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The Association for Research on Nonprofit Organizations and Voluntary Action (ARNOVA) was founded in 1971 by David Horton Smith and Bill Ready as the Association for Voluntary Action Scholars (AVAS). Their vision was to create an independent and impartial forum for researchers in the fledgling field of voluntary action and citizen participation. Major activities have included an annual conference and the publication of Nonprofit and Voluntary Sector Quarterly (NVSQ), formerly the Journal of Voluntary Action Research (JVAR); Citizen Participation and Voluntary Action Abstracts (CPVAA); and a newsletter. The organization's name change in 1991 signified diversification of the original mission, which now includes expanded outreach to researchers on nonprofit organizations and from previously neglected academic disciplines. The records consist of board and committee materials, correspondence, financial and administrative records, journals and newsletters, journal manuscript submissions, conference programs and proceedings, and grant proposals.

Peter Dobkin Hall was a historian of American philanthropy, who held appointments at Wesleyan (1974-1982), Yale (1973-1999), and Harvard (2000 until death), and was Scholar in Residence at the Rockefeller Archive Center in 1989. He was extensively published in philanthropy but it probably best known for his book "'Inventing the Nonprofit Sector' and Other Essays on Philanthropy, Voluntarism, and Nonprofit Organizations."