Business Commons^™

Donor-Advised Funds And Impact Investing: A Practitioner’S View, Sam Marks

The Foundation Review

Any discussion of foundations embracing impact investing must include some discussion of one of the largest — and growing — sources of philanthropic capital: donor-advised funds. These philanthropic accounts allow donors of all sizes to access many of the functions of a private foundation, including the potential to invest for impact. Sponsors of these funds, however, face unique challenges in catalyzing impact investments.

Like the larger institutional foundations that have led the way as mission investors, sponsors must often educate and inspire governance boards and investment committees. Unlike foundations with professional program staff, decisions regarding philanthropic resources at sponsors of …

Deploying Machine Learning For A Sustainable Future, Cary Coglianese

All Faculty Scholarship

To meet the environmental challenges of a warming planet and an increasingly complex, high tech economy, government must become smarter about how it makes policies and deploys its limited resources. It specifically needs to build a robust capacity to analyze large volumes of environmental and economic data by using machine-learning algorithms to improve regulatory oversight, monitoring, and decision-making. Three challenges can be expected to drive the need for algorithmic environmental governance: more problems, less funding, and growing public demands. This paper explains why algorithmic governance will prove pivotal in meeting these challenges, but it also presents four likely obstacles that …

Terrorism In The Middle East: Implications On Egyptian Travel And Tourism, Tamer Z.F Mohamed, Tamer S. Elseyoufi

International Journal of Religious Tourism and Pilgrimage

This paper attempts to shed the light on challenging issues affecting travel and tourism industry especially in the Middle East such as political, socio-economic and security instability. Due to its geopolitical and historical importance, the paper focuses on the situation in Egypt as a descriptive case study. The methodology relies on historical review and impact assessment to understand the roots and extended branches of instability in the Middle East that led to the Arab Spring, by focusing on the Egyptian case in the last half century. The assessment explains the negative effect of Western and Egyptian policy on extending the …

Oregon Nonprofit Disaster Preparedness: Finding From The 2018 Survey, Grace L. Chikoto-Schultz, Andrew Russo, Paul Manson, Jim White

The Nonprofit Institute Research

This report summarizes results from a survey administered in spring 2018 to 501(c)(3) charitable benefit nonprofit organizations across Oregon. The survey was developed by Portland State University in collaboration with the City Club of Portland’s Earthquake Report Advocacy Committee (CCERAC) and the Nonprofit Association of Oregon (NAO), following Sutton & Tierney’s (2006) and Ritchie, Tierney, & Gilbert’s (2010) classification and previous survey. Based on the survey distribution process, primarily through NAO, PSU’s Nonprofit Institute, and other nonprofit and public agencies’ networks, these survey results are based on a convenience sample of nonprofits that responded to the survey. As such, the …

An Appraisal Of The Actuaries’ Climate Risk Index, Stephen Lee Kolk

May 18, 2016: The Economic Impacts of Sea-Level Rise in Hampton Roads

PDF of powerpoint presentation given at the workshop "The Economic Impacts of Sea-Level Rise in Hampton Roads: An Appraisal of the Projects Underway" on May 18, 2016 at the Virginia Modeling and Simulation Center, 1030 University Blvd, Suffolk, VA 23435

Issue Brief: Saving By Mitigating, University Of Louisville, New England Environmental Finance Center

Sustainable Communities Capacity Building

Natural disasters can cause loss of life, inflict damage to buildings and infrastructure, and have devastating consequences for a community’s economic, social, and environmental well-being. Hazard mitigation means reducing damages from disasters.

Local governments have the responsibility to protect the health, safety, and welfare of their citizens. Proactive mitigation policies and actions help reduce risk and create safer, more disaster-resilient communities. Mitigation is an investment in your community’s future safety, equity, and sustainability.

Slides: Hydrofracking: Air Issues And Community Exposure, Debra A. Kaden

Air Quality Impacts from Oil and Gas Development (January 27)

Presenter: Debra Kaden, Ph.D., Toxicologist, ENVIRON International Corporation, discusses air concentrations of chemicals of potential health concern surrounding oil and gas development activities, as well as temporal and spatial patterns of these chemicals in the ambient environment. Such information is necessary to evaluate possible health impacts of the drilling process on air in surrounding communities.

19 slides

A Five-Year Management Stategy For Recreational Fishing On The West Coast Of Western Australia, West Coast Recreational Fishing Working Group

Fisheries management papers

In its discussion paper (Fisheries Management Paper No. 139), which was widely distributed and publicized, the working group put forward a range of management proposals for community discussion. These were developed after meeting directly with recreational fishers in key regional centres and receiving feedback from fisheries scientists and managers. The discussion paper attracted widespread comment, with more than 1,200 written submissions received from recreational fishers, angling clubs and other stakeholders. The working group would like to thank all those individuals and organisations that took the time to provide this valuable feedback. It was recognised that some of the most pressing …