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The Centre for Civil Society is a social innovation and public policy institute for the empowerment of ordinary people and strengthening of civil society.

The term 'civil society' refers to the relationships and associations that make up our life at grass-roots levels of society, in families, neighbourhoods and voluntary associations, independent of both government and the commercial world. Our aim is to strengthen civil society and empower people within it. 

You are warmly invited to participate in Civil Society Politics - a new politics that is grounded in communities and social relationships, and an alternative to the failed ideologies of Left and Right. Civil Society Politics is: A movement - which individuals may join. Global in scope - civil society is global, and a movement to strengthen it is needed in every country. Open to members of existing parties and members of none, including those who seek new parties based on civil society.

The Open Society Foundations work to build vibrant and tolerant societies whose governments are accountable and open to the participation of all people. We seek to strengthen the rule of law; respect for human rights, minorities, and a diversity of opinions; democratically elected governments; and a civil society that helps keep government power in check. We help to shape public policies that assure greater fairness in political, legal, and economic systems and safeguard fundamental rights. We implement initiatives to advance justice, education, public health, and independent media. We build alliances across borders and continents on issues such as corruption and freedom of information. Working in every part of the world, the Open Society Foundations place a high priority on protecting and improving the lives of people in marginalized communities.

The Center for Civil Society in the Luskin School of Public Affairs at UCLA was established in 2002 as a research center focused on civil society, nonprofit organizations, philanthropy, and social enterprise. Situated across the School's three academic departments of Public Policy, Urban Planning, and Social Welfare, the Center has, over the past decade, developed graduate curricula, served as a convening center for scholars, practitioners, and students, and has produced an array of studies and publications, including an annual State of the Los Angeles Nonprofit Sector report and survey that has become a trusted source of data and analysis for the regional nonprofit community.

Civil Society Futures was an independent inquiry that ran from 2017-2018, a national conversation about how English civil society can flourish in a fast changing world.

The Digital Civil Society Lab at the Stanford Center on Philanthropy and Civil Society created digitalIMPACT.io to support civil society organizations in using digital data ethically, safely, and effectively. The content and tools on the site come from nonprofit and foundation partners. digitalIMPACT.io is designed to help you learn from and share with others. The materials are provided as examples to inform your decision-making, organizational practice, and policy creation. We invite you to use and adapt what you find here, and hope you will share the practices and policies that you've developed. This website is only a start; real change will come as organizations integrate appropriate data management and governance throughout their work.

There is, however, one small problem with this. Governments cannot create community, no matter how hard they try, and they cannot build social capital. At best they can create policy environments which assist individuals and institutions in civil society to do these things, or at least, do not stifle their efforts or make their task more difficult. To acknowledge this is not to suggest that governments should simply sit back and hope social capital will grow before them. On the contrary, it is to advocate a radical re-invention of government and a wholesale move away from the old service delivery paradigm in the human services so as to remove some of the key governmental obstacles to civic engagement, responsibility and reciprocity at grass-roots levels of our society.

The Center coordinates teaching on nonprofit organizations and aspects of civil society; conducts research; and offers conferences, colloquia, and executive education as part of our community engagement. In undertaking these mutually supporting activities, we seek to contribute to the policy dialogue on the current and future role of nonprofit organizations, philanthropy, and civil society.

The rise of the state is a key marker in the evolution of human society. States typically emerged when one chiefdom (amid a competing set of chiefdoms) achieved a greater and more effective level of organization.
Despite the presence of similar conditions, some states rose and flourished while some advanced chiefdoms never passed the threshold into statehood. Why states emerged in some places and not others, why they arose independently in six places around the world starting about 5,000 years ago, and why their rise was usually associated with the growth of cities, are fascinating questions for anthropologists. Answers to these questions could offer insights into today's urban systems.

The Cultural Evolution Society is a professional scientific society that advances the theory and practice of cultural evolutionary studies. Our goal is to build capacity for researchers, educators, and practitioners to coordinate efforts.

Code for America hosted Nick Hanauer and Eric Liu for a discussion of their recent book, "Gardens of the Democracy." In it, they challenge Americans to approach the world not as a machinery that needs to be perfected but as a garden that needs constant attention, discretion, and periodic weeding. The book argues that since society and technology have fundamentally changed, so must our notions of citizenship and democracy: turning "the machine" into a garden. 

We are a newly formed Social Enterprise established to improve the way that service providers stimulate and support the development of the Big Society concept. By Big Society we mean everything from building the capacity of volunteers to supporting organisations to work better together with the community. We have a strong history in participatory democracy and have developed out of a commitment to 'practice what we preach'. Our raisen d'etre is to empower organisations and communities to reconnect within the social space that lies between the state and the individual. Ultimately, we aim to promote participatory democracy and increase social capital, for the mutual benefit of all.

This article is about power structures in society and how they interact. Specifically it is a guide to seeing who has power when important decisions are being made. It is quite old, but never-the-less of great value to anyone interested in issues of citizen participation. The concepts discussed in this article about 1960's America apply to any hierarchical society but are still mostly unknown, unacknowledged or ignored by many people around the world. Most distressing is that even people who have the job of representing citizens views seem largely unaware, or even dismissive of these principles. Many planners, architects, politicians, bosses, project leaders and power-holder still dress all variety of manipulations up as 'participation in the process', 'citizen consultation' and other shades of technobable.

imply put, governance is the science of decision-making. The concept of governance refers to the complex set of values, norms, processes, and institutions by which society manages its development and resolves conflict, formally and informally. It involves the state, but also the civil society at the local, national, regional and global levels.

NCVO champions and strengthens volunteering and civil society, with over 10,000 members, from the largest charities to the smallest community organisations. There are thousands of voluntary sector organisations in the UK. There are millions of volunteers. Every day, across the country, people give their time, energy and money. And for over 90 years, NCVO has brought the voluntary sector's people together: to solve problems, address root causes, and inspire each other.

Mainstream economics has demonstrated blind spots that have impaired its effectiveness and credibility-and failed society at large Founded in the wake of the financial crisis in 2009, the Institute for New Economic Thinking (INET) is a nonpartisan, nonprofit organization devoted to developing and sharing the ideas that can repair our broken economy and create a more equal, prosperous, and just society.

If we want a high-growth society with broadly shared prosperity, and if we want to avoid dislocations like the one we have just gone through, we need to change our theory of action foundationally. We need to stop thinking about the economy as a perfect, self-correcting machine and start thinking of it as a garden.

The ad-driven revenue model that traditionally funded quality journalism has not translated to the digital economy. Journalism is a fundamental pillar of free, democratic societies, and newsrooms around the world are facing an existential threat like never before. We're committed to introducing a new funding model that enables journalists to focus on journalism, not satisfying clicks-over-quality mandates from third parties like advertisers and publishers.

Shared value is a management strategy in which companies find business opportunities in social problems. While philanthropy and CSR focus efforts focus on "giving back" or minimizing the harm business has on society, shared value focuses company leaders on maximizing the competitive value of solving social problems in new customers and markets, cost savings, talent retention, and more.

Imagine Cape Town filled with people empowering people where every Capetonian, rich or poor, with a dream and the will to pursue it, has equal access to the empowering information and support they need. That's Motivate Cape Town!