Nonprofit organizations bring a unique, community-based perspective to the housing development sector. Nonprofit organizations secure public & private resources & invest them in housing in America's neighborhoods. This report examines how private nonprofit initiatives to provide low income housing development in local communities across the country have succeeded. Perhaps the greatest boost for nonprofit capacity during the past decade has been the emergence of non-governmental intermediary & support organizations at the all levels that can help mobilize capital, navigate complex development deals, & provide technical assistance.

The Resilient Sector makes available in an updated form the concise overview of the state of health of America's nonprofit organizations that Johns Hopkins scholar Lester Salamon recently completed as part of the "state of nonprofit America" project he undertook in cooperation with the Aspen Institute. Contrary to popular understanding, Salamon argues, America's nonprofit organizations have shown remarkable resilience in recent years in the face of a variety of difficult challenges, significantly re-engineering themselves in the process. But this very resilience now poses risks for the sector's continued ability to perform the tasks that we have long expected of it. The Resilient Sector offers nonprofit practitioners, policymakers, the press, and the public at large a lively assessment of this set of institutions that we have long taken for granted, but that the Frenchman Alexis de-Toqueville recognized to be "more deserving of our attention" than almost any other part of the American experiment.

From their experience in nonprofit operations and their understanding of the realities of urban politics, the editors of this wide-ranging volume and their contributors dig into issues seldom explored in the literature. They study the role of nonprofits in local governing coalitions, the potential of nonprofits to replace social welfare programs, their efforts to restructure key elements of the local political process, and the unanticipated internal impacts of the changing roles of nonprofit organizations in the urban community. The result is a compelling argument that to understand life in contemporary American cities, we must take into account the expanding role of nonprofit organizations, their response to increased service demands, and their participation in common efforts to direct policy choices. Hula, Jackson-Elmoore, and their panel of scholars, researchers, and close observers of urban policymaking focus on the delivery of social services to illustrate the complex and important set of roles that nonprofits have assumed. As social programs are cut at all levels of government, it is often believed that nonprofits can and should take up the slack and restore at least some portion of the cutbacks in such services. They examine how some nonprofit organizations have taken a proactive stance in this regard by implementing efforts that do not simply react to political and social change, but attempt to initiate and guide it instead. They attempt to change the political environment in which they operate, and the result has been to change the face of local politics in many jurisdictions. Each chapter of their book explores these expanding and emerging roles. Themes and focuses vary, which in turn reflects the variation and complexity within the nonprofit sector itself. At the same time, each chapter presents an emerging political or policy role now being played by today's nonprofits and voluntary associations, and a theoretical context in which such activities and behavior can best be understood. Scholars and advanced students in public administration, economics, and nonprofit management, as well as executive-level nonprofit managers, will find here an important update on what is happening in their special worlds, and the knowledge they need to make sense of it.

This report examines the character & role of housing trust funds (HTFs) in the United States and their potential & applicability in Canada. Such funds are essentially organizations that have secured a permanent source of ongoing revenue committed to the provision of affordable housing. These revenues are generally established through legislation or ordinance and nearly all come directly or indirectly from government sources. After an introduction, chapter 2 reviews the conditions that led to the creation of HTFs in the US and chapter 3 describes the main features of HTFs, including their sources of revenue & administration. Chapter 4 profiles a number of US HTFs, describing in greater detail their background, purpose, revenues, administration, and accomplishments. Chapters 5 & 6 profile some corresponding HTFs in Canada and some other similar funds, both existing & under consideration. Appendices include a list of dedicated revenue sources for HTFs and an overview of US state legislation that has enabled HTFs.