Third Sector Organizations in Iceland: Size, Scope, and Scale

• In Event: Comparative studies on the Third Sector

Abstract

This paper will report on the initial findings of a mapping project of third sector organizations in Iceland, a country on the cusp of the Arctic Circle. An international team of researchers was provided a database from Iceland Revenue and Customs, a national government agency, which detailed over 12,000 registered organizations in the country as of 2022. A longitudinal descriptive research design was appropriate for this study, given no baseline for third sector activity in Iceland has ever been established. The principal researcher on the team translated the database into English and coded the organizations in terms of location, primary activity, # of FTEs, and other variables of a demographic nature. The proposed paper will examine the following three questions: 1) Did Iceland experience a similar “global associational revolution” as Salamon (1998) and others documented in numerous countries around the world since the 1980s? 2) What subsectors are most prominent in Iceland’s third sector? 3) How does the size, scope, and scale of the third sector in Iceland compare with those of other Nordic countries?

Using a longitudinal descriptive research design, this study relies heavily on the concept and inspiration of the Johns Hopkins Comparative Nonprofit Sector Project. Social origins theory provides the theoretical framing for this project. As the role of theory can be to describe, explain, or predict (Creswell, 2018), we rely on this theoretical framework in our descriptive analysis. Measures detailing expressive versus service activities of the organizations supported the theory and existing data in the other Nordic states allows for comparisons. Utilizing the registration year of the organizations provides for a time-trend study over the years 1970-2020 to demonstrate significant growth of the sector in Iceland. Another key finding, in an island country with disparate population distribution, the data showed that the most remote areas of the country had some of the highest nonprofit activity levels when normalized for population.

This analysis contributes to incomplete data on comparative studies of countries within the Nordic region. Of five major international studies cited in the paper, not one included Iceland; moreover, Denmark, Finland, Norway, and Sweden were all included in the additional studies cited. A second phase study of the planned project includes utilizing a more pragmatic, mixed methods approach to supplement the numbers side of the data with a qualitative survey incorporating the lived experience of third sector organizational leaders in Iceland.

The paper will close with a discussion of the analysis including findings, limitations, and a proposed robust research agenda for further data collection. It is the team’s desire that this project will also demonstrate the importance of maintaining and updating the original Johns Hopkins Comparative Nonprofit Sector Project database and research conducted during the years 1991-2017.

References

Salamon, L. M., & Anheier, H. K. (1998). Social origins of civil society: Explaining the
nonprofit sector cross-nationally. Voluntas, 9(3), pp. 213-248.

Creswell, J. W., & Creswell, J. D. (2018). Research design: qualitative, quantitative, and mixed methods approaches (Fifth edition.). SAGE Publications, Inc.

Authors

• Jeannie Fox Entenza

• Steinunn Hrafnsdottir

• Omar Kristmundsson, University if Iceland

• Kelly LeRoux, University of Illinois Chicago