven edited volumes on various aspects of the nonprofit sector are just coming off the press as a result the research supported by Yale's PONPO, although the work of individual scholars associated with the Yale Program has resulted in over 30 books published or under contract for publication. In 1997, as interest in research on this sector continues to grow, there ought to be several good books annually published addressing important issues that will improve our understanding of the role, functions, and contributions of the independent sector to American society an other cultures.

There also has been a concern with reprinting the classic literature of the sector that has been long out of print. The University of Chicago Press reprinted Robert Bremner's classic history American Philanthropy (1960) in 1985, and published a revised and updated edition in 1987. The purpose of Brian O'Connell's American Voluntary Spirit (1983) was to produce a collection of classic pieces written about philanthropy and voluntary action spanning 300 years. More recently, Richard Magat, President of the Hazen Foundation agreed to become the new series editor for Transaction Books series Society and Philanthropy. The purpose of this series is to reprint classics on philanthropy in the social sciences The first book in the series, Wealth and Culture by Eduard C. Lindeman (1935), was just published with a new introduction by Richard Magat. More projects to reprint such classics ought to be encouraged, because some of the most important research on the voluntary sector was published before 1940.