Editor’s Note for Issue 9(4)

This issue reflects a cosmos of the policy landscape of the global nonprofit sector today.The five papers span the globe from the U.S. to Africa to Australia and examine cutting edge developments including global nonprofit chains, charity law reform and new forms of social purpose organizations.In the lead paper, Ronelle Burger, Trudy Owens and Aseem Prakash examine how donor countries provide aid to developing countries through international nonprofits which then contract with nonprofits at the national level which in turn subcontract to local nonprofits.The question is then how well donor intent to serve the ultimate beneficiaries is actually achieved in this chain structure.The authors employ transactions cost theory to conclude that the chain structure can be problematic because of the difficulty of holding nonprofits in the chain accountable without constraining their flexibility to respond to local conditions.Three cases of aid to Ugandan nonprofits illustrate their arguments.The second paper, by Beth Gazley, Yuan Cheng and Chantalle Lafontant, takes a systematic look at charitable support of U.S. national and state parks, employing the theoretical perspective of co-production and a unique historical dataset.The authors find that charities are involved in parks in a variety of ways that respond to various aspects of government failure, and that reliance on private philanthropy is a lasting feature of public park provision.The third paper, by Ian Murray, studies the reform of charity regulation in Australia in the context of charity regulation in other federated countries such as the U.S., Canada and the UK.The paper analyzes the historical and political reasons for the reforms, the implementation challenges they face in Australia's federal system of government, as well as the potential for expanding the charity commissioner's responsibilities to include regulation of the broader nonprofit sector outside of charities per se.Continuing on the theme of regulation, the fourth paper, by Anthony DeMattee, develops a broad overview of the types of regulatory regimes that govern civil society organizations at the national level worldwide, discovering four ideal types reflecting the (more or less liberal) governmental regimes in which they are embedded.The author applies this taxonomy to Kenya to illuminate how its regulatory regime has evolved incrementally over time.The fifth paper, by Stefan Toepler, examines the "benefit corporation", a new type of legal form in the U.S. that allows firms to combine profitmaking with a social mission.Toepler notes that this development has created considerable apprehension among traditional nonprofit leaders who perceive the new form as a competitive threat.Based on a study in the state of Maryland, Toepler finds little grounds for such concern, but rather that the new form tends to be more of an option for for-profit firms to differentiate themselves from their own competitors in the business sector.We round out this issue with a book review by Mohamed Mohamed, of an important new book, Islamic Education in the United States and the Evolution of Muslim Nonprofit Institutions, written by Sabith Khan and Shariq Siddiqui.The book is significant for dispelling myths about Islamic education and philanthropy, and examining their place in the U.S. nonprofit sector alongside other religiously based nonprofit sector institutions.I hope you enjoy reading this issue.Thank you for your interest in Nonprofit Policy Forum.

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