Over the past 15 years, CACOM has been successful in pursuing several major research programs, some of which have had a major impact on the Third Sector in Australia and New Zealand as well as internationally. Here we highlight several of the more significant of these.

Social Capital
Australian Non-profit database
Career Paths in the Third Sector
Asian Third Sector Research Unit
Recent Achievements

Social Capital
CACOM is recognized nationally and internationally for its research concerning social capital, with publications from Jenny Onyx, Mark Lyons and Sami Hasan together with Associates of CACOM. This interest stemmed in the early 90's from a request from Advisory Board members for a measure of community development. This led to the development of the social capital scale by Onyx and Bullen which was first applied to 5 communities in NSW with help from local community organisations affiliated with LCSA. This early research led to several working papers and international refereed journal articles (see Journal of Applied Behavioural Sciences, 2000). Since that time, the scale has been used by many other researchers. An independent study in US replicated and validated the measure, recommending that "these findings lend support to the notion of social capital as a meaningful construct and suggest the Onyx and Bullen instrument deserves further attention as a practical tool for health researchers and community agencies interested in social capital" (O'Brien, Burdsal, and Molgaard, 2004).
A meta analysis of a number of samples is now underway. To date over 6,500 people have used the scale and the factor analysis is extremely robust. That is the same factors emerge with the same or similar loadings, 7 factors plus an eighth for those working, plus a second order factor which is clearly a general social capital factor on which all items contribute a moderate amount. Not only does the level of social capital vary from one community to another, but so too does the profile of factors. Where one community may have high participation but relatively low trust, another may have the reverse. This is potentially an extremely important diagnostic tool for communities (especially local governments) to use. With the availability of well constructed, validated, tailor made social capital scales, it will become possible to test the relationship of social capital to a range of other concepts. For example, using the scale, it was demonstrated that measures of social capital predicted attitudes to environmental sustainability.

The research with social capital has led to several projects concerning community capacity building (in Broken Hill and Maleny) as well as collaborative work with Professor Ann Dale of Royal Roads University in British Columbia, looking at the relationship between social capital and sustainable community development in Australia and Canada. Working with Dr Sami Hasan and colleagues across Asia, the concept has been further developed within the Asian context of sustainable development.

Several books have emerged from this research program to date, including:

• Leonard and Onyx (2004) Social Capital and Community Building: Spinning Straw into Gold London, Janus (available from CACOM)
• Dale and Onyx (Eds) (2005) A Dynamic Balance: Social Capital and Sustainable Community Development (Vancouver, UBC)
  Hasan and Onyx (Eds) (forthcoming) Social Capital and Sustainable Development Management: Lessons from Asia.
• Other work by the CACOM team has found its way into journal publications, including widely cited work on networks and the relationship between bridging and bonding social capital (see Voluntas, 2003) and the relationship between social capital and power (see Third Sector Review, 2000).

Australian Non-profit Database
By the early 90s, it had become clear that there existed no national database of nonprofit organisations or their management, no national statistics on the rate of volunteering in Australia, and very little information on the existing funding sources or levels. No one knew the size of the sector, nor had any way of assessing its importance to the Australian society and economy. Yet clearly such information is essential if the sector is to have a sense of itself as a sector, let alone be used in strategic policy decision making.

Accordingly, CACOM, under the leadership of Mark Lyons began a process of sifting through the available ABS data sets, particularly that pertaining to industry data, to begin to get a sense of the size of the sector. Several small scale studies were undertaken to try and identify the kinds of categories under which nonprofit organisations would be registered at state and national levels, the adequacy of the existing registration data, and from this, estimates of the prevalence of different forms of nonprofit organisations, at least in NSW. Collaborative links were established with the ABS in Canberra. The results of these exercises were published in some of the early CACOM working papers.

Other studies added to the data pool. CACOM initiated and co-ordinated an Australia wide study of the way governments "contract" community organisations to provide care. This study was funded by the Law Foundation of NSW and resulted in a report, and a special issue of Third Sector Review, published in 1997 titled 'Contracting for Care'.

A second study was commissioned by the Fundraising Institute of Australia, and provided the first study of fundraising by government and nonprofit organisations in Australia. However the major effort of this research program centred around the Australian Nonprofit Data Project (ANDP). This project was formed in 1995 in collaboration with the Australian Bureau of Statistics and support from the Industry Commission, and aimed to collect and publish the first reliable and comprehensive statistics on Australia's nonprofit sector, philanthropy and volunteering. CACOM became the Australian participant in the John Hopkins University comparative Nonprofit Sector Project, which has to date collected comparable data on the nonprofit sector in over 20 countries.

