Foundation Center institute will focus on civil society, philanthropy

Tracking and stimulating philanthropic and nonprofit activity and innovation in the U.S. and abroad will be the focus of a new institute at The Foundation Center in New York City.

Heading the new Alexis Institute for Civil Society and Philanthropy will be Lester M. Salamon, professor and director of the Center for Civil Society Studies at Johns Hopkins University. The merger will combine and expand research on foundations and nonprofits, respectively, that The Foundation Center and Salamon now conduct separately.

Salamon says the new "joint venture," named for Alexis de Tocqueville, the 19th-century French historian and author of Democracy in America, will expand the scope of research in the face of growing innovation in philanthropy and growing awareness of the critical role nonprofits play, both in the U.S. and throughout the world.

"We have learned that the problems we're facing in the world and this country are too complex and too big for any single sector to handle on its own, whether it be government, business or the third sector," he says. "And increasingly, governments around the world, including governments in our country, have seen in the nonprofit sector an important ally in solving complex public problems."

But to develop effective partnerships between government and nonprofits, he says, "we need to have as good a body of information about the nonprofit sector as we do about the business sector and about government. And that simply has been lacking."

[Excerpt of article in Philanthropy Journal]