Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Factors Influencing Donor Partnership Effectiveness, Danièle St-Pierre, Lisa Burley

The Foundation Review

· The International Development Research Centre (IDRC) produced six case studies on jointly funded programs related to the environment, global health, and information technologies in developing regions around the world.

· A two-dimensional tool probing eight factors that influence donor (funder) partnership performance and interinstitutional communication was developed and used in conjunction with a Partnering Process Model to guide the preparation of the case studies.

· The case studies demonstrated that communication is important externally, that is, among donor partners, and internally, that is, within the various divisions of IDRC. With the use of this tool, it was possible to …

Enrolling The Eligible: Lessons For Funders, Beth Stevens, Sheila Dunleavy Hoag, Judith Wooldridge

The Foundation Review

· Many social programs have a gap between the number of individuals eligible for services and the number enrolled.

· The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation implemented Covering Kids & Families to increase enrollment in Medicaid and the State Children’s Health Insurance Program.

· Grantees sought to increase enrollment by raising awareness among low-income families, simplifying the application process, and coordinating among programs.

· Funders are encouraged to consider the lifecycle of programs and organizations, the skills in coalition-building and working with public officials that are needed, and the need to fit political strategies with the local culture.

Editorial, Teresa R. Behrens

The Foundation Review

No abstract provided.

Foundation Evaluation Startup: A Pause For Reflection, Jill M. Yegian

The Foundation Review

· This article reports on the accomplishments, challenges, and lessons learned in creating a new Department of Research and Evaluation at the California HealthCare Foundation.

· Different tools were developed to address each of three key areas: performance assessment, organizational learning, and program evaluation.

· These new processes and tools have been wellreceived by both staff and the board, and have become increasingly important as resources become more scarce, making understanding and maximizing the impact of investments even more critical.

· Fostering a culture of evaluative inquiry in a fast-paced, payout-oriented environment is a significant challenge – program staff often …

Assessing Nonprofits’ Communications Capacity: An Online Self-Assessment Tool, Anne Reisinger Whatley, R. Christine Hershey, Julia Coffman, Andre Oliver

The Foundation Review

· Foundations increasingly recognize the importance of strategic and effective communications to advance their social-change goals. This article provides a framework that helps foundations to better understand the communications capacity of their grantee partners.

· Based on a detailed analysis of a survey of 529 foundations, universities and nonprofits, the authors created a six-point index that identifies the characteristics and practices of organizations that are ranked as highly effective at using communications to advance their goals.

· The six indicators are: Involvement of organization leadership in communications, communications planning and organization-wide planning, staffing and the use of outside expertise, donor …

Social Movements And Philanthropy: How Foundations Can Support Movement Building, Barbara Masters, Torie Osborn

The Foundation Review

· As foundations seek to catalyze broad-based social change, there is a need for greater understanding of what social movements are, how they evolve, and how foundations can support them.

· Movement building presents unique challenges to foundations. Because movements, by definition, must be driven by the people who are most affected, foundations cannot determine the goals and timetables of a movement.

· The authors identify five core elements to movement building: organizing an authentic base; leadership; vision and ideas; alliances; and advocacy infrastructure.

· A framework for evaluating movement building is proposed, which can help foundations identify measureable outcomes …

Executive Summaries

The Foundation Review

No abstract provided.

Sustainability Is Made, Not Born: Enhancing Program Sustainability Through Reflective Grantmaking, Ann L. Mccracken, Kelly Firesheets

The Foundation Review

· This article explores how reflective grantmaking can lead to enduring changes in the communities that foundations serve.

· The Health Foundation of Greater Cincinnati's approach to evaluating and improving the sustainability of grant-funded projects is reviewed as an example.

· Their grantmaking framework includes policy and advocacy work, evaluation support, communications support, and technical assistance in addition to traditional funding of projects.

· This framework promotes sustainability of the funded work.

Who Becomes A Foundation Ceo? An Analysis Of Hiring Patterns, 2004-2008, Renée B. Branch, Michael P. Moody, Sue Marx Smock, Donna N. Bransford

The Foundation Review

· This study provided baseline data about the professional and individual characteristics of 440 candidates selected to be the top executive in a grantmaking institution during a five-year study period (2004-2008), and about the hiring patterns of the diverse institutions making these appointments.

· Most new chief executive officers (79.5 percent) were not hired from within the same foundation. The percentage of external appointments grew in each successive year of the study period.

