History

American nonprofit organizations first developed in the nineteenth century as the organizational instruments through which Americans put their First Amendment freedoms of religion and political beZief into practice. For one hundred years American nonprofits were held accountable by relatively small, compact communities of people who shared religious or other highly defined beliefs and values. In the twentieth century, many nonprofit organizations have grown very large and have adopted a scientiJic, general-sewice-to-the-community ethos. The legal, institutional, and cultural ideas and practices through which traditional nonprofts were, and are still, held accountable no longer seem to work equally well for the large5 more universal nonprofits of the late twentieth century.

Organizing God's Work: Challenges for Churches and Synagogues 1 makes significant and timely contributions to our knowledge of nonprofit organizations and voluntary action. Its accessible style will engage many leaders and laypeople as well as scholars. Organizing God's Work focuses on practical problems facing religious congregations in four religious traditions that are usually thought to be very distinct-Anglican, Catholic, Pentecostal, and Jewish Reformed. Locating congregations very broadly as part of civil society, and approaching them with questions drawn from a sophisticated mastery of organizational theory, Margaret Harris shows that all of these apparently very different British religious communities must cope with similar temporal challenges. She approaches questions of race and gender with admirable ease and directness. Her discussion of the realities that all congregations face has important implications not only for organizational theory but also for the current American debate over religious congregations and publicly funded services. In form, Margaret Harris's Organizing God's Work is very much a series of accessible, down-to-earth conversations, enriched by excellent quotations from the people she interviewed. Scholars will learn much from this book-not least, that an exceptionally well-informed researcher can produce excellent results from a very manageable number of interviews. More significantly, people in many congregations, not only in Britain but in the United States and other countries as well, are also likely to find Organizing God's Work exceptionally topical, stimulating, and useful. Note

Alnoor Ebrahim's NGOs and Organizational Change is a welcome contribution to the literature on NGOs and international economic development to which it is directed. It is also a welcome contribution to the literatures on the dynamics of giving, on nonprofit organizations more generally, and on learning within organizations. Ebrahim shows that while money talks, as resource dependency theory insists, perceptions and ideas are also the resources that count. Donors provide not only money but also definitions of problems and preferred solutions. But recipients are never merely passive: in return for money, they offer local knowledge and connections, stories of success, evidence of effectiveness, reputation. Donors can help recipients achieve their goals: recipients can help donors gain influence and prestige. Ebrahim grounds NGOs and Organizational Change in a thoughtful and detailed sociological analysis (citing Foucault and Bourdieu as well as March and Simon). Relations between donors and donees are shaped by the "discourses" through which donors explain their gifts. Donors provide "financial capital," but donees reciprocate with "symbolic capital" in such forms as information, stories of success, reputation. Yet the terms of exchange are by no means equal; donors can and do impose definitions of "success," notions of relevant information, systems of measurement and reporting. Donors can also provide valuable information about large-scale market, political, and intellectual change not otherwise available to local development workers. Ebrahim carefully dissects the general notions of "donor" and "donee." He notes that the individual agents who approve grants must negotiate with others who control funds, that donors seek to enhance their financial capital with intellectual and reputational capital, that leaders of recipient organizations can have motives very different not only from those of their donors, but also from their subordinates or clients. NGOs and Organizational Change illustrates its (very careful and sometimes technical) analytic argument through persuasively detailed case studies of two

IRECTOR of the Cleveland Foundation since 1984, Steven A. Minter has long played a leading role in the nonprofit sector not only in northeastern Ohio but nationally as well. Currently holding an endowment of more than $1 billion, which enables it to make grants of more than $50 million each year, the Cleveland Foundation plays a prominent role in the civic affairs of its region. Working closely with a distribution committee of prominent citizens, many of whom are appointed by such public officials as the mayor and a federal judge, Minter both manages the Cleveland Foundation's grant making and takes the lead in defining its remarkably active role as a civic catalyst. Minter was interviewed in June 1996. (For a history of the Cleveland Foundation, see Tittle, 1992; for a general account of U.S. community foundations, see Hammack, 1989.) Hamrnack: A good place to start is with the observation that the Cleveland Foundation is the oldest and second largest community foundation in the United States. One of the Cleveland Foundation's signature traditions is the convening of diverse arrays of parties in its region to seek solutions to community problems. How do you see the convener role of community foundations? And do you think that role has changed in recent years? Minter: I have given considerable time and thought to that question, trying to connect the early and the later years of the foundation's history During the early years, from about 1915 through the mid 1920s, perhaps a more appropriate term to describe our role would be catalyst study leadel: In the foundation's eighty-year history, there is a period we call the "middle years" in which we did not serve the community in the same way. By the mid 1960s, the modern era, the Cleveland Foundation had returned to acting as a catalyst. I believe the foundation really began in its role as convener during the modern era. In the earlier period, when the foundation was just beginning and had not yet accumulated any money, Frederick Goff [who came up with the community foundation idea and started 77

Conflicting cultural and religious values pose challenges – challenges that are too often ignored – to efforts to comprehend and to solve tough social problems. Value-conflict challenges call for much more thoughtful attention both by analysts seeking to understand the sources of problems, and by advocates for particular solutions. This contribution to the ARNOVA Policy Brief series draws on a wide range of historical and social research to advance its argument for recognizing value conflicts.

