TSI National Report No. 2: Barriers to third sector development in The Netherlands The third sector in the Netherlands is extraordinarily diverse and defies easy categorization. It comprises a broad variety of different organisations, ranging from neighbourhood initiatives to professionalized umbrella organisations, and from civic associations, advocacy networks to charity foundations. Dutch third sector organisations are active and highly visible in various policy fields, especially in health and […]
TSI National Report No. 1: Third sector barriers in the UK English third sector experts from the worlds of practice and academia met on 23 February 2016 in London as part of the process of involving national stakeholders in the implementation of the TSI research project. The purposes of the meeting were: (1) to review Draft Policy Briefings reports, summarising (a) the findings from Workpackage 5 […]
TSI National Report No. 1: Towards a more nuanced understanding of barriers and constraints in English third sector The analysis reported here, undertaken collaboratively between the Third Sector Research Centre (TSRC) and the University of Kent (SSPSSSR and PSSRU) in the UK, builds upon the ‘barriers to impact’ component of the EU Third Sector Impact (TSI) study led by the University of Kent. By combining data holdings at TSRC with results from the TSI […]
TSI Policy Brief No. 3: English Third Sector Policy in 2015 In recent decades, the third sector (which includes charities and social enterprises) in the UK and abroad has received heightened policy interest as awareness of the limits of market and state-dominated approaches to social problem solving grows. In the UK case, this has involved a slow-motion rollercoaster of change. Initially the sector was embraced under […]
Brandsen, T., Pape, U., “The Netherlands: The Paradox of Government–Nonprofit Partnerships”, Voluntas, Volume 26, Issue 6 (2015), pp. 2267-2282 This article illustrates the development of government–nonprofit collaboration in the Netherlands. It first gives an overview of the scope and structure of the nonprofit sector and voluntary work and then explains the crucial steps in the evolution of the partnership arrangement between the public sector and nonprofit institutions. The article describes the past significance of […]
TSI Policy Brief No. 2: Assessing the impact of the third sector in Europe TSI’s new Policy Brief “Assessing the impact of the third sector in Europe: From concept to metrics. Progress on indicators and methods” addresses TSI’s contribution to a coordinated European approach that can reliably identify causal links between third sector activities, their impacts and infrastructure elements by which they are significantly determined. The Policy Brief departs […]
TSI Working Paper No. 9: (Social) Innovation Impact – Review of Research This paper examines the status of social innovation research, the notion and scope of impact produced by innovation, as well as the limitations of impact measurement.
TSI Working Paper No. 8: “Unemployment, volunteering, subjective well-being and mental health” As the risks associated with growing labour market deregulation and flexibilisation are increasingly shifted towards individuals, an increasing number of people are likely to experience unemployment, which can result in declining mental health and well-being. This paper asks whether voluntary work can reduce the negative effects of unemployment on well-being. Drawing on Latent Deprivation Theory, […]
TSI Working Paper no. 6: “Meta-Analysis of SROI Studies – Indicators and Proxies” A new Working Paper by the TSI team at Business University of Vienna in Austria explores how existing SROI (Social Return on Investment) analyses can be applied to the assessment of impact indicators proposed by the TSI Impact group. This five dimensions are (1) well-being and quality of life, (2) innovation, (3) civic engagement, empowerment, […]
TSI Working Paper No. 7: “Community-level impacts of the third sector” It is often assumed that the density of third sector organizations provides opportunities that are beneficial for engagement in volunteering, social cohesion, and social capital. By sophisticated multi-level modelling and after controlling for relevant individual and area characteristics in data from the UK, this paper concludes that the “foot-print” of third sector organizations does not […]
TSI Working Paper No 5: “Measuring the Impact of the Third Sector: From Concept to Metrics” This working paper clarifies the meanings of the concepts of civil society, public sphere and third sector in the light of TSI’s work on a conceptualization of the third sector in Europe. First, the paper surveys the genealogy and different meanings of the concept of civil society and introduces the idea of a differentiated “civil […]
TSI Working Paper No 4: The Impact of Volunteering on Volunteers in 23 European Countries Most of the evidence of the positive contribution of volunteering for the volunteers is based on established correlations between volunteering and measures of individual health, well-being or civic engagement. Confounding unobserved variables may lead to biased regression estimates. This paper explores the impact of volunteering on the self-reported health, the self-reported well-being, and the level […]