"Dimensions of Australia's Third Sector", the first technical publication from the Australian Nonprofit Data Project (ANDP) was published at the end of 2000. Three other technical publications are under preparation. In addition, the Australian national data has been incorporated into several international, John Hopkins publications.

Career Paths in the Third Sector
Just as little was known about the size or shape of the third sector in Australia, so too little was known about the kinds of people who managed third sector organisations, their levels of qualifications and experience, the motivation for working in the sector and the opportunities for career path progression. It was widely believed, both inside the sector and in the business world, that condition of employment were poor, and therefore only those who could not get "real jobs" would accept such employment.

To begin to explore some of these assumptions, CACOM, under the leadership of Jenny Onyx, obtained a series of small Faculty of Business research grants. A small qualitative interview study of third sector managers in rural and urban NSW suggested quite complex patterns of motivation, and mixed employment conditions. Based on the interview results, a questionnaire was designed and applied to a larger sample of third sector managers across rural and urban NSW. These results were analysed and published, first in a CACOM working paper, and subsequently in the Australian Journal of Social Issues and the international Journal of Nonprofit Management and Leadership.

In brief, the results suggest that while salary and conditions are indeed poorer in the third sector, the levels of qualifications and experience are high, some career progression does occur, and third sector managers are motivated by a combination of personal development and social contribution.

A small subsequent questionnaire study contrasted the motivational patterns of managers of for-profit, public service and third sector organisations (all of whom were currently undertaking postgraduate management qualifications in Sydney). This study, which confirmed some fundamental career path differences in the three sectors, was published in 1998 in Third Sector Review. Jenny Green of CACOM is now undertaking a further analysis of senior executives of large nonprofit organisations.

Asian Third Sector Research Unit (ATSRU)
In 1999 CACOM, under the leadership of Mark Lyons, initiated the first Asian Third Sector Research Conference, held in Bangkok. Several members of CACOM attended. We also agreed to take a lead role in the Asia Pacific Philanthropy Information Network (APPIN) project sponsored by the Asia Pacific Philanthropy Consortium. After initial work by Simon Johnson, the Asian Third Sector Research Unit was formed with Sami Hasan as its coordinator.

APPIN has collected information on philanthropy and third sector from fourteen countries and regions (Australia, Bangladesh, China, Hong Kong SAR, India, Indonesia, Japan, Korea, Malaysia, Pakistan, Philippines, Taiwan, Thailand and Vietnam) for the Asia Pacific Philanthropy Consortium (APPC) website www.asianphilanthropy.org. This website is already a very popular source of information for third sector researchers and practitioners in the region.

The Ford Foundation funded "Asia's Third Sector: Governance for Accountability and Performance" involving partners in six Asian countries, is progressing according to plan. Six papers based on interim findings were presented at the ISTR international Conference in Toronto, Canada in October 2004. Data and information from all six participating countries have been received. Partners are writing country reports to be published locally. Sami Hasan, Jenny Onyx and Mark Lyons are analysing the data and writing (with some partners) the comparative report.
Recent Achievements in Research & Network Building

Recent Achievements in Research & Network Building

CACOM has a long established relationship with the International Society for Third Sector Research - ISTR (http://www.istr.org)

We organised the first and the second ISTR Asia Pacific Regional Conference in Bangkok in 1999 and in Osaka in 2001, respectively.

The Asian Third Sector Research Unit played a key role, as the secretariat of the Program Committee, in organising the 3rd ISTR Asia and Pacific Regional Conference 2003 in Beijing. Jenny Onyx (in 2003; and Mark Lyons until the end of 2002) was the chair and Sami Hasan was the executive secretary of the Program Committee. The two and a half day conference had twenty-four paper sessions (with four concurrent sessions) and three plenary sessions. Three paper sessions and two plenary sessions were in Chinese with simultaneous translation. Seventy-papers were delivered by scholars from 19 different countries and regions (for abstracts please see: www.asianphilanthropy.org/ndev).

Jenny Onyx was elected a member of the Board of the International Society for Third Sector Research (ISTR) and was appointed Co-Chair of the Academic Program Committee for the highly successful Sixth International Conference of ISTR held at Ryerson University Canada, in July 2004. There were 68 paper and panel sessions and 34 posters, besides the three plenary sessions. Participants attended from over 80 countries.

Planning is already underway for the Fourth ISTR Asia Pacific regional Conference, to be held in Bangalore India in November, 2005.

Jenny Onyx, as the chair of the Academic Program Committee of the 7th ISTR Conference to be held in July 2006, has been working towards achieving our goals.