Recently，t he study of community education has seen an increasing amount of attention paid to the services and the activities of non-protit organizations (NPOs). Some works hypothesize that as part of the grass-root movement，NPOs should ideally be an important element of civic publicity. However，t here have been few studies with ap ositive approach. Therefore，t he purpose of this paper is to examine the issue of civic participation of NPOs in order to verify the abovementioned hypothesis. There are three dimensions to participation in this context: NPO-government. NPO-people， and people-government. In order to determine how NPOs function in facilitating civic participation in these different dimensions，t he author carried out tieldwork in two local public institutions that were entrusted to NPOs. One of them is an example of NPO-government participation， w hich is ac ase of effective participation of NPOs in the management of ap ublic library. Another is an example of people-NPO participation， which is a case of positive participation by the local citizens in the projects of a NPO. The results of this tieldwork suggest that the expertise of the NPOs support civic participation. It is clear that this constitutes a vital factor in the facilitation of civic participation. With a focus on the role of NPOs，t he author proposes am odel of ac atalyst that indicates the educational effect of NPOs. Finally，t he educational capacity of NPOs is shown to comprise three elements: cooperative learning，e ducational projects，a nd community developmet.