Nonprofit Administration and Management Commons^™

Unearthing Potential: Impact Investors’ Perspectives On Egypt’S Social Enterprise Market, Yousef Hesham Shoukry

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis examines impact investing in Egypt from the vantage point of the impact investors, revealing that Egypt's constraint is not the availability of capital but its direction, as the absence of legal recognition, coordinated intermediaries, and a shared impact-measurement standard keeps capital out of a market otherwise rich in social enterprise potential. The study employed a constructivist grounded theory approach, drawing on eleven semi-structured interviews with impact fund managers, ecosystem enablers, and public-sector policy advisors operating in or considering Egypt's social enterprise market. Data revealed that practitioners converge on the founding principles of impact investment (combined financial and social …

Refereed Research - Health Is The Greatest Wealth: A Research Agenda For Subsistence Marketplaces, Samanthika Gallage Dr

Subsistence Marketplaces

Health is a major challenge for people who live in subsistence because poverty heightens exposure to disease and weakens access to care. Yet it has received limited and fragmented attention in subsistence marketplaces research. Health decisions are made within the same trade-offs, uncertainty, unfamiliarity and relational exchange that shape other subsistence consumption. At the same time, health also goes beyond other mundane consumption decisions: it demands abstract causal reasoning, carries heightened vulnerability, and depends on information and trust that consumers cannot easily verify. Therefore, this paper argues that health should be treated as a core area of study in subsistence …

Institutional Affiliation And Financial Sustainability In Non-Profit Art Museums: A View From Moca Jacksonville, Kylie R. Kozack

PANDION: The Osprey Journal of Research and Ideas

Nonprofit art museums operate within increasingly complex financial environments that require diversified revenue strategies to maintain institutional stability. This case study examines how diversified funding structures, particularly university affiliation, shape the sustainability and operational capacity of mid-sized nonprofit art museums using the Museum of Contemporary Art (MOCA) Jacksonville. Drawing on institutional history, financial analysis, and interviews with museum leadership and staff, the study analyzes earned income, contributed income, public funding, and the structural support created through MOCA Jacksonville’s affiliation with the University of North Florida. The findings suggest that diversification and university affiliation are most useful when understood together as …

Right To The Library: Following Urban Planning Away From Stakeholder Theory, Jaime Taylor

Urban Library Journal

In the field of urban planning,  a well-established and growing body of discourse encourages reconsideration of stakeholder theory. Like urban planning, librarianship has been using stakeholder theory nearly since the theory’s inception, with its prevalence accelerating since the mid-1990s. However, compared to planning, librarianship’s use of stakeholder theory has been undertheorized; in three decades, there have not been meaningful advances or critiques of stakeholder theory’s place in library management. This article will review the advent of stakeholder theory in the business management literature; distill urban planning’s criticism of the theory and ideas for moving past it; and suggest what from …

Ai Readiness Of Operations & Finance Professionals In A Large Urban Public School District Amidst Ai-Driven Digital Transformation, Adetunji Onamade

Annual DBA Scholars Conference

This qualitative study examined AI readiness among Operations and Finance professionals in a large urban public school district, a public-sector workforce underexamined in the AI adoption literature. Using a grounded theory approach, data from 24 interviews and three focus groups (37 participants) produced 164 codes across 12 themes. Findings converge on a single proposition: AI readiness in this District is an organizational infrastructure problem, not a technology problem. Two theoretical contributions emerged: the Organizational AI Readiness Infrastructure Framework, a three-level diagnostic model, and the AI Readiness Conditions Model, a five-stage prescriptive sequence from governance through systemic transformation.

Refereed Research - Hybrid Institutional Co-Adaptation From Subsistence To Resource-Rich Markets: A Study Of Refugee Farmers In The United States, Priyanka Jayashankar Dr, Rifka Verma

Subsistence Marketplaces

This paper investigates how refugee farmers from subsistence contexts navigate and establish themselves in U.S. agricultural markets through hybrid institutional co-adaptation. We analyse qualitative data from focus groups and interviews with refugee farmers from the African continent and agricultural value chain stakeholders across the Midwest. We derive a multi-stage process consisting of institutional sensemaking, pushback during market navigation, hybrid institutional co-adaptation and market legitimacy.

Cultural Humility In The Workplace: A Causal-Comparative Study Of Foreign And Local Hire Employees In International Education, Natalie A. Ortiz

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Cultural humility is recognized as a framework for fostering respectful relationships in culturally diverse workplaces. However, limited research has examined cultural humility within international education in regard to workplace dynamics and power imbalances that may exist between foreign and local hire educators. The purpose of this quantitative causal-comparative study was to examine differences in perceived cultural humility levels between foreign and local hire employees in PreK-12^th grade private international schools in Central Asia and Eastern Europe. The study also examined whether years of international educational experience and the number of international educational assignments influenced perceived cultural humility levels. Data …

Editorial, Julia Coffman

The Foundation Review

No abstract provided.

Front And Back Matter

The Foundation Review

No abstract provided.

Climate Change Evidence: Driving Value-Added Use For Better Decisions, Tim Larson, Marina Lahowin, Sarah Hanck

The Foundation Review

This article examines the evolving ecosystem of climate solution evidence tools and distinguishes the different functions they serve, including evidence aggregation, assessment of evidence strength, comparison of solution options, spatial targeting, policy benchmarking, and adaptive management.

Drawing from research on evidence-informed policymaking and climate decision science, the authors identify persistent barriers to evidence use, including misalignment with decision needs, deep uncertainty, institutional incentives, and limited capacity for collective sensemaking.

The article argues philanthropy’s greatest leverage lies not in increasing the supply of evidence alone, but in strengthening the systems through which evidence is interpreted, governed, and embedded in decision processes. …

Evidence And Learning Amid A Climate Crisis: Six Promising Frontiers For Advancing Practice, Tim Larson, Shawna Hoffman, Marina Lahowin

The Foundation Review

The effects of the climate crisis are intensifying each year, just as the global context for mitigation, adaptation, and resilience efforts grows increasingly complex. Against a backdrop of urgency, resource scarcity, high uncertainty, and politicization, evidence is arguably more crucial than ever for informing climate action.

The potential of evidence for climate action has not been fully realized, leaving tremendous value on the table. This article argues that the challenge is not driven by a shortage of evidence, but rather by a mismatch between dominant evidence and learning practices and what decision-makers need.

In response to the question “how can …

Full Issue

The Foundation Review

No abstract provided.

From Rhetoric To Reality: Piloting Conversation-Based Reporting On Systems Change, Laura Rana Englert

The Foundation Review

The Climate Emergency Collaboration Group (CECG) is a philanthropic regranter aiming to unlock the power of international moments and systems to deliver a step-change in global response to the climate emergency. Both CECG’s work and the systems to which it contributes are characterised by complexity, non-linearity, and unpredictability.

CECG transformed its approach to reporting from traditional written reports using predetermined indicators to a conversation-based reporting (CBR) process prioritising depth over breadth and meaningful two-way exchange. CECG uses CBR to explore collective contributions to system change and drive evidence-informed decision-making.

This article provides a practice-based case study of CECG’s experience piloting …

Executive Summaries

The Foundation Review

No abstract provided.

Evaluating Complex Social Change: Lessons From Ford’S Climate Change Program, Subarna Mathes, Bess Rothenberg, Kelsey Simmons

The Foundation Review

This article offers a detailed account from within the Ford Foundation of what it takes to subject a complex social change strategy to genuine evaluative scrutiny. Drawing on the work of the Foundation’s Office of Strategy and Learning (OSL) and its evaluation of the Natural Resources and Climate Change program, it describes what shifts in strategy and learning were necessary, what was required organizationally, and what changed as a result.

The article delves into the evaluation process itself, including how OSL balanced the needs and perspectives of Ford leadership, program staff, and grantee partners. It shares how OSL centered equity …

Philanthropy And The Climate Crisis: Learning And Evaluation To Drive Decision-Making And Identify Emergent Opportunities, Lindsay Hanson, Rosy Kalfus, Courtney Lee

The Foundation Review

To us, strategic learning is an adaptive approach to using evaluation and other data to directly affect decision-making and action.

An early focus on building relationships and accountability to specific outcomes and values — including establishing baselines and plans for regular reporting and interpretation — laid the groundwork for decision-making in later stages of the Climate Solutions program’s lifecycle.

Increasingly rapid data feedback loops informed the Climate Solutions program’s strategy pivot, decisions, and collaboration with grantees and funder partners.

Engagement in strategic learning and use of evaluation to drive decision-making improved with practice, as illustrated by the Climate Solutions team’s …

More Than The Sum: A Collective Vision For The Future Of Strategy, Monitoring, Impact, Learning And Evaluation (Smile) In Climate Philanthropy, Marta Arranz, Rees Warne, Olivia Deich, Amelia Abdelrazik

The Foundation Review

Organizations funding climate work must learn quickly and make urgent decisions despite uncertainties and low levels of control. Within climate philanthropy, sharing learnings widely and using evidence for decision-making are crucial.

The authors argue the “evaluation” field is both misdefined and underleveraged. In a shift away from accountability and siloed learning within organizations, they propose redefining the evaluation profession as SMILE (Strategy, Monitoring, Impact, Learning, and Evaluation).

After three years of building field-wide learning infrastructure, the authors reflect on the field’s progress and offer recommendations to the climate philanthropy ecosystem.

Climate Breakthrough's Impact And Learning System: A Case Study, Olivia Deich

The Foundation Review

Climate Breakthrough makes one-time, multi-million-dollar, multi-year, flexible grants to climate strategists. The portfolio is collectively aimed at achieving an outsized emissions reduction goal. There are no strategy pillars, and grantees are from across the globe. This model, paired with Climate Breakthrough’s guiding values, opens the door for impact and learning work focused on iteration and learning.

In practice, grantees identify a small set of key performance indicators themselves; they share emissions reduction estimates for their work that are important but not dominant; they have abundant impact and learning resources; and the funder gains a wealth of data from which to …

Feedback Loops In Practice: A Case Study On Evaluating A Climate Collaborative, Mansi Shah, Amy Sherwood, Abbie Turiansky, Drew Koleros, Axum Teferra

The Foundation Review

Philanthropic support to address the climate crisis has grown substantially, yet it remains unclear how effectively philanthropies are learning from their investments, from each other, and from other actors about what generates meaningful impact. Evaluations have come under scrutiny, as conventional approaches often struggle to account for complexity and provide the timely insights needed for adaptive management.

In this article, the authors present the learning journey of a complex, systems-focused climate philanthropy initiative that uses structured feedback loops as an evaluation design. They describe how these loops were implemented over a two-year evaluation; discuss the choice of complexity-aware methods; and …

Spend-Down To Scale Up: Limited-Life Giving In The Climate Crisis, Madeleine C. Mckinnon, Samuel Rogers, David Gunsberg, Emma Mcintosh

The Foundation Review

This article shares first-hand experiences of a charitable foundation operating under a spend-down model, illustrating how a fixed time horizon shapes philanthropic and programmatic behavior. The authors discuss three conditions that a spend-down horizon reliably forces: the imperative to fund quickly, collaboratively, and boldly on shared goals; the discipline to concentrate capital with strategic focus; and the emphasis on learning and collaboration as both a means to optimize for impact now and to sustain and scale impact over the long term.

Authors explore the influence of these conditions in a series of case studies working towards a clean energy transition …