Image of International Charitable Connections: the Growth in Number, and the Countries of Operation, of English and Welsh Charities Working Overseas

Journal Articles

International Charitable Connections: the Growth in Number, and the Countries of Operation, of English and Welsh Charities Working Overseas

This paper provides new empirical evidence about English and Welsh charities operating
internationally. It answers basic questions unaddressed in existing work: how many
charities work overseas, and how has this number changed over time? In which countries
do they operate, and what underlies these geographical patterns? It makes use of a unique
administrative dataset which records every country in which each charity operates. The
results show a sizeable increase in the number of charities working overseas since the mid-
1990s. They show that charities are much more likely to work in countries with colonial and
linguistic ties to the UK, and less likely to work in countries with high levels of instability or
corruption. This considerable geographical unevenness, even after controlling for countries’
population size and poverty, illustrates the importance of supply-side theories and of
institutional factors to an understanding of international voluntary activity. The paper also
serves to provide a new perspective on international charitable operation: while it is the
large development charities that are household names, the results reveal the extent of
small-scale ‘grassroots’ registered charitable activity that links people and places
internationally, and the extent of activity in ‘developed’ as well as ‘developing’ country
contexts.

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Detail Information
Series Title
Journal of Social Policy
Call Number
-
Publisher
Cambridge : Cambridge University Press.,
Collation
-
Language
English
ISBN/ISSN
0047-2794
Classification
NONE
Content Type
-
Media Type
-
Carrier Type
-
Edition
Volume 45 - Issue 3 - July 2016, pp. 453-486 Abstr
Subject(s)
England
working overseas
charity
Specific Detail Info
-
Statement of Responsibility
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