Public Affairs, Public Policy and Public Administration Commons^™

Project Renew Worcester, Danni Yue, Amy Zhang, Jing Han, Omid Ashrafi, Yiming Xu

School of Professional Studies

n The client for this capstone project is RENEW Worcester which is a fledgling solar power project whose main goals are to bring renewable energy in the form of solar power into local, primarily low-income communities and are committed to the mission of making the transition off of fossil fuels to clean, renewable power. Based in Worcester, Massachusetts, they are a local chapter of Co-op Power which is a consumer-owned sustainable energy cooperative (co-op) made up of numerous different local chapters all over the New England area as well as the state of New York. The problem that we will …

The Rise And Fall (And Rise And Fall) Of The Olympic Games As An Economic Driver, Victor Matheson

Economics Department Working Papers

This paper traces the economic history of major sporting events focusing on the Olympics. Historically, the Olympic Games as well as other major sporting events have been considered costly events that place a burden on host cities. Only in relatively recent years, coinciding with the massive increases in the cost of hosting these events, have event organizers begun to claim that these events bring with them large economic benefits.

State's Fiscal Dependency And Implications On Monetary Management In Nigeria, Akinboyo O. Lawrence, Apinran O. Martins

Bullion

This study examines fiscal management by States in Nigeria and its potential to sustain growth and development. The study used secondary data from the Bank's Statistical Bulletin and the Nigeria Bureau of Statistics. Information on monthly allocations to States, internally Generated Revenue, Debt stock, total Revenue, and Total expenditure were used to examine fiscal imbalance in the States. Data were collected on statutory allocations to States by the Federation Account Allocation Committee (FAAC), Internally Generated Revenue (IGR), States' debt stock, capital and recurrent expenditure from the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) and the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS). Descriptive statistics …

Point/Counterpoint: Is There A Case For Subsidizing Sports Stadiums?, Victor Matheson

Economics Department Working Papers

In recent decades, governments have committed enormous public resources to subsidize construction of new stadiums, and the dollar value of taxpayer contributions for these subsidies continues to climb. Spending of taxpayer dollars includes both direct subsidies from state and local governments, as well as indirect subsidies from the use of tax-exempt bonds to finance construction. In granting stadium subsidies, governments claim that the stadiums are a public good that attracts tourists and businesses, thereby generating increased spending and job creation—benefits that flow to the community rather than to team owners. But do such benefits exist, and are they large enough …

The Impact Of Coaches' Character On Youth Basketball Players, Natasha Hill

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

If utilized effectively, recreation and sports can serve as major tools for developing youth, improving the educational environment, and increasing the number of productive adults that are healthier physically and mentally to positively impact society. Most research targeting recreation and sports developing youth has the perspective primarily of parents and youth. Evaluating the character strengths of coaches and youth athletes who actively participate in team basketball is vital.

An exploration of the value of basketball and character strengths of (n = 64) youth athletes, between the ages of 12 to 16 years, and the impact of their involvement with coaches …

2018 December, Morehead State University. Office Of Communications & Marketing.

Morehead State Press Release Archive, 1961 to the Present

Press releases for December of 2018.

Assessing Rice Consumers’ Preferences And Willingness To Pay In Haiti, Cleeford Pavilus

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

In the last 30 years, rice has become the number one food staple in Haiti, and rice imports have outpaced domestic production to supply the country’s increasing rice demand. Policy makers support the claim that increasing local rice supply will not only reduce the dependency on imported rice but also upheave the national economy. However, there is a lack of information on Haitian consumers’ preferences for rice to aid the development of the local rice supply chain. This research aims to bridge that gap by assessing Haitian consumer preferences and willingness to pay for selected rice quality characteristics. The results …

An End To Business As Usual: Nurturing Authentic Partnerships To Create Lasting Community Change, Jeffrey Sunshine, Bernadette Sangalang

The Foundation Review

The David and Lucile Packard Foundation created Starting Smart and Strong, a 10-year place-based initiative in three California communities, to develop and test solutions that support parents, caregivers, and educators as they prepare young children to be healthy and ready for school. The initiative brings together public and private partners to create comprehensive early-learning systems and ultimately scale what works.

This article offers key insights into the foundation’s experience, three years into implementation, with managing this complex initiative and how program officers were compelled to think differently about the best roles staff can play to support grantee communities and amplify …

Creating Habits For Inclusive Change, Pennie Foster-Fishman, Erin Watson

The Foundation Review

The act of transforming community outcomes requires diverse stakeholders across an array of settings to become actors of change. While this movement to action lies at the heart of effective community change, it also remains one of the most challenging aspects of collective work.

Drawing from the ABLe Change Framework systems-change model, this article presents four processes used in numerous communities across the United States to effectively engage diverse stakeholders in taking actions to improve local systems. These processes prioritize the voices of the most disadvantaged within communities and engage them as key actors in the change process.