· Most new foundation CEOs (67 percent) were not working for a grantmaking institution when they were appointed. This majority made the transition from fields outside of …

Building The Bridge For Diversity And Inclusion: Testing A Regional Strategy, Vicki Rosenberg, Lynn Perry Wooten, Mary Mcdonald, Kimberly Burton

The Foundation Review

· Transforming Michigan Philanthropy Through Diversity & Inclusion (TMP) is a six-year research and development effort of the Council of Michigan Foundations (CMF). A unique experiment, TMP is the only statewide, comprehensive effort to promote diversity and inclusiveness among foundations in the country.

· Organizational excellence through diversity and inclusion requires an organization to find a goal that resonates with its stakeholders and then create collaborative communities that focus on achieving that goal. This strategy positions an organization to use the full diversity of those stakeholders for tasks such as problem-solving, innovation, quality initiatives, and the acquisition of resources.

· …

Executive Summaries

The Foundation Review

No abstract provided.

Constructing Collaborative Success For Network Learning: The Story Of The Discovery Community Self-Assessment Tool, Angela Frusciante, Carmen Siberon

The Foundation Review

· Despite conversations about the importance of community collaboration, foundations continue to struggle with how to best frame and support collaborative success.

· Existing tools to assess collaboration may not fit with either a foundation’s values or a specific program strategy.

· From a foundation perspective, developing a community self-assessment tool reinforced the idea that collaborative functioning is crucial and deserves attention.

· This article shares a story of the development and initial use of the Discovery Community Self-Assessment Tool as a process of social construction critical to collective action and a possible indicator of network learning.

Moving Diversity Up The Agenda: Lessons And Next Steps From The Diversity In Philanthropy Project, Jessica Bearman, Henry A. J. Ramos, Anna-Nanine S. Pond

The Foundation Review

· The Diversity in Philanthropy Project (DPP) was a three-year, voluntary effort of foundation trustees, senior staff, and executives of philanthropysupport organizations committed to increasing diversity and inclusive practice across organized philanthropy’s boards, staff, grantmaking, contracting, and investing.

· DPP had significant achievements, including mobilizing greater commitment among foundation leaders to voluntary action on diversity and enhancing both the knowledge base and data methodologies available for understanding diversity, inclusion, and equity in foundation work.

· The initiative also faced its share of challenges, including difficulty assessing the impact on the diversity performance of foundations, slow adoption of recommended principles and …

Paradigm Shift: A Foundation/Grantee Partnership Using Data To Drive Neighborhood Revitalization And Assess Impact, Lois W. Greco, Margaret Grieve, Maggie Mccullough

The Foundation Review

· The Wachovia Regional Foundation spearheaded the formation of a partnership to create a participatory outcome evaluation framework for its neighborhood revitalization work.

· The framework integrates the use of primary and secondary data and has been modified and improved to strengthen a variety of the foundation’s comprehensive neighborhood revitalization efforts.

· Forty-one community-based organizations have utilized the framework as a key tool to craft and implement neighborhood plans in a 62-county region.

· The framework has enabled grantees and residents to better understand and capitalize on market dynamics, enhance their participation in revitalization activities and begin to demonstrate the …

The Work-Family Interface In The United States And Singapore: Conflict Across Cultures, Adam M. Galovan, Tamara Fackrell, Lydia Buswell, Blake L. Jones, E. Jeffrey Hill, Sarah June Carroll

Faculty Publications

This article examines the work–family interface in a cross-cultural comparison between two nationally representative samples from the United States (n 􏰀 1,860) and Singapore (n 􏰀1,035) with emphasis on work–family conflict. Family-to-work conflict was negatively related to marital satisfaction in both Singapore and the United States, although the effect was stronger in the United States. Similarly, family-to-work conflict was positively related to job satisfaction in the United States but was negatively related in Singapore. As expected, schedule flexibility was negatively related to depression in the United States, but in Singapore the relationship was positive. These findings suggest that theoretical relationships …

Couple Relationship Education At Home: Does Skill Training Enhance Relationship Assessment And Feedback?, W. Kim Halford, Keithia Wilson, Bronwyn Watson, Tony Verner, Jeffry Larson, Dean M. Busby, Thomas Holman

