A blank spot in the research of the Hungarian nonprofit sector: Characteristics of politically purposed civil-nonprofit organizations and their volunteers
István Sebestény – Anna Mária Bartal
Abstract
So far, no detailed analysis of the nonprofit statistical characteristics of Hungarian civil-nonprofit organizations with political goals has been published. The primary aim of our gap-filling study was therefore to reveal the formal statistical characteristics of civil-nonprofit organizations with political goals by a longitudinal study covering the period between 1995 and 2024. As a basis for the analysis, in the first part of the study, we review the laws that (also) affect the operation of civil-nonprofit organizations with political purposes, embedded in the regulatory and development history of the domestic civil-nonprofit sector. In the last thirty-five years, three sources of recruitment of Hungarian political nonprofit organisations have been identified (reborn and revived after the political transformaton, as well as formalized from movements close to a party, as well as "electoral" civil organizations), the appearance of which was also reflected in changes according to the number of organizations. The organizational form of the association is basically typical of civil organizations with political goals, whose membership has gradually decreased since 2013. Among the small number of foundation forms, party foundations play a special role, in addition to party foundations, close-to-party and political foundations. Nonprofit organizations for political purposes operate primarily in the capital and secondarily in cities. They are found in smaller numbers in the county seat, least of all in the villages. Another important goal of our study was to examine volunteers from nonprofit organizations with political goals. These volunteers are the visualizers of one of the conventional forms of political volunteering, mostly activities related to political associations. From 2010, a gradual decrease in the number of volunteers of associations with political goals was detected, and fewer and fewer volunteers worked fewer and fewer working hours, as most of them occasionally helped their organization with their work.
Keywords: nonprofit organizations for political purposes, volunteering, political volunteering, party foundations