Social income and the voluntary sector

The nonprofit or volunteer sector, including both the contributors of monetary gifts and voluntary labor, has strong incentives now to shift its allocations by region and by sector. Shifts in the distribution of investments in community social capital are especially pronounced in sectors and local areas whose social heterogeneity has retarded public sector response to the demand for collective consumption goods. The redistribution of firms and households on the regional and national scales not only withdraws needed social capital from the places of origin but provides, questionable benefits, in proportion to tax incentives, to the destination regions or sectors. The theoretical justifications which underlie the so-called nonmarketplace activities of the volunteer sector can be demonstrated to have only partial nonmarketplace functions. Some empirical study of this phenomena has begun, which can help to provide policy recommendations for the management of the volunteer sector and to assist donors as well as potential recipient communities to derive more benevolent outcomes from pure and “impure” altruistic activities.