It is important to recognize that the nonprofit sector has developed within a larger institutional and social context, and that nonprofit organizations of today have been and will continue to be shaped by historical forces, social institutions, laws and regulations, and significant political and economic trends and events of the nations and cultures in which they develop and operate. All of these have had an important influence on the modern practice of nonprofit leadership and management, and all have important implications for the future of the sector. The chapters of Part One provide the background and information that help us understand this context, and they examine the ways these large-scale phenomena are affecting nonprofit leadership and management.

This part of the book contains four chapters. In Chapter One, Peter Dobkin Hall describes and analyzes the implications of the historical evolution of the U.S. nonprofit sector and how nonprofit organizations are affected by and affect many our society's major institutions. Bruce R. Hopkins and Virginia C. Gross explain in Chapter Two the federal-level legal and regulatory environment within which U.S. nonprofit organizations, particularly charities, operate, and share observations on the implications of this evolving framework for the practice of nonprofit management. In Chapter Three, Brent Never describes some of the most significant of large-scale changes of the economic, political, and demographic environments of the sector and discusses, in particular, how nonprofit organizations in the United States are affected by changes in their evolving relationship with government over the past fifty years. Finally, in Chapter Four, Alnoor Ebrahim examines the increasingly strong push for nonprofit accountability and provides a useful framework by which to consider how nonprofit leaders can understand and respond. This press for greater accountability is a critical element that is shaping most aspects of modern nonprofit management, in the United States, Europe, and across the globe, and cannot be ignored. Ebrahim's chapter offers an invaluable perspective for making sense of the multiple and often conflicting demands on the nonprofit sector.

It is clear that three of the four chapters in Part One have a very explicit focus on the context of nonprofit organizations in the United States. In some respects, this may appear to make them less relevant to the nonprofit and nongovernmental organization world beyond the borders of the United States. Alternatively, these chapters can be viewed as case examples from one nation, cases that exemplify the principles and dynamics that have their counterpart in every nation and continent of the world. History, legal framework, and socio-political and economic dynamics of the recent past are fundamental elements of pivotal significance to the nonprofit and nongovernmental organization context of every nation. The specifics of such contexts will be different for every nation, but the reader from outside the United States is encouraged to consider what may be the comparable trends and dynamics that are relevant to the nonprofit sector and civil society in their own nation. In some nations, the context will be relatively similar; in others, the context will be significantly different. Nonetheless, since context fundamentally affects why and how nonprofits and nongovernmental organizations emerge, operate, thrive, and die, the important question for the nonprofit leader is how such contextual conditions have been and will continue to shape the unique character of their sector and their work as leaders and managers for their own specific circumstances. In contrast to the first three chapters, Ebrahim's treatise on accountability in Chapter Four is broadly generalizable across all nations and cultures; it is the specific forms and vehicles of accountability that will vary from nation to nation.