This article …

Community Navigation As A Field Of Practice: Reframing Service Delivery To Meet The Needs Of Communities’ Marginalized Populations, Joby Schaffer, M. Julie Patiño, P. Barclay Jones, Ladawn Sullivan

The Foundation Review

Community navigators help individuals and families access local services and assistance through a combination of referrals and interpersonal support. The Denver Foundation launched the Basic Human Needs Navigator Learning Community in February 2014 to help navigators working with local organizations and community members practicing navigation independently improve their practice and identify similarities and differences in their approaches.

This article discusses the multiyear, peer-learning project, including the general lessons the foundation learned about both navigation and the use of a learning-community approach to reach its field-building goals.

Reports from participating organizations and community members over four years suggest the efficacy of …

Book Review: The Goldilocks Challenge: Right-Fit Evidence For The Social Sector, Veena Pankaj

The Foundation Review

No abstract provided.

A Field Study: An Examination Of Managers’ Situational Leadership Styles, Thomas G. Henkel, Debra T. Bourdeau

Publications

The present study explored the applicable situational leadership styles of experienced military managers attending an advanced leadership educational program. While attending this program, these managers were requested to reveal the results of their situational leadership self-assessment in which they participated. A total of 620 managers agreed to reveal their results, and descriptive statistics were conducted to determine the findings of their situational leadership self-assessments. The study research results revealed two situational leadership styles were predominating: (Telling and Participating). The findings of research study have significant implications for managers when leading individuals and teams for organizational success. These findings also may …

Front Matter

The Foundation Review

No abstract provided.

A Partnered Approach To School Change In A Rural Community: Reflections And Recommendations, Sara Rimm-Kaufman, Mary Fant Donnan, Dianne Garcia, Melinda Snead-Johnson, Eugene Kotulka, Lia Sandilos

The Foundation Review

With so many education policies and practices made at the local level, community-based foundations are in a unique position to support their local school districts in taking a comprehensive, systematic approach to improving the lives of young people. This article describes a research–practice partnership designed to produce school improvement in a rural community in western Virginia and reflects on a three-year collaboration among The Alleghany Foundation, two school districts, and the University of Virginia.

The partners identified challenges and strengths within the school districts and the community; gathered and analyzed existing district data and new findings from interviews and surveys …

China’S Belt And Road Initiative And Asean’S Maritime Cluster, Hans-Dieter Evers, Thomas Menkhoff

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

This paper centres around China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) and makes a case for further examining the possible effects of the complementary ‘Maritime Silk Road’ on Southeast Asia’s maritime clusters with reference to Singapore, Malaysia and Indonesia. Port development with “Chinese engagement” from Port Klang in Malaysia to Sri Lanka to Gwadar in Pakistan to some Gulf state ports to Piraeus in Greece provides a string of valuable pearls in the form of harbours from which adjoining areas can be serviced through feeder vessels or railway lines by Chinese government-linked companies. Whether China’s heavy investments in land and maritime …

Equity For All: Building The Infrastructure For Change Through Community-First Funder Collaboratives, Ellen Braff-Guajardo, Kaying Hang, Leslie Cooksy, Monica Braughton, Fontane Lo

The Foundation Review

Foundations increasingly recognize that improving conditions in many communities requires addressing inequities in access to rights and resources. Yet there are challenges to effective investment in underresourced regions, especially when foundations have limited familiarity with the region and may assume limited local capacity to leverage philanthropic investments.

This article discusses how Sierra Health Foundation partnered with other California and national foundations to establish the San Joaquin Valley Health Fund, a collaborative whose grants focus on strengthening the capacity of communities and organizations in the Valley to advance policy and systems changes that promote health and racial equity.

This article highlights …

Likely Trajectory Of Fed Policy Far From Settled, Thomas Lam, David Fernandez

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

Markets seem to be assuming an almost pre-set path of Fed policy normalization in 2019, including hiking rates and shrinking the balance sheet. In contrast, we see many uncertainties ahead.

Full Issue

The Foundation Review

No abstract provided.

By Us And For Us: A Story Of Early Childhood Development Systems Change And Results In A Rural Context, Lisa Payne Simon, Kirsten Scobie, Phoebe Backler, Catherine Mcdowell, Charles Cotton, Susan Cloutier, Clare Nolan

The Foundation Review

Since 2007, the Neil and Louise Tillotson Fund — a donor-advised fund of the New Hampshire Charitable Foundation — has invested in early childhood development in Coös County — New Hampshire’s largest and most rural and economically disadvantaged county. Community providers from a range of disciplines formed strong professional relationships and agreed on common goals and evidence-based strategies to improve services for children and families.

This article describes how local community members joined forces with the fund to create an integrated early childhood development system for Coös’ children and families. It provides background on the investment and initiative strategy, summarizes …

A New Tool For New Times? Using Geographic Information Systems In Foundations And Other Nonprofit Organizations, Jeffrey L. Brudney, Christopher R. Prentice

The Foundation Review

The literature on nonprofit organizations exhorts them to understand and develop their communities’ strengths and capacities. Yet, identifying those communities, appreciating the conditions that affect them, and integrating organizational stakeholders can pose difficulties for any nonprofit, including foundations.

