A Review of Deviant Nonprofit Groups: Seeking Method in Their Alleged ‘Madness-Treason-Immorality’
Authors: Smith David Horton 
Published: March 2019

This long Voluntaristics Review2 (VR 3.5–6) article and book focuses on the deviant form of Nonprofit Groups (NPGs), mainly volunteer-based associations, but occasionally paid-staff-based nonprofit agencies. A Deviant Nonprofit Group (DNG) is defined as “a Nonprofit group that deviates significantly from certain moral norms of the society” (Smith, Stebbins, & Dover, 2006, p. 68). The aim is to develop and present an empirically grounded theory with eighty-three hypotheses about many of the key analytical features or operational characteristics of DNGs, usually voluntary associations with memberships and often run by volunteers, not nonprofit agencies without memberships and usually run by paid staff (Smith, 2017a).

The total theory may be termed a Grounded General Theory of DNG Operation-Structure. The document is based on an extensive review and qualitative content analysis of about 260 published research documents representing twenty-five common-language purposive-goal types of DNGs (vs. analytical-theoretical types, which do not exist in detail). Moral norms are the broad, emotionally charged directives concerning what is customarily right and wrong, by which members of a community or society implement their institutionalized solutions to problems significantly affecting their valued normal way of life (see Stebbins, 1996, pp. 2–3). These norms indicate in a general way what the community (it may be local, regional, national, or international) expects by sociocultural custom of its members in particular areas of social life and what it considers rejections of those expectations. Thus, moral norms stand apart from other kinds of expectations such as ordinances, regulations, customs, and folkways in general.

Deviating (near synonym: deviance) is defined as rule-breaking, and sometimes is a crime in a specific society at a specific time in its history, but not always. Such deviation, deviance, or rule-breaking of specific actions by a DNG (or any individual or group) is highly variable both through historical time in a given society and also across societies or nations at a given historical time (Smith, 2017b). Deviance or rule-breaking is present in the nonprofit sector (NPS), just as in all other sectors of human society (Smith, 2017a), although less frequently studied in the NPS than for other societal sectors (Smith, 2011).

Essentially, this present document attempts to bring some systematic theoretical order to the disorder-chaos of a highly varied set of Deviant Nonprofit Groups/DNGs that heretofore has been seen as composed of disparate, unrelated types of groups—a jumble or chaos. All these DNGs are rather consistently alleged (at least initially) by many or even most people in their societies of origin, when known to non-members-outsiders, to be different, strange, deviant, crazy, insane, mad, dangerous, sick, selfish, cruel, stupid, weird, wild, evil, ungodly, sinful, unnatural, treacherous, subversive, seditious, criminal, bad, evil, immoral, and so on. Summarizing briefly the most stigmatizing epithets for nearly all DNG types studied here, DNGs and their leaders and members generally are often accused of madness-treason-immorality, because their perceived deviance is emotionally troubling to conventional adults in the society.

As such, in the eyes of their own society, DNGs are often stigmatized and labeled very negatively by many, often most, people in a given society who are DNG outsiders-non-members at a given time (e.g., a period of at least ten years from the DNG’s de facto origin date, if the DNG existed for that long, sometimes for much longer). A wide range of negative terms (epithets) may be used to describe a DNG, summarized here as mad (crazy)-treacherous-immoral, as well as various other negative traits or factors being alleged regarding the DNG and its leaders and/or members.

Yet there is often little systematic evidence for these stigmatizing epithets or negative traits alleged about DNGs, except for a few DNG types (e.g., Revolutionary DNGs, Terrorist DNGs, Guerrilla DNGs, Coup d’État DNGs). This common lack of concrete evidence for stigmatizing statements about any given DNG suggests that the allegations are mainly emotional statements, rather than factual statements, based mainly on fast-thinking (see Kahneman, 2011). By definition, DNGs and their leaders and members believe in and take actions that involve serious rule-breaking in their own society (i.e., violating current moral norms and rules). However, the stigmatizing of these beliefs and actions by non-members, including the general public and the government, is often much exaggerated, or even simply false. Over time, especially decades, the deviant actions may (and often do) tend to seem less and less serious in the given society, as societal-consensual definitions of social deviance can change and have done so markedly over historical time (e.g., Smith, 2018b; Winck, 1991).

