The Limits of Voluntarism: Charity and Welfare from the New Deal through the Great Society by Prof. Andrew Morris of History has been named winner of the Virginia A. Hodgkinson Research Book Prize for 2010.
The prize is awarded annually by the Association for Research on Nonprofit Organizations and Voluntary Action, based in Indianapolis, Ind., in conjunction with Independent Sector, an organization that promotes the non-profit sector.
Morris’ book (Cambridge University Press, 2009) describes what became known as the “New Alignments,” a new relationship between charities and welfare that lasted from the 1930s through the 1970s.
Before the Great Depression, opponents of public welfare argued that charities, not the government, were the best source of relief. But their inability to meet the crushing demands of the 1930s led them to welcome the creation of the welfare state.
Under the “New Alignments,” the public sector provided the financial safety net, and the voluntary sector focused on specialized therapy services such as marriage and family counseling.
By the 1970s, Johnson’s War on Poverty had infused public money into non-governmental organizations and set the stage for the current debate over public funding for charities and non-profits.
Morris joined Union in 2003. He holds a bachelor’s degree in history from Brown University, and a master’s and Ph.D. from the University of Virginia, where he received a Miller Center Fellowship in National Politics. He has published several articles including “The Voluntary Sector’s War on Poverty,” which received the 2006 Ellis Hawley Award for best article by a junior scholar from the Journal of Policy History.
Morris is to receive the award this month at the annual conference of the Association for Research on Nonprofit Organizations and Voluntary Action in Alexandria, Va.
The prize recognizes Virginia Hodgkinson who, as vice president of research at Independent Sector, advanced understanding of the role of the nonprofit sector in the U.S. and abroad. She also developed many of the institutions and organizations supporting research on philanthropy, volunteering and nonprofit organizations.