more impressive with each exposure to it. Everything has changed and nothing has changed since Democracy in America was published in the 1830’s. Its author grasped with remarkable perception both the mutable and the immutable qualities of man. There could be nothing more salutary for us today than to assimilate his fine sense of what was permanent in a world which, like ours, was undergoing deep convulsions. Committed to the classical economics of Adam Smith, Tocqueville did not share Smith’s illusions about the eternal nature of the market. On the contrary, as Albert Salomon has emphasized, his point of view

Democracy in America: An Appreciation On the Occasion of the Centennial of Tocqueville's Death

We present a model of how institutional pressures at the community level shape corporate social action—behaviors and practices that extend beyond immediate profit maximization goals and are intended to increase social benefits or mitigate social problems for constituencies external to the firm—within the metropolitan area where firms are headquartered. We propose that community isomorphism influences the nature and level of corporate social action within communities and conclude with theoretical implications emphasizing the community as the focal unit of analysis for understanding corporate social action.

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Community isomorphism and corporate social action

This article investigates whether revenue diversification leads to greater stability in the revenue structures of nonprofit organizations. Our findings suggest that nonprofits can indeed reduce their revenue volatility through diversification, particularly by equalizing their reliance on earned income, investments, and contributions. This positive effect of diversification on revenue stability implies that a diversified portfolio encourages more stable revenues and consequently could promote greater organizational longevity. Despite any additional complexity or crowding out, nonprofit managers may increase the financial stability of their organizations by adding additional revenue streams. However, our analysis also reveals several other important factors that contribute to nonprofit revenue stability. In particular, increasing a nonprofit organization's total expenses and fund balance reduces volatility, suggesting larger nonprofits and organizations with greater growth potential experience greater revenue stability. Finally, the results suggest nonprofits relying primarily on contributions will experience more volatility, whereas nonprofits located within urban areas will have more stable revenue structures over time.

Revenue Diversification in Nonprofit Organizations: Does it Lead to Financial Stability?

Acting Globally but Thinking Locally? The Enduring Influence of Local Communities on Organizations

Nonprofits reflect and shape community conditions. Understanding the nature of this relationship is important if we are to fully comprehend the role nonprofits play in contemporary society and if policy makers are to make effective use of the sector to implement local responses to community needs. Using data on Internal Revenue Service-registered nonprofits for Indiana counties, the authors examine how theories of demand, supply, and social structure predict the overall density of nonprofits in local communities. The authors find substantial county-level variations in the densities of nonprofits overall and of charitable, advocacy, and mutual-benefit nonprofits. Using multiple regression techniques, they are able to explain 20% to 46% of overall variation (depending on legal category involved) in nonprofit densities. Their findings support the supply and social structure, but not demand, explanations and reveal somewhat divergent patterns for the various types of nonprofits. The authors note several important caveats to the findings.

Community Variations in the Size and Scope of the Nonprofit Sector: Theory and Preliminary Findings

This exploratory study identifies and assesses the significance of factors that contribute to the growth of the nonprofit sector in the field of social services across 285 major metropolitan areas in the United States. Measures derived from social cohesion, demand heterogeneity, market failure, resource dependence, and philanthropic culture theories are introduced to correlation and multiple regression analyses. All but the philanthropic culture measures are positively associated with the growth of the nonprofit sector in social services. Particularly noteworthy are the positive influences that religious cohesion and interdenominational diversity have on numbers of nonprofit social service providers—a finding that reaffirms the historical linkage between religion and voluntary associations. Summary U.S. economic and sociodemographic census data, as well as data from a unique religious census, are analyzed. If a unifying theory of the nonprofit sector is attainable, studies such as this should contribute to laying the empirical building blocks for such a theory.

A Study of Factors Influencing the Growth of Nonprofits in Social Services

This article demonstrates that political culture is an important factor for human service delivery systems. Information from two metropolitan areas with different political cultures is used to test expectations regarding the design andfunctioning of these systems. Thefindings indicate that in a moralistic (as opposed to a traditionalistic-individualistic) political culture, state and local governments spend more for human services, provide more funding to nonprofit organizations, and compensate forfederal human service program budget reductions. In a traditionalistic-individualistic culture, on the other hand, the private sector is relatively more important for the funding of nonprofits and for their adjustment to federal budget cuts. This has implications for the level and range of human services available to the citizens of a community andfor the changes that can be expected in communities over time.

John J. Corbin

Papers

A Study of Factors Influencing the Growth of Nonprofits in Social Services

The Institutionalization of Nonprofit Human Service Delivery: The Role of Political Culture