This article examines how a tool relatively new to nonprofits — geographic information systems — can be used to support community building by bringing together different stakeholders. A geographic information system is designed to capture, store, manipulate, analyze, manage, and present spatial or geographic data, thus allowing an organization to map its community and share that visualization with its stakeholders.

This article …

Executive Summaries

The Foundation Review

No abstract provided.

Thriving Communities: A Model For Community-Engaged Grantmaking, Mary Francis, Colleen Desmond, Jeffrey Williams, Jennifer Chubinski, Jennifer Zimmerman, Ashlee Young

The Foundation Review

Interact for Health is a health conversion foundation serving the three-state region of Greater Cincinnati, Ohio. Its current community change initiative, Thriving Communities, is a community-learning model that helps embed health promotion and advocacy work in communities while those communities build an equitable infrastructure with stakeholders to more rapidly spread evidence-based practices.

This article explores the three tools developed for the Thriving Communities initiative: Success Markers, the Developmental Pathway, and Relationship Mapping. Interact for Health has found that these tools build core competencies and confidence among grantees as well as a process for community engagement that produces results at the …

Editorial, Teresa R. Behrens

The Foundation Review

No abstract provided.

Fostering Change And Fresh Voices: Vancouver Foundation’S Youth Engagement Journey, Trilby Smith

The Foundation Review

Since 2011, Vancouver Foundation has invested significant time, energy, ideas, and money in bringing together immigrant and refugee youth and young people with lived experience of the foster care system in British Columbia.

Through its Fostering Change and Fresh Voices initiatives, the foundation has listened and worked in partnership with these young people to address the issues that affect their lives, and important progress has been made in the forms of meaningful policy changes and improved political engagement. The foundation is now in the process of returning these initiatives to the communities that inspired them.

This article describes the roles …

Back Matter

The Foundation Review

No abstract provided.

Book Review: Decolonizing Wealth, Juan Olivarez

The Foundation Review

No abstract provided.

Using Social Media To Assess The Consumer Nutrition Environment: Comparing Yelp Reviews With A Direct Observation Audit Instrument For Grocery Stores, Ying Shen, Philippa Clarke, Iris N. Gomez-Lopez, Alex B. Hill, Daniel M. Romero, Robert Goodspeed, Veronica J. Berrocal, Vg Vinod Vydiswaran, Tiffany C. Veinot

Urban Studies and Planning Faculty Research Publications

Objective
To examine the feasibility of using social media to assess the consumer nutrition environment by comparing sentiment expressed in Yelp reviews with information obtained from a direct observation audit instrument for grocery stores.

Design
Trained raters used the Nutrition Environment Measures Survey in Stores (NEMS-S) in 100 grocery stores from July 2015 to March 2016. Yelp reviews were available for sixty-nine of these stores and were retrieved in February 2017 using the Yelp Application Program Interface. A sentiment analysis was conducted to quantify the perceptions of the consumer nutrition environment in the review text. Pearson correlation coefficients (ρ) were …

Ohio Selects And Begins Installation Of A Workforce Intervention: Coach Ohio: Promoting Resilience And Optimism, Quality Improvement Center For Workforce Development

Other QIC-WD Products

Ohio is committed to improving outcomes for children and families. Strengthening the child welfare workforce is an essential component for improving these outcomes. To this end, the Ohio Department of Job and Family Services (ODJFS) partnered with eight public children services agencies; Champaign, Crawford, Hamilton, Knox, Montgomery, Summit, Trumbull, and Wayne, to become one of eight national project sites to test child welfare workforce interventions through the Quality Improvement Center for Workforce Development (QIC-WD). Earlier this year, the Ohio site conducted a workforce assessment that revealed 48% of Ohio’s participating child welfare caseworkers experienced at least one symptom of secondary …

The Evolution Of A Collaborative Network: Understanding Partnerships In A Policy Mandated Collaboration Through Social Network Analysis, Pallavi Singh

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

Federal funding agencies that administer financial support in the form of program grants to non-profit organizations (NPOs) that provide child and family services increasingly require NPOs to formalize inter-organizational partnerships in order to receive this vital source of funding. That is, by mandate NPOs must participate in inter-organizational collaboration networks to receive these essential federal funds. Therefore, there is a need to understand the collaboration behavior of NPOs in a policy-mandated environment. This study considers collaboration behavior as information sharing and advice-seeking between the organizations who are part of a collaboration network as a result of a policy mandate.

Drawing …

Viability Of Zero-Based Budgeting Methods In The City Of Albuquerque, Justin P. O'Shea

Shared Knowledge Conference

This project’s objective is to study and propose an alternative budgeting method for use by the City of Albuquerque’s municipal government. Zero-base budgeting (ZBB) is a modern government budgeting process that allocates funds starting from a base of zero for operating units and requires annual justification of all resource and service items in the budget. Although traditional ZBB is rare in practice, local and state governments in the United States are starting to utilize elements of ZBB and are incorporating ZBB methods into their current budgeting process. Interannual variability in economic standing and resultant municipal revenues has prompted the City …