In this final report on third sector barriers and coping strategies, TSI’s Annette Zimmer and Benedikt Pahl present findings from national research in a comparative manner.

The first part of the report provides an overview of the common barriers third sector organizations face across Europe. In the second part they highlight some of the specific challenges of third sector organizations in the organizational fields TSI investigated: sports, social services and arts and culture. In the third part they scrutinize some of the specific challenges of TSOs in particular country regimes, before summarising the organizational strategies that contribute to the resilience of TSOs that have proven to be outstandingly successful against mounting challenges.

A general conclusion is that more and more third sector organizations develop into hybrid organizations that comprise different organizations under their roof with varying organizational cultures and identities. Looking at the sector as a whole, the contours of its sub-organizational fields become increasingly fuzzy.