The creation of an unsolicited organization: Victim Support Sweden

The aim of this study is to understand how a new nationwide nonprofit organization, Victim Support Sweden (VSS), emerged in just a few years without public or political demand. In this qualitative study, we reconstruct and follow the first years of the organization. The study is based on a content analysis of VSS’s archival documents from 1988 to 1992 and retrospective interviews with key persons. The results acknowledge the power of entrepreneurs in establishing the organization. The entrepreneurs used their skills, engagement, and backgrounds to “make sense” of the organization, even though there were no crime victims calling for support. They combined logics from adjacent fields and created a specific new “victim support logic.” Thereafter, the logic spread quickly through the entrepreneurs’ lobbying of politicians and education of local victim support volunteers.