Delineating the Community Sector

The work of the community sector can be broadly described as community development – or community activism as it was more commonly called in the 1970s and 1980s. This section explores how the community development sector is understood and defined, and considers ongoing debates in relation to these.

What constitutes a voluntary organisation? Salamon et al. (1999) suggest five common or shared features of such organisations, as follows: organisation (they have an organisational presence and structure); private (they are institutionally separate from the state); non-profit distributing (they don’t return profits to owners or managers); self-governing (they control their own affairs); and voluntary (membership in them is not legally required and they attract some level of voluntary contribution, be it time or money). This is a somewhat instrumentalist definition and tells us little about what voluntary organisations are concerned about or do. Let us turn now to the literature that focuses on the motivation and purposes of voluntary and community organisations.

Some theorists describe the space between the state and the market as a ‘third sector of private associations that are relatively autonomous from both state and economy’ (Young, 2000a, p.158). Young describes these as ‘voluntary, in the sense that they are neither mandated nor run by state institutions, but spring from the everyday lives and activities of communities of interest’ and operate on a not-for-profit basis (ibid.). Powell (2007) discusses this space between the state and the market in the context of civil society, which he subdivides into private and public spheres, with private associations categorised by exclusivity and civic association taking place in the public sphere, being broadly inclusive and oriented towards democratic participation. In line with these descriptions, the community groups that are the subject of the current research would fall within the rubric of civic associations.

Marshall (1996) suggests that, rather than talk of a voluntary sector in the singular, it is more helpful to think of the multiplicity of voluntary sectors which

he describes as ‘evolutionary social phenomena that develop (and change their nature) in interaction with each other’ (p.54). He proposes a fourfold categorisation of the voluntary sector comprising: a religious sector; a philanthropic sector; a community sector; and an informal sector (an amalgam of several sub-sectors) (ibid.). His description of the community sector is useful as it focuses on the end-point of the sector, arguing that its aim is to:

achieve influence on the other sectors – to gain economic power through combination in order that members will be better placed to operate in the private sector (through co-operatives, for example), to generate credibility for their cause and stake a claim as a group deserving of public help (which may recruit philanthropic support), or to influence government to change or create legislation in their favour (ibid., p.54).

This definition combines a pragmatic, or transactional, focus along with a more transformational one which seeks influence and change at policy levels. It parallels those definitions of community development, described earlier, which highlight the range and variety of activities which can co-exist and together constitute CD.

As outlined earlier, there is often a distinction, made by at least some practitioners, between the community and voluntary sector(s). There is little to be found in the literature in relation to this distinction, at least as articulated in this manner. Roginsky and Shortall (2009) suggest that the term voluntary sector includes, or sits alongside, the community sector and note that ‘in both cases it usually means service delivery’ (p.480). They reference Taylor’s (2004) work on this, in particular his assertion that the distinction between the voluntary and community sector in the UK has been promoted by a Community Sector Coalition, ‘set up to ensure that the interests of smaller, more associational organisations are not crowded out by those of larger, more professionalised and formally organized ‘non-profit organisations’’ (Taylor, pp.124-125).

Mirroring this, Donoghue (1998), writing in a Southern Irish context, suggests that many community organisations make a distinction between themselves and the voluntary sector, which they tend to associate with larger non-profit bodies that employ paid personnel. In terms of the size of the community sector (my term), she points out that community organisations in the South are the largest single group to have been granted charitable exemption in recent years (ibid.). The Revenue Commissioners, who make this determination, include a wide range in this grouping, describing community organisations as organisations of ‘benefit to the community’ including area-based partnership companies, local enterprise groups and community centres as well as social and welfare services including citizen information services, women’s shelters and rape crisis shelters, relief agencies and environmental groups (ibid.). This range is too wide to be of use on its own, but her further description, offered when she states that the more recent manifestation of community activism ‘has occurred around the principles of a rights culture, viz. the right to consultation and direct democratic participation’ (ibid., p.11), helps narrow the focus again. Arguably, this also holds true for community sector organisations in the North, where common discourses primarily centre on rights, equality and inclusion. This is in large part related to the origins and evolution of many community groups being in the civil rights era in the late 1960s and 1970s, and in direct response to struggles for rights and equality, struggles which have continued.

Also useful is Donoghue’s (2003) description of the organisational field of community development as specifically concerned with the expression of self and group identity, whether that identity is based on a geographic or social locale. According to her, community development organisations are ‘formed on the four principles of empowerment, participation, inclusion and rights’, and although they are involved in service provision they are ‘more strongly associated with advocacy and campaigning’ (ibid., p.5). The community development organisational field also includes communities of interest, formed to give expression to and fight for the rights of people such as, for example, people with disabilities, lesbians, gay men, lone parents and Travellers (ibid.).

This rights-focused framing aligns with the original and ongoing concerns of

According to the typology, there are four organisational types, each having a different orientation and relationship with the state, ranging from being closely connected to it, to being separate and critical of it. However, it is noted that these categories are a considerable simplification, are not mutually exclusive, and categorisation does not cover all the potential functions of voluntary associations (ibid.).

In summary then, the concept of a voluntary and community sector – or sectors – has unclear boundaries and comprises huge diversity making it difficult to

required for the current research to provide a frame of reference and categorise which community groups/organisations constitute the research ‘site’.

Marshall’s (1996) point about the multiplicity of the voluntary sector serves to underscore the need to delineate which elements of it are the focus of this research. The current study therefore draws on two of Acheson et al.’s (2004) organisational categorisations described above, namely ‘community associations’ and ‘networks’ and on Donoghue’s (2003) focus on what community development is essentially concerned with, that is, empowerment, participation, inclusion and rights with a strong emphasis on advocacy and campaigning. Thus, what is defined as ‘the community sector’ in Belfast, for the purposes of this study, comprises community-based, neighbourhood groups, along with the ‘next level up’ networks, described by Acheson et al. (2004) as member-orientated and often policy focused and concerned with transformational rather than purely transactional work and, as such, focused on issues such as empowerment, participation, inclusion and rights. This is discussed further in Chapter Four, along with a proposed typology of the community sector in the North and the types of community sector organisations included in the current research sample.