Faculty Publications

To evaluate the effective components of couple relationship education, 59 newlywed couples were randomly assigned to one of two couple relationship programs (CRE): (1) RELATE, which involved receiving feedback mono their relationship based on the on-line RELATE assessment; or (2) RELATE + Couple CARE, which was RELATE plus completing the 6 unit Couple CARE relationship skill training program. Relative to RELATE, RELATE + Couple CARE produced more improvement in couple communication, and high relationship satisfaction across the next 12 months in women. Men sustained high and similar relationship satisfaction in either condition. Skill training CRE has additional benefits for couples …

Welfare As Happiness, John Bronsteen, Christopher Buccafusco, Jonathan S. Masur

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Mass Privatisation And The Post-Communist Mortality Crisis: Is There Really A Relationship?, John S. Earle, Scott G. Gehlbach

Upjohn Institute Working Papers

We reexamine the recent, well-publicized claim that "rapid mass privatisation [of state-owned enterprises]...was a crucial determinant of differences in adult mortality trends in postcommunist countries" (Stuckler, King and McKee, 2009). Our analysis shows that the estimated correlation of privatization and mortality in country-level data is not robust to recomputing the mass-privatization measure, to assuming a short lag for economic policies to affect mortality, and to controlling for country-specific mortality trends. Further, in an analysis of the determinants of mortality in Russian regions, we find no evidence that privatization increased mortality during the early 1990s. Finally, we reanalyze the relationship between …

The Effects Of Owi Victim Impact Courses On Offender Recidivism, Sarah Emily Johnson

Dissertations and Theses @ UNI

This study examines the effectiveness of victim impact courses, a court mandated intervention program, for 2nd OWI offenders (individuals with a second conviction of operating while intoxicated) in the first, fifth, and sixth districts of Iowa. Victim impact courses are intended to teach offenders about how drinking and driving can come to affect others in various different ways. The course is intended to lower reoffending rates for those who participate. Data was obtained through the ICON database. The ICON database is utilized by the Department of Corrections in Iowa to track information concerning offenders and their offenses. A bivariate analysis, …

The New Childbirth : An Analysis Of Planned Cesarean Sections, Loren Wilbers

Dissertations and Theses @ UNI

This study examines the experience of planned cesarean section delivery as told by six mothers who have given birth utilizing this method. The rate of planned cesarean deliveries being performed in the United States has been increasing over the past two decades. The existing literature attributes this phenomenon to mothers' fear of the pain associated with vaginal birth, desires to imitate celebrities and maintain vaginal tone, and the greed of obstetricians who push for cesarean deliveries for both convenience and financial gain. The voices of mothers themselves is lacking in the existing literature. Thus, this study draws upon a qualitative, …

Therapeutic Discourse And The American Public Philosophy: On American Liberalism's Troubled Relationship With Psychology, Clifford D. Vickrey

Honors Theses

I explore the main currents of postwar American liberalism. One, sociological, emerged in response to the danger of mass movements. Articulated primarily by political sociologists and psychologists and ascendant from the mid-fifties till the mid-seventies, it heralded the "end of ideology." It emphasized stability, elitism, positive science and pluralism; it recast normatively sound politics as logrolling and hard bargaining. I argue that these normative features, attractive when considered in isolation, taken together led to a vicious ad hominem style in accounting for views outside the postwar consensus. It used pseudo-scientific literature in labeling populists, Progressives, Taft conservatives, Goldwaterites, the New …

Family Ties: Mainstream Environmentalists' Understanding Of Radical Environmentalism In America, Zachary W. Ezor

Honors Theses

Environmentalism in the United States manifests itself in numerous ways. While American environmentalists have been grouped into broad camps over the years, observers have struggled to accurately classify the different components of the movement. Lately, environmentalists have been characterized based on their chosen modus operandi. Environmentalists who employ typical interest group tactics of policy advocacy and accept the notion of political compromise can generally be called 'mainstream.' Alternatively, those environmentalists who employ non-conventional strategies like direct action and take a no-compromise stance on environmental issues are typically described as 'radical.' Despite these distinctions, both radical and mainstream environmentalists are parts …

Erasing The Steps Of Kingdom: Indigenous Autonomy In Chiapas, Mexico And The Zapatistas' Re-Conception Of Power, Tara Brian

Honors Theses

Although the Zapatista rebellion in Chiapas, Mexico in 1994 emerged from a long history of guerrilla struggle in Central America, the indigenous movement offered something new: a bold re-conception of power and a novel approach to revolution that shifted the locus of struggle away from state capture to the realm of civil society, opened the revolution to previously excluded participants, and conceived of innovate means to manage power within Zapatista autonomous zones. In this thesis, I begin with a discussion of the ways in which the Zapatistas’ rhetoric of revolution and power has inspired theorists and activists around the world …

