Arising as a market-induced improvement on existing governmental services and competing with the government for customers and resources, nonprofit organizations are a relatively unexplored area of public policy. This collection of essays, written by scholars from a variety of disciplines, adds new dimensions to the theory of nonprofit organizations, and describes the public policies regarding nonprofit organizations that do or should exist in both developing and developed countries. The contributors consider why governments subsidize such organizations, the problems such subsidies create, and the role played, from an international perspective, by religion and other ideological institutions in the founding and managing of nonprofit services.