Legal research on nonprofit organizations has made steady and fruitful progress in the last 20 years. The important reason for this is that, along with the growing interest in nonprofit sector in Japanese society and economy in general, positive legal system related to nonprofit organizations (nonprofit law) has changed dramatically since the latter half of the 1990s. In addition to research on the legislative process of nonprofit law, the important development of basic theories regarding the content of nonprofit law, such as the relationship with "freedom to association", nonprofit corporation system and governance, and tax incentives, was observed. On the other hand, many issues still remain regarding the content of actual nonprofit law and legal research. This paper reviews on 20 years of legal research on nonprofit organizations in Japan in terms of current achievements and challenges.

This paper introduces typical research topics in the field of NPO research from an economic perspective. First, we review the most typical economic theories on the worldwide expansion of the NPO sector, government failure, and contract (market) failure. Second, we empirically examine the robustness of these theories through econometrics. Third, we develop a theoretical model of philanthropy and social capital by applying basic microeconomics and macroeconomics and their corresponding econometric models, respectively. Lastly, we perform a literature review on CSR theory. In addition, this paper discusses typical empirical research examining the relation between CSR (measured by CSP) and financial performance. Therefore, we expect to generate new findings from this research. Finally, this paper introduces some empirical research topics in the field of NPO research based on the availability of sufficient data.

Japan NPO Research Association (JANPORA) celebrates 20 years since its establishment. I have analyzed trends in research from conference presentation titles and abstracts of papers published in conference non-profits reviews over the last 20 years. Quantitative text analysis (text mining) was used as the analysis method. As a result, it was found that the research presented at the conference of the JANPORA was very well balanced and diverse in content. On the other hand, themes such as collaboration and volunteering were found to be on a downward trend, while themes such as social enterprise, social capital and social impact were found to be on an upward trend. Analyses of academic journal non-profits reviews suggest that submitted papers may be biased towards those that analyze the financial content of the corporation. In order to further improve NPO research in Japan in the future, it is necessary to regularly analyze the history of such research.

Attracting people's attention and encouraging them to take voluntary actions is not an easy task for every nonprofit organization. Given the abundance of information that people live with today, nonprofits must be strategic in how they approach potential supporters. Many organizations apply marketing techniques and seek for positive responses from the target audience. To expand our knowledge on effective and efficient communication strategies, this study goes beyond conventional framing analyses and examines elements of charity advertisements that viewers pay attention to. Do people turn their eyes to photos, and if so, what do they find attractive? Do they find words and phrases more appealing, or numbers? Multiple online advertisements of a well-known nonprofit were shown to 895 university students in Japan, who were asked to pick one that they found most striking, and self-analyze why they made that choice. Series of text analyses using these open-ended answers found that viewers pay attention to: who appears in the photo, whether the character is looking into the camera, detailed and specific numbers, and whether those numbers represent problematic situations.

This study is aiming to understand two simple questions of ‘Co-production'―what is this concept means and how it take the collaboration behavior in social service delivery. The discussion started with several issues left by prior studies, we took a literature review on the conceptualization of co-production and trying to find its theoretical implications to the practice. The answerers to the questions can be summarized as follows. First, taking service users as stakeholders in service production and delivery could be considered as a very essential characteristic of co-production. However, co-production is not a normative good like ‘Partnership'. By considering co-production as an unavoidable property to the service delivery, the concept is changing the perception of collaboration behavior and interaction mechanism in service production and delivery process. Second, as an essential characteristic with service delivery process, Co-production contains all kind of stakeholder relationships, whether it is constrained by formal contract and separated with role-sharing in project. To the practice, the most important thing can be speculate as 3 perspectives―equality of execution, purpose co-existence, and the value co-creation in both individual service and service system.