Revitalizing The Signaling Power Of Class Rank At Colby College, Nicholas Van Niel

Honors Theses

Consistent with trends at American colleges and universities nationwide, grades have been monotonically increasing at Colby College over the past decade while controlling for student aptitude. A rich data set that describes every Colby student over three cohorts is used to predict student performance. By comparing the mean predicted grade to the mean actual grade in a department, it is seen that some departments award mean grades that are significantly higher than predicted grades warranted by explainable factors. With some departments giving significantly higher grades than other departments, the current grading system is susceptible to awarding unwarranted higher grades to …

No, I’M Really, Really Bad At Math: Competition For Self-Verification, Alexandra E. Wesnousky

Honors Theses

In their theory of self-verification, Swann and Read’s (1981) postulate that people like feedback that is consistent with their self-concept. Researchers have yet to examine what happens when two individuals are both seeking feedback from each other to verify their self-concept on the same domain. When individuals are competing against someone to verify a similarly held self-concept, they should try to seek more polarized feedback, especially when the domain is highly important. In two experiments, participants expected to receive computer feedback on their responses to identity-related questions, either based on their own responses or on how they compared to the …

Continuity Of Fdi: Determinants And Effects On Growth, Loredana Popescu

Honors Theses

The literature on foreign direct investment (FDI) provides evidence on the relation from FDI to growth in the presence of some absorptive qualities such as existing level of development, financial market depth, trade policies and human capital thresholds. The analysis of FDI inflows in the literature so far does not include an investigation of discontinuity, or of lack of steady positive flows. Discontinuities are expected to depend on development levels and risk factors in the host country as they proxy for attractiveness of the target to the foreign investor. This paper investigates the continuity of FDI with its determinants and …

Migration, Food And Cultural Production Across Changing Afro-Ecuadorian Geographies, Amelia J. Swinton

Honors Theses

The human geography of Ecuador is changing. Urban Afro-Ecuadorians now outnumber those living in the two rural regions that have been the ancestral homelands of the population. This physical transformation assaults Ecuador's historically racialized geography, which conflated cities, modernity and white-mestizo identity. Though Afro-Ecuadorians living in the rural north had previously been physically and figuratively located outside of the national project, Ecuador’s new constitution has sought to reverse this institutionalized exclusion. National belonging has been reframed through the concept of interculturality, which recognizes diversity and equality at the same time. I conducted two periods of fieldwork in the north-central Chota …

The Emerging Civil Society In China And Its Impact On Democratization, Haolu Wang

Honors Theses

Recent years have seen an emerging civil society in an authoritarian China. The authoritarian embrace of civil society challenges the conventional wisdom that civil society is closely linked to democracy. In Beijing, the rhetoric of civil society linked less to democracy than to modernization. However, does civil society development have any impact on democratization in authoritarian regimes? The thesis tries to provide a tentative answer by studying civil society and democratization in post-Mao China. As a result of economic development and political reforms, gradual political liberalization has marked a shift of state-society relations that gives rise to a certain degree …

The “Lunatic Fringe” -- Barry Goldwater And The Conservative Revolution Of The 1960s --, Nicholas L. Bromley

Honors Theses

How did conservatives, who had become effectively ostracized by their party following the Great Depression and the societal reforms of the New Deal, regain leverage within the GOP during the 1960s? My hypothesis is two-fold. First, I contend that a small group of conservative activists led by F. Clifton White, in spite of a dearth of resources and manpower, managed to infiltrate Republican infrastructure and “hijack” the delegate- selection process. The distinctly conservative and recalcitrant disposition of the Goldwater delegates demonstrates that these activists succeeded. Second, I argue that in addition to temporarily overpowering the national convention in 1964, conservatives …

Leisure: Definitions, Patterns, And Constraints: A Study Of University Students In China, Shisi Zhou

Dissertations and Theses @ UNI

China has witnessed tremendous social transformation in the last three decades due to the introduction of the "open door" policy and economic reforms in the late 1970s, which has resulted in great changes in Chinese culture and identity considerations. University students, as one of the most energetic and creative groups of individuals in the society, are playing and will play an important role in leading leisure lifestyles in China in the future. The purpose of this study was to examine the understanding of leisure (xiuxian in Chinese), leisure patterns, and constraints among university students in China.

Undergraduate students (N = …