Nonprofits are critical civic threads in the organizational tapestry. They drive economic growth, strengthen the fabric of our communities, connect people and resources for humanitarian purposes from border to border, and foster civic engagement and advocacy. Moreover, they operate in every sector of society, from community development, education, and health, to arts, political awareness, and spirituality. Given nonprofits’ significant roles in our social fabric, it is essential to understand how nonprofits operate, interact with their communities, and influence civil society.
The Civic Life of Cities Project grew out of the Stanford Project on the Evolution of Nonprofits (SPEN) which studied 200 randomly sampled NPOs from the San Francisco Bay Area nearly two decades ago. However, thanks to a team of collaborators, this project has been expanded beyond the Bay Area. Now, the group includes Seattle (and the greater Puget Sound Region), Shenzhen, China, Sydney, Australia, Taipei, Taiwan, Vienna, Austria, and Singapore. As part of the Seattle team, I have been collecting data on Seattle’s nonprofit sector and studying the underlying factors that create “the nonprofit sector effects” in the greater Puget Sound Region. As part of the global research project, I am participating in multiple comparative research projects, including nonprofits’ embeddedness and the relationship between nonprofits’ democratic characteristics in operations and their contribution to democracy in society.
Gowun Park 