| Acronym or Term | Name | Definition |
| ACL | Americans' Changing Lives | Data set |
| ACPS | American Citizen Participation Study | Data set |
| ARNOVA | Association for Research on Nonprofit Organizations and Voluntary Action | Association of researchers on the nonprofit and voluntary sector |
| ATUS | American Time Use Survey | Data set |
| Cohort | | Group of individuals with a common identity, typically time |
| CPS | Current Population Survey | Data set |
| ICPSR | Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research | Data repository |
| IS | Independent Sector | Association of institutions with an interest in philanthropy and volunteerism |
| IUPUI | Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis | Center for Philanthropy |
| NBER | National Bureau of Economic Research | Association of economists |
| NLS | National Longitudinal Surveys | Data set |
| NSF | National Science Foundation | Source of research funding |
| NSFH | National Survey of Families and Households | Data set |
| PSID | Panel Survey of Income Dynamics | Data set |
| RGK (Center) | Ronya and George Kozmetsky | Center for Philanthropy and Community Service in the LBJ School at the University of Texas at Austin |
| SAS | Statistical Anaylsis System | Statistical software |
| SPSS | Statistical Package for the Social Sciences | Statistical software |
| Stata | | Statistical software |
| UI | Urban Institute | Think tank |