We are pleased to announce the second TSI Working Paper “The Third Sector in Europe: Towards a Consensus Conceptualization”.

A common conceptualization is an important milestone towards measuring the third sector in Europe as “there remains a kind of conceptual ambiguity” about the “manifold types of entities that co-exist in the third sector” (FP7 tender under which the TSI Project is operating). The achievement of conceptual clarification is a key objective of the project.

This working paper reports on the progress that TSI has made toward this objective. It presents a consensus definition of the third sector that builds upon a bottom-up investigation of European experiences with various third sector concepts and a vigorous set of discussions among project partners and outside stakeholders. Read more and download the paper.