Prof. Benjamin Gidron

Benjamin Gidron is the founder and director of the Israeli Center for Third sector Research (ICTR) at Ben Gurion University of the Negev in Beer-Sheva, Israel. He has been researching issues pertaining to the Third Sector and related topics for the past 25 years.

He is a Professor at the Guilford Glazer School of Business & Management at BGU, where he founded and directs the Nonprofit Organizations Management Program . He came to the School of Management after serving for some 20 years at the BGU Spitzer Department of Social Work, where he served as the chair (1985-90). He holds the David and Dorothy Schwartzman Chair for Community Development.

He served as the founding President of the International Society for Third sector Research (ISTR) -1992-1996.

In the mid-1990's he has led a group of researchers in a pioneering study of the Israeli nonprofit sector within the Johns Hopkins Comparative Study of the Nonprofit Sector . This study has provided for the first time important data and insight on the Third Sector in Israel, its size, composition, funding sources as well as its legal structure, history, government policy towards it and patterns of giving and volunteering of the Israeli public. This study and several follow-up studies resulted in a number of articles and a book (with Michal Bar and Hagai Katz) entitled The Third Sector in Israel: Between Welfare State and Civil Society published in 2003 in Hebrew (by Hakibutz Ha'Meuchad) and in 2004 in English (by Plenum).

His book (with Stan Katz & Yeheskel Hasenfeld) Mobilizing for Peace: Conflict Resolution in South Africa, Northern Ireland and Israel/Palestine published by Oxford University Press (2002) is comparing the nature and roles of civil society organizations active in the peace/conflict resolution processes in three conflict regions. The book was the recipient of the Virginia A Hodgkinson first Prize for the Best Research Publication in Nonprofit Organizations and Philanthropy, 2003.

 
 


Written by Yaron Khazai 2003