This issue of Voluntaristics Review (VR) begins by explaining briefly the transition of the most advanced societies from industrial to post-industrial, post-modern, current service-information-technology societies. As I have discussed elsewhere (Smith, 2018; see also a summary in Smith, Stebbins, & Grotz, 2016, pp. 1211â1213), four global associational revolutions have occurred in human societies over the past 10,000 years. The most recent of these four global associational revolutions, like the first three, came about because of a major change in the economic system of some societies. Quoting from my article on these four revolutions (Smith, 2018), with permission:
Beginning in the 1950s, some industrial societies (e.g., the USA, UK, Germany, France, Canada) transitioned into societies dependent more on service-provision occupations than on manufacturing occupations, with information technology, computers, and the Internet later expanding/adapting to meet the special needs of service-information societies.
Inglehart, 1997; Inglehart & Welzel, 2005; Kumar, 2004
The authors go on to discuss how Information and Communication Technology (ICT) has evolved in the nonprofit sector, and the influence of technology on nonprofit organizations (NPOs). It should come as no surprise that modern ICT not only facilitates businesses as for-profit organizations and government (statutory) agencies at all territorial levels, but can also significantly help most types of NPOs, including both nonprofit agencies and voluntary or membership associations. In Smith (2017, p. 14), I state that, âIn recent journal articles and encyclopedia chapters, Smith and others have shown that [Membership Associations] MAs (both local, national, and transnational) are important features of the [Voluntary Nonprofit Sector] VNPS for reasons besides their greater age in human history and their very large numbersâ¦. Much research has shown that MAs are very distinctively structured, with power usually coming from the bottom up [or] the membership, rather than top-down from the board of directors and top staff, as in governments, businesses, and nonprofit agencies with paid staff (Smith, 2000, Part II; 2017).â
My own research and writing shows that, most fundamentally, MAs are member-controlled, essentially democratic organizations or groups. Nonprofit agencies (NPAs), by contrast, are generally elite-controlled, hierarchical organizations in terms of power structures. Lower participants have little or no power. Most MAs in all nations for the past 10,000 years have been and are local, grassroots groups (Grassroots Associations/GAs), as relatively informal, non-professional, leisure time groups run by volunteers. They are usually NOT work organizations, as are NPAs run by paid staff, even though NPAs may have a Service Volunteer Program, as a volunteer department.
In the current VR 3.1 issue, McNutt et al. provide a broad and detailed review of various kinds of ICT that are both relevant and potentially useful to NPOs. Given the foregoing elucidation of key differences between NPAs and nonprofit MAs, it is only natural that most ICT processes and techniques tend to be more relevant to and more frequently used by NPAs than by MAs. This is especially true for small, local MAs (GAs), the vast majority of which are all-volunteer in terms of both members and leaders or staff, with very small annual incomes and budgets (Smith, 2000, 2014).
However, the present authors make a case for ICT being relevant also even in such all-volunteer GAs, which are by far the most common form of NPOs around the world and have been for ten millennia (Harris et al., 2016; Smith, 2014). One needs to keep in mind that ICT includes just the use of smartphones, as minimal modern ICT, or those plus computer tablets, both giving access to the Internet. The issue closes with a discussion of some broad technology issues, such as the digital divide, security surveillance, and network neutrality. This issue is a primer for all voluntaristics scholars and NPO leaders or managers regarding the wide range of ICT that is increasingly important in the operation and impact of NPOs generally.
References
Harris, B., Morris, A., Ascough, R. S., Chikoto, G. L., Elson, P. R., McLoughlin, J., Muukkonen, M., PospÃÅ¡ilová, T., Roka, K., Smith, D. H., Soteri-Proctor, A., Tumanova, A., & Yu, P. (2016). History of associations and volunteering. In D. H. Smith, R. A. Stebbins, & J. Grotz (Eds.), The Palgrave handbook of volunteering, civic participation, and nonprofit associations, 2 vols (pp. 23â58, Chapter 1). Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.
Inglehart, R. (1997). Modernization and postmodernization. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
Inglehart, R. & Welzel, C. (2005). Modernization, cultural change, and democracy. New York: Cambridge University Press.
Kumar, K. (2004). From post-industrial to post-modern society: New theories of the contemporary world, 2nd edn. New York: Wiley-Blackwell.
Smith, D. H. (2000). Grassroots associations. Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE Publications.
Smith, D. H. (2014). The current state of civil society and volunteering in the world, the USA, and China. China Nonprofit Review (English edition), 6(1), 137â150.
Smith, D. H. (2017). âThe global historical and contemporary impacts of voluntary membership associations on human societies.â Voluntaristics Review: Brill Research Perspectives, 2(5â6), 1â125.
Smith, D. H. (2018, in press). Four global associational revolutions: Explaining their causes and setting straight the socio-historical record. Civil Society in Russia and Abroad (English translation of journal name, published in Russian, but this article is in English), 7.
Smith, D. H., Stebbins, R. A., & Grotz, J. (Eds.). (2016). Palgrave handbook of volunteering, civic participation, and nonprofit associations, 2 vols. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.