"Inventing the Nonprofit Sector" and Other Essays on Philanthropy, Voluntarism, and Nonprofit Organizations

Winner of the John Grenzebach Award from the American Association of Fund-Raising Council Trust for Philanthropy and the Council for Advancement and Support of Education

Philanthropy and voluntarism are among the most familiar and least understood of American institutions. The oldest American nonprofit corporation—Harvard College—dates from 1636, but most of the million or so nonprofits currently in existence were established after 1960. In "Inventing the Nonprofit Sector" and Other Essays on Philanthropy, Voluntarism, and Nonprofit Organizations cultural historian Peter Dobkin Hall describes and analyzes the development of America's fastest growing institutional sector.