Recent years have witnessed a significant upsurge of organized private, nonprofit activity in the countries of Asia, Africa and Latin America and with it an appreciation of the role that nonprofit organizations can play in the processes of economic and political change. Long recognized as instruments of relief and promotors of human rights, such organizations have recently come to be viewed also as essential contributors to basic economic growth and to the broader civic infrastucture that is now increasingly seen as a fundamental precondition for markets and representative political institutions to function.