Refusing the Market: A Democratic Discourse for Voluntary and Nonprofit Organizations

This article extends critical and normative theorizing about the assumptions and implications of marketization for nonprofit and voluntary organizations and suggests an alternative discourse. It describes reasons for the increasing marketization of nonprofit and voluntary organizations and what the literature has shown to be problematic about marketization. It argues that one way to resist colonization by the market is for academics and practitioners of voluntary and nonprofit organizations to create and apply a democratic counterdiscourse.