Neoliberal restructuring has left individuals and families scrambling for survival and increasingly reliant on the under-funded and over-regulated non-profit sector to patch over the steadily growing fissures in our society. The book examines the creativity and resilience of nonprofits in maintaining and expanding their services. This book also delves into the vital role of non-profits in advocacy for human rights, anti-racism, Indigenous claims, and improved health and social services.

The decades-long turn towards marketized solutions to social needs has created the conditions under which privatized modes of service delivery have become the norm. The extraordinary rise of the non-profit sector is an under-analyzed consequence of neoliberal restructuring in Canada. In this timely corrective, Ted Richmond and John Shields analyze the place of the non-profit sector in neoliberal times in Canada. The authors take a critical political economy approach, providing a vital analysis of the significance of the non-profit sector, and bring clarity to its dimensions and roles in society. The book pays particular attention to the provision of social, human and health services in Canada’s changing welfare state system.

Ted Richmond has worked in the non-profit and government sectors for some forty years. He is an active community-based researcher with many social justice-oriented publications to his credit. He has also been a part-time university teacher of non-profit sector studies.

Ted Richmond's profile page

Born in NY City, Shields holds a Masters Degree in theology from St. Paul’s College in Washington, DC, where he worked with Martin Luther King and the civil rights movement. He went on to teach popular theology in Canada and the US. He left the church and moved to British Columbia in 1969. An interest in social justice led him to the labour movement where he was a champion for women’s equality work. He was President of the BC Government and Service Employees Union (BCGEU) for fourteen years. A deep interest in spirituality led him to contemporary cosmology, which is illuminating a deeper understanding of the universe. For the past twenty years he has explored the connection between science and spirituality. He now lives in Victoria, B.C., and has been teaching Labour Relations and Negotiations at Vancouver Island University.

John Shields' profile page

Axelle Janczur has been the executive director at Access Alliance for the past twenty-one years. Axelle’s work includes the opening of community hubs in east and west Toronto, the launch of a successful social enterprise, the opening of the Non-Insured Walk-In Clinic, the creation of a safe, welcoming space for LGBTQ+ newcomers and much more.

Axelle Janczur's profile page

“This book makes a landmark contribution to our understanding of the complex and increasingly neoliberalized nonprofit sector. Richmond and Shields share their usual sharp and compelling analysis in this meticulously researched and must-read book on a sector that is often overlooked and definitely merits of this kind of decisive and definitive analysis.”

Donna Baines, professor of social work, University of British Columbia