Participation in Civil Society Organizations (CSO) draws on and enriches social, cultural, and human capital. Social impacts of such participation as active citizenship are systemic and ‘ripple’ far beyond the immediate program outputs and outcomes. CSOs and the third sector as a whole must demonstrate and gage the difference they make in the social life of the broader community. This research offers a new approach to conceptualize CSO social impacts through an empirically derived model that accounts for the impacts of active citizenship for individuals, organizations, and the broader community. A conceptual model of systemic social impact is presented as it was developed through an exploratory study of a large Australian CSO using an abductive methodology combining focus groups and a survey. Considering the potential of the model that could account for impacts beyond program outputs and outcomes, we propose several propositions for future testing the conceptual model.

Item Type:	Refereed Article
Keywords:	Social impact, active citizenship, social capital, cultural capital
Research Division:	Human Society
Research Group:	Sociology
Research Field:	Applied sociology, program evaluation and social impact assessment
Objective Division:	Expanding Knowledge
Objective Group:	Expanding knowledge
Objective Field:	Expanding knowledge in human society
UTAS Author:	Maxwell, H (Dr Hazel Maxwell)
ID Code:	102194
Year Published:	2015
Web of Science® Times Cited:	8
Deposited By:	Health Sciences
Deposited On:	2015-08-04
Last Modified:	2016-12-05
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