However, the foregoing should not be taken to mean that all DNGs are innocuous. As suggested above, some DNG types can be immensely harmful to people and property, such as the revolutionary DNGs, terrorist DNGs, guerrilla DNGs, and coup d’etat DNGs noted. Yet other types of DNGs also sometimes do substantial harm, such as the rest of the broader DNG analytical category, Deviant Political Resistance & Liberation Groups, including also WWII Underground Nazi-Resistance Groups, Vigilante Groups, Citizen Militias/Paramilitary Groups, and Political Parties (Deviant). Similarly, the broader DNG analytical category, Deviant Anger & Violence Groups, includes DNG types that often cause serious harm—Hate Groups, Motorcycle Outlaw Gangs, and Delinquent Youth Gangs. Even some DNGs in the broader DNG analytical category of Deviant Religion & Worldview Groups, can do substantial harm—obviously, Massacre/Mass Suicide Groups, but also medieval Heresy Groups (Christian) subject to the Catholic Church’s Inquisitions, as well as some Cults/New Religions (Deviant), Deviant Science DNGs, and some Sects (Deviant).

The author is doing something analogous to what the first systematic, theoretical botanist did when s/he went into the jungle/forest and tried to see commonalities among the great variety of apparently different forms of plants present there. Here, the equivalents of plants are the many different DNG types, and the commonalities discovered are now expressed in the many empirically grounded hypotheses formulated by the author over the course of this research effort, with the first fifty-one hypotheses formulated much earlier, in 1994, but not investigated regarding empirical support by qualitative content analysis until done here (Smith, 1996b).

These source documents were chosen as typical examples of a newly constructed set of twenty-five purposive or goal types of DNGs, described here. As the reader will see, the present grounded theory review and content analysis seeks the empirical operating methods and structures of these twenty-five DNG types—the method in their alleged madness-treason-immorality, or other stigmatizing epithets. The terms mad and madness are not meant as clinical or psychiatric terms; similarly, the terms treason and treachery are also used loosely, as with immorality or bad/evil. Instead, these are vague and imprecise, common language (vernacular) terms expressing negative emotion, bandied about carelessly and loosely when English-speakers really dislike and are disturbed by the beliefs and especially by the alleged or actual actions or a person or group. Such terms are ways that other people strongly disfavor and stigmatize certain beliefs, values, actions, or inactions by specific persons or groups.

In this content analysis process of much published research on DNGs, the author is seeking two useful scholarly outcomes:

Develop and derive meaningful generalizations as empirically grounded hypotheses for future more careful, systematic, and, if feasible, quantitative testing with a better sample of DNGs so as to build a body of valid grounded theory about DNGs.

Assess whether each such grounded theory hypothesis finds any empirical support in a fairly comprehensive but haphazard sample of at least 100 specific DNGs of twenty-five common-language purposive or goal types.

All of the grounded hypotheses developed and reported here in this review were supported by empirical evidence for at least one (often two) of the two or three specific DNGs of 25 DNG types studied, as described in source documents that were content analyzed. Indeed, all such hypotheses were supported by most of the twenty-five DNG
types studied, giving significant qualitative validity to the author’s Grounded General Theory of DNG Operation-Structure. Such empirical support suggests that these hypotheses are valid at least sometimes for many DNG types and deserve further investigation, hopefully in more quantitative studies with better sampling of DNGs, countries, and historical time periods. Taken collectively, the many empirically grounded (supported) hypotheses of the present theory can be seen as a new theoretical paradigm for studying NPGs that helps bring analytical order to a previously chaotic realm of dark side or deviant NPS phenomena.