Reviews of the literature found that the Malaysian Third Sector lacks basic descriptive information. Not being adequately described could make the sector’s impact and contribution to the economy difficult to quantify and may give the impression that its functions and contributions are less significant. It could also be difficult to develop policies that effectively address the needs of the stakeholders without sufficient knowledge of what the sector entails. An in-depth understanding of the sector could also make resource allocation more efficient.

This research asks: who are the constituents of the Malaysian Third Sector, how are they regulated, what are their activities and who are their beneficiaries? What are the motivations for their existence? The study employed a convergent parallel mixed method to address these questions and conducted the qualitative and quantitative strands concurrently but independently.

Interviews with Third Sector actors and Regulators were undertaken to obtain a deeper understanding of the sector. The respondents, apart from the Regulators, were selected via a nonprobability purposive sampling method and was selected from the stratified population of Malaysian Third Sector organisations. Theories explaining the Malaysian Third Sector were identified based on data obtained from the interviews.

The quantitative exercise involves merging the organisational databases of seven different Regulators to come up with a unified Malaysian Third Sector Dataset and classified according to the categories of the International Classification for Non-Profit Organisations (ICNPO). The statistical software ‘Stata’ was employed to classify Malaysian Third Sector organisations into the relevant ICNPO categories and was done based on keywords in their names that describe their activities and/or beneficiaries.

This research contributes to the body of knowledge in the form of an improved account of the Malaysian Third Sector including theories applicable to the sector. It concludes with suggestions of potential areas for further research to enhance these findings.