The Center for Civil Society Studies

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About CNP

About CNP

The Johns Hopkins Comparative Nonprofit Sector Project (CNP) is a systematic effort to analyze the scope, structure, financing, and role of the private nonprofit sector in a cross-section of countries around 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.

This project has increased the visibility of the civil society sector in policy debates worldwide. It grows out of the increased need for basic information about civil society organizations as a result of a dramatic "associational revolution"; the reappraisal of the respective roles of the market and the state that lies behind it have focused new attention on the role of private, nonprofit organizations. Despite their growing importance, however, these organizations remain poorly understood almost everywhere, making it difficult to determine what their capabilities really are or to attract attention to the challenges they face.

The Johns Hopkins Comparative Nonprofit Sector Project was designed to fill these gaps in knowledge by developing the first systematic body of information about this crucial, but long-overlooked, set of institutions at the international level.

Objectives

More specifically, the Johns Hopkins Comparative Nonprofit Sector Project seeks to:

Document the scope, structure, financing, and role of the nonprofit sector for the first time in solid empirical terms in a significant number of countries scattered widely throughout the world;

Explain why this sector varies in size and character from place to place and identify factors that seem to encourage or retard its development;

Evaluate the impact these organizations are having and the contribution they make;

Publicize the existence of this set of institutions and increase public awareness of them; and

Build local capacity to carry on this work into the future.

Approach

To pursue these objectives, the Project utilizes a comparative empirical approach that features heavy reliance on a team of Local Associates in the target countries, a common framework, set of definitions, and information-gathering strategies; and a network of national and international advisory committees to oversee progress and help disseminate results.

Coverage

Project work began in 1990 in 13 countries and now extends to more than 40 countries spanning all the regions of the world: