Business Commons^™

Proving Foundation Impact On Public Policy Empirically: The Case Of The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation And Consumer Choice For Adults With Developmental Disabilities, Ann Whitney Breihan

The Foundation Review

· Foundations that work on national public policy issues face challenges in demonstrating impact.

· This case study of how the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation’s initiative to support choice of program provider for developmentally disabled adults uses some advanced statistical techniques to demonstrate the impact of the foundation’s funding.

· This study suggests that to get the greatest impact on policy change, foundations should consider offering modest competitive grants to governmental departments; spending the funds in regional groupings; and focus on jurisdictions that have demonstrated interest in the policy area by spending their own funds.

Setting The Table For A Sustainable And Just Food System, Kien Lee, Kolu Zigbi, Marjorie Nemes

The Foundation Review

· As consumers and producers, people of color have been affected disproportionately by systemic problems in the food system.

· This article describes the Diversifying Leadership for Sustainable Food Policy initiative, a joint effort of the Jessie Smith Noyes Foundation and the W. K. Kellogg Foundation to build the capacity of organizations led by people of color to engage in policy and advocacy work.

· Grantees successfully built their capacity to engage in policy work (e.g., increased capacity to identify policy targets), increased their organizational capacity (e.g., diversified boards), improved their communities’ capacity (e.g., created opportunities for dialogue and improved …

New Voices At The Civic Table: Facilitating Personal And Social Change, Laura T. Pinsoneault, Linda Nguyen

The Foundation Review

· This article describes six pilot initiatives of the Alliance for Children and Families -- New Voices at the Civic Table (New Voices), a philanthropy-funded effort to challenge human service organizations to integrate civic engagement as a permanent part of their infrastructure.

· All six New Voices models included common elements: leadership training, civic education, experiential learning, participatory decision-making, networking, and reflective evaluation.

· Each also reflected one of four primary variations to civic engagement based on their community needs and demands: self-efficacy, constituent involvement, mobilizing, and organizing.

· Results demonstrate that civic engagement in human services not only produces …

Finding The Win In Wicked Problems: Lessons From Evaluating Public Policy Advocacy, John Sherman, Gayle Peterson

The Foundation Review

· Many of the social issues private foundations and other philanthropies attempt to address — poverty, homelessness, global climate change — are wicked problems. That is, they defy easy definition, lack permanent solutions, and have multiple stakeholders.

· The wicked problems framework helps make explicit the challenging nature of the issue to be addressed, requires an inclusive style of leadership that seeks stakeholder involvement, and demands candid exchange among stakeholders about the nature of the problem and effectiveness of efforts to address it.

· A wicked problems framework provides a set of criteria and questions for evaluators of advocacy efforts …

Editorial, Teresa R. Behrens

The Foundation Review

No abstract provided.

Leveraging Grantmaking: Understanding The Dynamics Of Complex Social Systems, David Peter Stroh

The Foundation Review

· The nonobvious interrelationships among elements in a complex system often thwart people’s best intentions to sustainably improve system performance.

· The complex, nonlinear problems that most foundations address can be solved most effectively by thinking systemically instead of linearly about these problems.

· Systems thinking offers a range of analytic tools to improve our capacity to think systemically, including ways to distinguish problem symptoms from root causes, reinforcing and balancing feedback, system archetypes, mental models, and system purpose and goals.

· Applying these tools enables us to target highleverage interventions that can lead to sustainable, system-wide improvement.

· These …

Effective Advocacy Evaluation: The Role Of Funders, Johanna Morariu, Kathleen Brennan

The Foundation Review

· This article addresses the role of funders in supporting advocacy and advocacy evaluation work.

· The growth and strengthening of the advocacy evaluation field has lessened the “hard to measure” stigma attached to advocacy grantmaking.

· An increasingly broad array of evaluation designs and methods better capture advocacy data, enable rapid analysis and learning, and foster accountability.

· Based on a study of advocacy grantees and a study of advocacy grantmakers, the authors conclude that supporting evaluation and capacity building, providing multi-year funding commitments and core support, and creating custom reporting requirements and timelines are strategies that funders can …

Tools To Support Public Policy Grantmaking, Martha Campbell, Julia Coffman

The Foundation Review

· This article provides guidance on how foundations can frame, focus, and advance efforts to achieve public policy reforms.

· Five essential steps for developing public policy strategy are described: choosing the public policy goal, understanding the challenges, identifying influential audiences, determining how far those audiences must move, and deciding how to move them.

· Two tools developed specifically to support foundations during the strategy development process are presented.

Measuring The Impacts Of Advocacy And Community Organizing: Application Of A Methodology And Initial Findings, Lisa Ranghelli

The Foundation Review

· The increasing emphasis by funders on strategic grantmaking and measurable outcomes may be a disincentive to support policy and advocacy work, because of the perception that outcomes can be difficult to assess.

· A tool for measuring impact can reduce the barriers to funding advocacy and policy work.

· The tool draws upon the literatures on evaluating advocacy and organizing, social capital building efforts, and return on investment approaches to evaluation.

· The tool was applied in two sites, where funders found it useful to understand advocacy impacts and learn how advocacy can enhance their grantmaking goals.

Community Building For Children’S Health: Lessons From Community Partnerships For Healthy Children, Dorothy Meehan, Kathleen Hebbeler, Stacie Cherner, Dana Petersen

The Foundation Review

· This article describes Community Partnerships for Healthy Children (CPHC), a 10-year, $17 million initiative of the Sierra Health Foundation targeted at improving children’s health in northern California by mobilizing communities to use their assets. Implementation grants were modest ($50,000 annually), but technical assistance and communications support were also provided.

· The initiative rolled out in four phases. Overall, a total of 31 communities participated in the initiative. Twenty-six communities remained through phase three, with 18 engaging in the final fourth phase.

· Evidence indicates that CPHC improved the health of some children in some communities with regard to some …

Philanthropy And Mistakes: An Untapped Resource, Robert Giloth, Susan Gewirtz

The Foundation Review

· Sharing and leveraging lessons learned from mistakes is an important but underutilized resource to improve philanthropic investments and nonprofit performance.

· Philanthropic mistakes extend beyond the results of program evaluations to include questions of mission, role, investment strategies, and implementation.

· Distinguishing between “constructive” and “nonconstructive” mistakes focuses attention on those factors that shape the outcomes for even the most well-designed investments.

· Sharing and reflecting upon mistakes has the potential to improve philanthropic capacities for anticipation, learning, and adaptation.

· Philanthropy must recognize the sometimes blurry lines between success and failure, constructive and nonconstructive mistakes, and philanthropic and …

Community-Based Collaboration: A Philanthropic Model For Positive Social Change, Lynda Frost, Susan Stone

The Foundation Review

· A highly publicized incident served as a catalyst for the Austin, Texas, community, convened by the Hogg Foundation for Mental Health, to address gaps in the behavioral health system.

· The foundation worked with the local behavioral health authority, the mayor’s office, police and sheriff’s departments, and the city health department to design the Austin Mayor’s Mental Health Task Force. The task force was succeeded by a monitoring committee that identified six focus areas in which to develop action plans and monitor community progress.

· This collaborative process aimed to strengthen public commitment to behavioral health services and create …

Editorial, Teresa R. Behrens

The Foundation Review

No abstract provided.

Supporting Asian-American Civic Engagement: Theory And Practice, Wing Yi Chan

The Foundation Review

· This paper is a review of relevant research related to the civic engagement of Asian-American youth.

· Little work has been done to understand the civic engagement activities of Asian-American youth. However, unique promoters and barriers to Asian- American youth civic engagement exist, given this group’s distinct historical, cultural, and sociopolitical experiences.

· Asian-American youth may have two different ethnic and racial identities, and these identities may be related to different kinds of civic engagement. Asian-American students who have a stronger pan-Asian identity are more aware that their fate is linked with other Asian-Americans and therefore are more likely …

The Art Of Community Double Dutch: Knowing When To Jump In, Lesley Grady

The Foundation Review

· This article uses the childhood experience of learning how to play Double Dutch jump rope as an allegory to navigating complicated community leadership through civic engagement.

· There is both an art and a science to deciding when and why to work with a broad base of stakeholders to attempt comprehensive community change.

· The key lessons are the following: (1) follow the noise and find the excitement, (2) ask questions and get into conversations, (3) set the rules of the game, 4) keep score, 5) get the right equipment and players, 6) know when to jump in and …

Turning The Ship: Moving From Clinical Treatment To Environmental Prevention: A Health Disparities Policy Advocacy Initiative, Mary Kreger, Claire D. Brindis, Abigail Arons, Katherine Sargent, Annalisa Robles, Astrid Hendricks, Mona Jhawar, Marion Standish

The Foundation Review

· This article examines success factors for a statewide initiative to reduce health disparities by establishing environmental policies to reduce asthma risk factors for school-aged children.

· Twelve local coalitions and a statewide network focused on schools, housing, and outdoor air policies.

· Multiple types and levels of policy advocacy were encouraged by the Initiative so that issues at the local level linked to larger issues across the state, and conversely state-level policies supported local endeavors.

· Factors that contributed to the success of the initiative included: structuring the initiative on a systems change model; employing multiple technical assistance providers …

The Potential Of Partnerships For Health Advocacy And Policy Change: The Legacy Of The Partnership For The Public’S Health Initiative, Clarissa Hsu, Dave Pearson, Ron Maynard, Carol Cahill, Allen Cheadle

The Foundation Review

· This article reports on a study of 11 partnerships between public health departments and community organizations that were funded by The California Endowment to support advocacy and organizing to improve health outcomes in the communities.

· The evaluation examined the sustainability of the partnerships as well as the policy and advocacy work of the organizations.

· Almost 90 percent of the activities in policy change and community capacity building was sustained, whereas partnership and health department capacity building activities were the least likely to be sustained.

· The policy change legacies at the community level were strong and included …

An Overview Of Userra And The Fmla's Provisions For Military Families, Workplace Flexibility 2010, Georgetown University Law Center

Conferences, Panels, and Events

Two federal laws offer employment protections specifically to service members and their families. This is a summary of these laws, the USERRA and provisions of the FMLA.

A Sampling Of Workplace Flexibility Laws And Programs For Military Personnel, Workplace Flexibility 2010, Georgetown University Law Center

Conferences, Panels, and Events

A variety of laws, policies, and programs govern the availability and utilization of workplace flexibility in the military as an employer for both service members and civilians. This document provides examples of those laws, policies, and programs, categorized by the type of flexibility governed.

Work-Based Social Support In The United States: Limits And New Possibilities, Heather Boushey, Chris Tilly

Center for Social Policy Publications

The U.S. social policy framework has always relied on private employers to fill in the gaps for workers, rather than the state. U.S. workers have neither a strong social safety net outside of the labor market, nor an extensive social welfare structure supporting the labor market. For the most part, adequate provision of social benefits depends critically on employers’ voluntary adoption of support policies. For example, the U.S. has neither a universal health plan nor a requirement that employers provide health insurance coverage; the U.S. public system of old-age pensions is work-based, and that public system falls short unless supplemented …

Camping: A Positive Developmental Context For Youth With Disabilities/Serious Illness, Christopher T. Troxell

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

The paper will examine how elements of youth development can enhance the camp experience, so that new camps for youth with disabilities and/or serious illness, such as Flying Horse Farms, can start with a solid knowledge base of what works and why it works. Also, even though the paper is geared toward these specific types of camps, part of its recommendation could be modified to fit the purpose of any camp.

2008 December, Office Of Communications & Marketing, Morehead State University.

Morehead State Press Release Archive, 1961 to the Present

Press releases for December of 2008.

Maximizing Warfighter Capability Using Surveyed Necessity Measurement: Application To The Usaf F-15c Fleet, John M. Colombi, David R. Jacques, Dennis D. Strouble

Faculty Publications

Within the Department of Defense, with changing missions to counter dynamic and asymmetrical threats, the acquisition workforce strives to maximize capability for joint warfighting. How acquisition professionals measure and select capability improvements for the nation’s weapon systems is a perpetual challenge, made even more complex with constrained defense budgets. This study identifies a method for determining which upgrades should be purchased (production) for which aircraft in the F- 15C fleet by optimizing a capability proxy measure. Each upgrade’s “necessity” for a given mission area was obtained by conducting a survey of over 250 experienced F-15C pilots. The solution presented in …

Extended Time Off Overview, Workplace Flexibility 2010, Georgetown University Law Center

Memos and Fact Sheets

Workplace Flexibility 2010 defines Extended Time Off (EXTO) as time taken off from work for a single reason that extends for more than five days but less than one year.

EXTO may be brief in nature (e.g., a few weeks), when taken, for example, for a vacation, to recover from minor surgery, or to comply with a public health quarantine request. EXTO may also be longer in nature (e.g., a month or more), when taken, for example, for maternity/paternity purposes, for elder care, for military duty, or for a sabbatical from work.

EXTO (either brief or prolonged) may be unpaid …

Fact Sheet On Extended Time Off (Exto), Workplace Flexibility 2010, Georgetown University Law Center, Urban Institute

Memos and Fact Sheets

The Need for Extended Time Off (EXTO):

1. New children: More women and mothers are working, and there is an increase in the number of couples with children in which both parents work.
2. Health issues: According to a 2000 survey of employees regarding the Family & Medical Leave Act (FMLA), among those who took FMLA leave, more than half, 52.4%, of workers used the leave to attend to their own health conditions. Thirteen percent reported taking leave to care for a parent and nearly 12% reported using leave to care for an ill child.
3. The need for paid EXTO: Despite the …

Dividing Up Intelligence Education, Robert Clark, Ph.D

Journal of Strategic Security

At this year's annual conference of the International Association for Intelligence Education (IAFIE) in Monterey, CA, the keynote speaker posed the question, "How much do you need intelligence education outside the beltway?" Which led to a second question discussed during the conference: "What should such education look like?" In short, what should we be teaching in universities? What should we leave to the intelligence community as training? And what could be done in either or both settings? The first question of any educational effort is:What are we preparing students for?

Havre Community Survey, Christine Oschell

Institute for Tourism and Recreation Research Publications

The purpose of this case study was to provide Havre community planners with an understanding of their visitors and the money spent by them in Havre, MT.

Icworld: An Mmog-Based Approach To Analysis, Kimberly Gill, David Rolston, Wyatt Wong, Robert Pietrusko

Journal of Strategic Security

Intelligence analysts routinely work with "wicked" problems—critical,time-sensitive problems where analytical errors can lead to catastrophic consequences for the nation's security. In the analyst's world, important decisions are often made quickly, and are made based on consuming, understanding, and piecing together enormous volumes of data. The data is not only voluminous, but often fragmented, subjective, inaccurate and fluid.Why does multi-player on-line gaming (MMOG) technology matter to the IC? Fundamentally, there are two reasons. The first is technological: stripping away the gamelike content, MMOGs are dynamic systems that represent a physical world, where users are presented with (virtual) life-and-death challenges that can …

Short Takes: Intelligence-Service Psychology: A German Perspective, Sven Max Litzcke, Helmut Müller-Enbergs

Journal of Strategic Security

To date, four German volumes in the series "Intelligence-Service Psychology" (Nachrichtendienstpsychologie) have been published. These volumes generated interest in both the German and non-German speaking communities. It was therefore decided to translate some of the basic articles of the series into English (Litzcke, Müller-Enbergs & Ungerer, 2008), making them accessible to a wider range of readers. This article contains abbreviated versions of the articles in the book.

Research Note: Using The Iterate And Dots Databases, Peter A. Flemming, Edward Mickolus, Todd Sandler

Journal of Strategic Security

For more than three decades, Vinyard Software's two ITERATE (International Terrorism: Attributes of Terrorist Events) datasets have set the standard in events research for terrorism researchers. It has recently been supplemented by the DOTS (Data on Terrorist Subjects) biographies project, which covers all terrorists, supporters, and other individuals mentioned in the ITERATE project.