Another significant development in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries was the emergence and growth of charitable not-for-profit organizations. In previous centuries, organized charities to support the sick, disabled, and those living in dire poverty were supported mostly by religious organizations and wealthy private individuals. As western economies grew, the gulf between the rich and poor also grew, and the number of sick and disabled multiplied.
As a result, western governments created a new category of organization designed specifically to support activities that supported those in need. Thus, the not-for-profit or “third sector” of modern economies was born, distinct from government, which raises funds through taxes, and for-profit commerce, which raises funds by providing goods and services for a price. Not-for-profit organizations are able to do their work partly because they are exempt from paying taxes, while they can galvanize support from the growing population of educated citizens who feel concern and empathy for the most unfortunate among them. Since the early twentieth century, not-for-profit and charitable organizations have grown to mammoth proportions and now claim support from billions of people through millions of organizations worldwide.
Colleges, universities, research facilities, service clubs, libraries, fund-raising enterprises, and a wide array of other organizations claim tax-exempt not-for-profit status. Since the end of World War Two, the not-for-profit sector has grown faster than the for-profit sector and faster than government-based organizations. In the twenty-first century, in fact, a new hybrid form of organization, the “fourth sector” or “B Corporation” sector (where “B” stands for “Benefit”) has also emerged to combine the most useful impacts of charitable activity with the greater freedom of for-profit commercial activity.
Meanwhile, in the first half of the twentieth century, it appeared that the application of powerful technologies to global warfare might doom the human species to extinction. But after the Second World War, scholars, historians, philosophers, and world leaders formed a working consensus to learn from shared experience and support global collaboration for the common good across boundaries of race, gender, religion, nationality, and social class. Since the end of World War Two, the global United Nations has at least prevented outright global conflict, though regional and local conflicts continue to bedevil the human race. Advances in agriculture, manufacturing, communication, and transportation emerging from the Industrial Revolution have supported global collaboration on many fronts despite severe competition based on nationalities and political ideologies. As the Information Age dawned and then blossomed, it also dawned on people across the civilized world that our power to destroy human civilization also implies our power to create a better version of human civilization if we could just learn to work together in reasonable harmony, if not in perfect lockstep unity.