following the demise of Ephrata. He also adds tables in an appendix which highlight some important aspects of various communes throughout history. Though Alderfer is not the first to tell Beissel's and the commune's story, he rightly points out that his is the most extensively footnoted and accessible version. The author expressed his hope that the work willinterest the general reader and scholars interested in the Ephrata phenomenon, the Pennsylvania German milieu, and the communal tradition. The Ephrata Commune, like the Chronicon itself, surely merits the interest of a broader range of scholars than those the author identifies (especially scholars of American religious and colonial history), but it would probably fail to hold a general reader's attention. \ u25a0

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who wrote From the Depths: The Discovery of Poverty in the United States (1956) and American Philanthropy (1960), two books that have had an exceptional effect on the fields of nonprofit and philanthropic studies, died on September 7, 2002. Nonprofit and Voluntary Sector Quarterly asked four scholars to appraise Bremner's contributions to the field. Three of the scholars also have experience as practitioners; together, the four span three generations of approaches to history. Their observations on Bremner and his legacy provide an extended discussion of approaches to the history of philanthropy and the nonprofit sector-and of some of the practical uses of history. Their four essays provide varied appreciations of Bremner's work and an explanation of its remarkable longevity.

Florence Kelley and The Nation's Work is a first-rate contribution to American history that is well deserved to win the ARNOVA book prize in 1998. Its focus on a single extraordinary life makes the book exceptionally readable. Sklar's fluid account of the dramatic events and striking transitions in the first half of Kelley's life carries the reader along. Yet, the book is much more than the biography of a single person. It offers the fullest and most compelling account yet available of the ways in which wealthy and well-connected northern Protestant women used nonprofit organizations to participate in American civic life in the generations before women won the right to vote. As Sklar puts it, Kelley's story "reminds us that the history of civil society also embraces personal hopes and aspirations" (p. xvi). Sklar brings an important part of 19th-century American civil society to life. Florence Kelley's own story makes compelling reading, and Sklar conveys it with great care and skill. Kelley was born in 1859 into a family already prominent in women's as well as men's civic life. She grew up, as Sklar writes, "within the most radical network in women's public culture-Garrisonian abolitionism" (p. 15). Sklar assigns this network a key role within a "women's public culture" that she describes as in "opposition to marketplace definitions of human values and relationships" (pp. 14-15). Kelley spent many childhood weeks at the home of her aunt, Sarah Pugh, who exemplified the radical strain in British and American Quakerism. Quietly protesting "the rigid Sabbatarianism of their neighbors" (p. 16), Pugh spent many Sundays knitting and discussing political strategy on her porch with Lucretia Mott, the famous advocate for women's rights; she also carried on a very active correspondence with British and American women who opposed slavery and prostitution. Kelley's father was even more prominent. He was one of the founders of the Republican party and a member of the U.S. House of Representatives from 1860 to 1890. William D. Kelley was such a staunch advocate of the protective tariff that he was widely known as "Pig-Iron Kelley." A man who had started out as a critic of active government, William Kelley became a strong advocate of government intervention to promote economic development, protect the incomes of workers, and defend the rights of African Americans. He was one of the 1. On workingmen's incomes, see Robert Coit Chapin (1909). On teachers' salaries, see David B. Tyack (1974, p. 62).

Preface xi Acknowledgments xiii Chapter 1. The Ethnic Setting 1 Chapter 2. Economic Collapse 8 Chapter 3. La Guardia and the New Ethnic Order 30 Chapter 4. The Old World Influence 57 Chapter 5. Communism, Coughlinism, and the Church 87 Chapter 6. Going to War 109 Chapter 7. Winning the Votes 126 Chapter 8. In the Neighborhoods 150 Chapter 9. On Ethnic Conflict 164 Notes 168 Essay on Sources 221 Index 223 ILLUSTRATIONS A cknow ledgm ents Many people have assisted me in the research and writing of this book. I would first like to thank Thomas C. Cochran, of the University of Pennsylvania, who guided this work through its dissertation stage. Seymour J. Mandelbaum, Uni versity of Pennsylvania, also provided valuable help in developing the disserta tion and continued to offer his keen insights as the work progressed into this book. He has always been both an astute critic and good friend over the years. My research also enabled me to meet such fine people as Bernard Wax, Director of the American Jewish Historical Society, and Rev. Silvano M. To rnasi, Director of the Center for Migration Studies. Both men kindly interrupted their busy schedules and provided assistance in the early stages of this work. A note of appreciation also goes to Joseph B. Frechen of the St. John's University mathematics department and to William McAlpine, formerly of the Georgia Institute of Technology, who introduced me to quantitative techniques and helped in the development of the statistical data. I would like to thank Jerome Bakst of the Anti-Defamation League of B 'nai B 'rith, New York; Harvey Johnson of the Central Bureau, Catholic Central Union of America; and Ward Lange of the Steuben Society of America. Their aid in finding various materials is appreciated. I owe a debt of gratitude also to the persons who granted me interviews. The personnel of a number of libraries and archives have also been helpful. I should like to express my appreciation to the