This article provides a survey of the growth of research on Nonprofit Sector and Voluntary Action Research, now termed simply voluntaristics. The author founded the organized, global, interdisciplinary, socio-behavioral science field of voluntaristics in 1971, with his formation and establishment of the Association for Research on Nonprofit Organizations and Voluntary Action (ARNOVA; www.arnova.org). Both ARNOVA, and its interdisciplinary, academic journal, Nonprofit and Voluntary Sector Quarterly (NVSQ), have served as initial models for the global diffusion of this interdisciplinary field, now present in all inhabited continents and with upwards of 20,000 academic participants in at least 130 nations and territories, and likely more. Voluntaristics, after more than 40 years of growth, now qualifies as a new, global, integrative, academic discipline in the socio-behavioral sciences and related social professions, not just as one of many interdisciplinary fields of research, according to six defining criteria for a discipline. However, the author prefers to label voluntaristics as an inter-discipline, since its hallmark is the interdisciplinary study of all, voluntary nonprofit sector (VNPS) phenomena.

Written by over 200 leading experts from over seventy countries, this handbook provides a comprehensive, state-of-the-art overview of the latest theory and research on volunteering, civic participation and nonprofit membership associations. The first handbook on the subject to be truly multinational and interdisciplinary in its authorship, it represents a major milestone for the discipline. Each chapter follows a rigorous theoretical structure examining definitions, historical background, key analytical issues, usable knowledge, and future trends and required research. The nine parts of the handbook cover the historical and conceptual background of the discipline; special types of volunteering; the major activity areas of volunteering and associations; influences on volunteering and association participation; the internal structures of associations; the internal processes of associations; the external environments of associations; the scope and impacts of volunteering and associations; and conclusions and future prospects. This handbook provides an essential reference work for third-sector research and practice, including a valuable glossary of terms defining over eighty key concepts. Sponsored by the International Council of Voluntarism, Civil Society, and Social Economy Researcher Associations (ICSERA; www.icsera.org), it will appeal to scholars, policymakers and practitioners, and helps to define the emergent academic discipline of voluntaristics.

This volume explores the world of grassroots organizations and outlines their history while differentiating them from the more familiar paid-staff nonprofit organizations. David Horton Smith, a leading scholar on the nonprofit and voluntary sector, examines the available empirical research on the topic and analyzes the theoretical concepts that have come to define such associations. He affords the reader a complete, detailed description of the nature and characteristics of grassroots organizations, their formation, structure, leadership, life cycle, effectiveness, and their integral role in postmodern societies.