For my organizational paper I plan on focusing on how the civil society is increasing in size and how they are needed in our society in order to promote the awareness of issues dealing with human needs. I plan on using the issue with human trafficking and IPS’s response and programs as an example to back up my case.

Here are a few interesting things I found about my group’s country China’s nonprofit sector:

• Nonprofits were practically nonexistent before the 1980s, the majority began to appear in the mid-90s as a response to the government decreasing social service programs in order to create a more market based economy. In 2005, the nonprofit had risen to 150,000 from it only being 6,000 in 1999.
• China’s nonprofit sector’s biggest challenge in meeting the rising demands for social issues are due to the lack of business resources (management training and skills) and funding.
• Very little of China’s funding for charities actually come from China, 80% of their donations are from international corporations and organizations, compared to the US’s 5% international contributions.
• 85% of the available funds go towards the government affiliated nongovernmental organizations (NGO).

A few questions I have about the civil society is:

-What are the steps in creating a nonprofit? Funding it?

- How will I be able to apply what I read in this class to actual work in the nonprofit field? ie. the theories we read.

-How important is research? or does it depend on the organization?

-Grants? Grant-writing?

The most important thing that I learned in this course is that nonprofits are apart of what is termed the “civil society” or the “3rd sector.” I never gave a thought about all of those associations, organizations, groups, foundations, think tanks, etc and linking them together and putting them in one big category. But one thing that stands tall in all our discussions is that to be considered “legally” to be apart of the civil society in America they must fall under the 501c category. The civil society makes up a lot of our daily lives without us even realizing it. A lot of for-profit corporations either donate to nonprofits or create a foundation that somehow gives back to the community. Even with all of these definitions, I feel that people will always feel that the nonprofit sector or the third sector’s main goal should be the helping of something, whether the community, kids, animals, the disabled, or etc. That will continue to prevail in people’s thoughts when discussing nonprofits despite the wide range of subcategories that fall under it.