RESEARCH PROJECTS
Research Projects
The Center is one of the foremost academic research centers in the world concentrating on the nonprofit sector and civil society issues. Building on the pioneering empirical studies of the American nonprofit sector conducted by its director in the early 1980s, the Center has extended its analysis to the international sphere, producing the first comprehensive comparative assessment of the size, structure, financing, and role of the nonprofit sector at the global level. Our projects include:
The Listening Post Project identifies key trends and challenges facing the U.S. nonprofit sector and the innovative strategies nonprofits have adopted in response.
The New Frontiers of Philanthropy Project is bringing newly emerging forms of philanthropic and social-investment action to the attention of much broader audiences in a form that will give them further credence and traction.
The Nonprofit Economic Data Project is a systematic effort to document and analyze nonprofit employment, volunteering, and finances in the private nonprofit sector in the U.S. both nationally and locally
The Comparative Nonprofit Sector Project (CNP) is the largest systematic effort ever undertaken to analyze into the scope, structure, financing, and impact of the nonprofit activity throughout the world in order to improve our knowledge and enrich our theoretical understanding of this sector, and to provide a sounder basis for both public and private action towards it.
The UN Nonprofit Handbook Project seeks to improve basic statistics on the scope, structure, financing, and activities of the nonprofit sector in national economic statistics by promoting the global implementation of the United Nations Handbook on Nonprofit Institutions in the System of National Accounts.
The JHU/ILO Volunteer Measurement Project. JHU is working in partnership with the International Labour Organization and a Technical Experts Group to develop the first-ever set of international guidelines for generating regular and reliable statistics on volunteering which will be comparable across countries and regions. In December 2008, the 18th International Conference of Labour Statisticians (ICLS) approved a first draft of ILO Manual on the Measurement of Volunteer Work, authorizing additional testing, drafting, and eventual publication of the Manual.
The New Governance Project has developed a set of materials on the "tools of government" that can help students as well as equip nonprofit, government, and business leaders to operate the many new tools of public action such as grants, contracts, loan guarantees, and vouchers, which are now in widespread use.
