In present-day Russia, the government’s approach towards the non-profit sector is in many ways ambivalent and contradictory. The Russian government follows two opposing strategies: it largely suppresses independent and potentially critical NPOs, while at the same time co-opting those that function in line with government priorities. The essay analyses the ways in which NPOs have perceived the dual nature of governmental policies and how these policies have affected the non-profit sector in Russia’s regions. The essay argues that, by creating divisions between different types of NPOs, government policies have exerted a negative influence on the internal solidarity of the Russian non-profit sector.

Government–nonprofit cooperation has been an issue of considerable debate in public management literature. Most studies have focused on Western countries where collaborative forms of government have become a core element in the provision of social services. Less is known about transitional countries such as Russia where government–nonprofit cooperation is a relatively new phenomenon that is taking shape in the ambiguous context of a hybrid political regime. This article studies the nature and extent of government–nonprofit relations in Russia’s regions. It focuses on the regional implementation of the Russian government’s program to enhance the cooperation with socially oriented nonprofit organizations enacted in 2010. The article aims to understand how this program has been realized on the ground, at the regional level, and how it is assessed by the actors involved. The article thereby contributes to a broader comparative understanding of the evolution of government–nonprofit relations by bringing the special case of Russia into systematic view.

This paper discusses the relationship between corporate volunteering and civic engagement outside the workplace in Russia, proceeding from a mixed-method approach. The quantitative findings are based on a comparison between employees in 37 Russian companies who participated in corporate volunteering ( N = 399) and those who did not ( N = 402). Using binary logistic regression analysis, we demonstrate that employee participation in corporate volunteering is positively related to four forms of civic engagement outside the workplace: informal volunteering, formal volunteering, formal monetary donation, and informal monetary donation. In addition, we draw on information obtained from interviews with 10 corporate volunteers, as well as with all 37 company corporate volunteering managers, to develop a general explanation for why corporate volunteering might lead to civic engagement. We identify three primary explanations. First, trust in companies can be converted into increased trust in social institutions. Second, corporate volunteering can expose employees to other realities, thereby leading them to rethink their priorities. Third, corporate volunteering socializes employees to volunteering, thus making them more likely to incorporate volunteering into their personal repertoires of activities. Corporate volunteering appears to be an effective mechanism for stimulating civic engagement and volunteering infrastructure in post-communist countries.

Given its ubiquitous nature, sport events are one of the most popular venues for episodic volunteering around the world. This article explores the rare dataset of volunteering in sport events in seven countries—Finland, Ghana, India, Japan, Switzerland, Tanzania, United States—to overview the differences and similarities identified in demography, volunteers’ reactions to hosts’ management strategies, satisfaction, and intention to volunteer again. Key findings include differences in the level of satisfaction, where responses among American volunteers were the highest. We also find that although well-organized management strategies such as quality training, communication, and proper appreciation led to higher satisfaction, these factors did not contribute to volunteers’ intent to volunteer again. Such management style might be too impersonal with less autonomy on the part of volunteers that they may not feel needed in future events. Somewhat messy management might motivate volunteers to participate again.

In this article, we are concerned with the recruitment potential of one-off episodic events for attracting and retaining volunteers. Our specific focus is on the neglected pool of non-returning volunteers. These are one-off event participants who are unwilling to volunteer again in future. Many studies generally document an overwhelming willingness of people to repeat volunteering after participating in a one-off event, either due to reasons of social desirability or because they had a good volunteering experience. The positive participant reaction at most one-off events leads to the assumption that such events are useful arenas in which to generate a pool of potential repeat volunteers. Yet, scant attention is given to those people at the events who have no inclination for further volunteering. This article addresses that gap. It is part of a special issue on episodic volunteering from an international perspective and uses data from nineteen countries across the world. Our statistical analyses, which compares returning and non-returning volunteers, finds that on average, 7.42% of episodic event participants do not want to volunteer again in future. The results reveal that younger, less educated, novices who participate on their own are more likely to report unwillingness to repeat volunteering. Non-repeat volunteers unexpectedly had higher levels of altruistic motivation, and as expected, a less satisfactory one-off volunteer experience. The article concludes with implications and recommendations for organizers of events employing episodic volunteers.

This article elaborates on the methodological aspects of social innovation research, with a focus on an examination of the validity of quantitative scales in the identification of socially innovative non-profits (n = 850 NGOs, 2015). This elaboration is necessary due to the methodological shortcomings of existing metrics of social and general, i.e., those relating to technological and business innovations. Based on theoretical conceptualization and derived demarcation lines of the concept, a multi-item scale was generated. It was applied along with a self-assessment scale, which replicates the general innovation measurement. Both scales of an NGO’s social innovativeness resulted in appropriate validity coefficients. However, scales capture different and only partly intersecting shares of socially innovative NGOs. We propose that theoretical and self-assessment scales could be administered simultaneously to eliminate self-assessment biases and to provide empirical data on the scope and size of a sub-sector of socially innovative NGOs.