CONCEPTUAL APPROACHES TO THE SOCIAL PURPOSE OF CHARITABLE AND VOLUNTEER ACTIVITIES

Abstract

The article analyzes the conceptual approaches to the social purpose of charitable and voluntary organizations and determines that they largely reflect the peculiarities of the researchers' scientific outlook, as well as their attitude to clerical or liberal values. Generalizing the views of scholars on the social purpose of charitable and volunteer organizations allows us to distinguish the following conceptual approaches: 1) kratological (from the ancient Greek Κράτος: power, dominance, might), whose representatives consider charitable activities to be one of the ways for political and economic elites to strengthen their power and/or profits by changing social relations, general social, electoral and consumer sentiments by providing certain benefits to a certain category of people; 2) idealistic, in which persons engaged in charitable and volunteer activities are considered, without taking into account their individual characteristics and motivations, as altruistic, humanistic and selfless individuals whose meaning of life is selfless service to the needy; 3) technological, whose supporters believe that it is currently impossible to measure social utility by scientific methods, but a reliable picture of the focus of charitable organizations can be drawn up based on the analysis of financial and organizational indicators of their work; 4) balancing, within which a person achieves a positive emotional state through the implementation of his or her charitable activity. The article shows that the most promising for a reliable assessment of the social role of charitable organizations is a technological approach, which does not require the use of immeasurable categories such as "common good", "happiness", "universal human values", etc., which may have a diametrically opposite understanding in different social groups. In our opinion, determining the place and role of charitable and volunteer organizations in solving the complex tasks currently facing the Ukrainian State and society should be based on the analysis of structured information of a financial, organizational and legal nature, which will make the conclusions of such studies valid and reliable.