Public Policy Commons^™

Partner-Centered Evaluation Capacity Building: Findings From A Corporate Social Impact Initiative, Lisa Frantzen, Julie Solomon, Laura Hollod

The Foundation Review

Funders can play a proactive role in helping to fill the gap between funders’ expectations and nonprofits’ ability to evaluate grant results. Using a partner-centered design, Johnson & Johnson piloted an evaluation capacity-building initiative that supported eight grantees in strengthening their ability to measure and use findings concerning health-related outcomes, by focusing on key evaluation challenges identified by the grantees.

Grantees’ approaches to capacity building naturally grouped around the areas of evaluation- framework development, data-systems strengthening, and staff training. Through individualized projects, grantees increased their ability to both do and use evaluation.

This article describes the design, implementation, and results …

Learning From The Opportunities And Challenges Of A Philanthropy-Private Sector Partnership, Victoria C. Scott, Andrea Lamont, Abraham Wandersman, Leslie Snapper, Mona Shah, Erik Eaker

The Foundation Review

Cross-sector partnerships are essential for addressing such complex social issues as improving population health. Among such partnerships, a philanthropy-private sector partnership is rare in practice; they may seem incompatible due to differences in their missions and cultures. However, these collaborations can yield positive returns for philanthropy organizations and businesses, as well as the broader community.

This article draws upon an evaluation of a partnership between the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and Humana Inc. to highlight key insights for forming and implementing a formal partnership between a philanthropy organization and an investor-owned business.

Establishing and maintaining a philanthropy-private sector partnership is …

Back Matter

The Foundation Review

No abstract provided.

Hearts And Minds: An Analysis Of Checks And Safeguards, Monitoring, And Performance Review Of Executive Boards And Their Executive Directors Within Select Nonprofit Corporations., John Michael Wagner

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

Horror stories of ineffective nonprofit organization management arise in the media far too often. When these stories emerge, the public demands accountability from those responsible. Ultimately, accountability rests with the fiduciaries of the organization. For nonprofit

organizations in the United States, fiduciary responsibility and accountability reside with the board of directors.

Board governance has been widely studied in the for-profit sector. Due to the critical nature of the work nonprofits perform, there has been an increasing effort to study board governance in nonprofit organizations. Employing in depth interviews, with both executive

directors and board members, checks and safeguards such as …

The Effects Of Food Security On Socioeconomic Mobility In The United States: A Case Study In Allendale County, South Carolina, Taylor St Clarke

Senior Theses

This thesis examines the relationship between food security – defined as accessibility to an affordable, nutritious, and sustainable source of food – and socioeconomic mobility in the continental United States. This thesis is primarily focused on the effects of food insecurity on both individuals and communities, examining the chronic long-term effects of such insecurity on areas known as “food deserts,” which are often given status as areas of persistent poverty. This research further examines the effects of a sustained poor diet, brought about by food insecurity, on the individual and overarching community in a food desert and how such a …

Does Migration Cause Income Inequality?, Pia M. Orrenius, Madeline Zavodny

Mission Foods Texas-Mexico Center Research

Inequality has been rising across the world in recent decades. Latin America has been an exception to what otherwise seems to be the prevalent trend in the U.S., Europe and Asia. In the U.S. the rise in inequality since the 1970s has coincided with the rise in Mexican immigration. In Mexico, inequality has been declining since the mid-1990s, a period during which emigration to the U.S. first increased to historic highs and then declined steeply.

Our review of the literature suggests that low-skilled immigration to the U.S., much of it from Mexico, has only played a minor role in rising …

¿La Migración Causa Desigualdad De Ingresos?, Pia M. Orrenius, Madeline Zavodny

Mission Foods Texas-Mexico Center Research

La desigualdad ha aumentado en décadas recientes a lo largo del mundo. Latinoamérica ha sido una excepción a lo que, por lo demás, parece ser la tendencia prevalente en los Estados Unidos, Europa y Asia. En los Estados Unidos, la acentuación de la desigualdad desde los años 1970 ha coincidido con el aumento de la migración mexicana. En México, la desigualdad ha disminuido desde mediados de la década 1990, periodo durante el que la emigración a los Estados Unidos se elevó, primero a niveles nunca antes visto, para luego declinar de manera abrupta.

Nuestra revisión bibliográfica sugiere que la inmigración …

Exploring The Role Of Irish Local Authorities In Tourism Development: A Senior Management Perspective On Tourism Development In Cork County Council, Monica Moisuc

Masters

In an Irish context, the government's engagement in tourism and its role in developing the sector is acknowledged across most Irish government publications. However, despite efforts made to highlight the major role of the government in tourism, the number of studies that seek to understand how Irish local governments are engaging in tourism is limited. In an attempt to fill this knowledge gap, this study brings a new contribution to the current relevant literature by exploring the role of the government in developing tourism within a local Irish context.

Using a qualitative case-study approach, the particular entity under investigation is …

Is The J-1 Trainee And Intern Exchange Visitor Program Still Fulfilling Its Original Purpose As An Educational And Cultural Exchange Program?, Rachael Ropkey

Capstone Collection

The J-1 Trainee and Intern Exchange Visitor program came out of the legislation of the Mutual Educational and Cultural Exchange Act of 1961. This policy was brought forth at the end of World War II. The J-1 is a “non-immigrant visa category … for individuals approved to participate in work-and study-based exchange visitor programs” (U.S. Department of State, J-1 Visa Basics). The J-1 has many subcategories, including Au Pairs, Summer Work Travel, College and University Student, Intern, Trainee and many more. The J-1 visa subcategories that will be the focus of this capstone paper are the …

Evaluating Theories On Income Polarization In The U.S., Jocelyn Anderson

Political Science Theses and Capstones

This paper examines the relationship between technological change and income polarization within the United States. I examine and discuss the reshaping of the U.S. labor market via skill- biased technological change, possible effects of globalization, as well as institutional policies. My research also explored how aspects of corporate structure norms, and tax avoidance could be causes for increased income polarization related to top tier incomes. Using current literature and data to consider the top causes of an increasingly widening wage gap, one can see that advancements in technology and the changes it has had on the labor market, as well …

Aligning Evaluation And Strategy With The Mission Of A Community-Focused Foundation, Claudio Balestri

The Foundation Review

Foundations are commonly recognized as having a comparative advantage in supporting forward-looking projects and programs. In this sense, the long term represents the natural horizon in which the foundations are called to fulfill their mission to plan and develop philanthropic activities and, therefore, the time reference for assessing results.

When a mission is focused more on improving the quality of life in a specific community than on addressing a specific social problem, evaluation of outcomes becomes more challenging. While available methods can provide valuable support to measuring the impact of a foundation’s specific program, they are unlikely to provide an …

Full Issue

The Foundation Review

No abstract provided.

Crisis Philanthropy: Two Responses To The Pulse Tragedy In Orlando, Cindy T. Rizzo

The Foundation Review

This article examines two philanthropic responses to the mass shooting at the Pulse nightclub in Orlando, Florida, on June 12, 2016, a tragedy that particularly impacted the region’s growing Latinx LGBT community.

The Central Florida Foundation’s Better Together Fund and the Our Fund Foundation’s Contigo Fund, while organized and operating in different ways, looked to best practices in crisis philanthropy and, in the wake of the massacre, provided the region with resources to address both short- and longer-term needs.

Better Together practiced strategic philanthropy focused on addressing systemic issues. Contigo lifted up new and diverse leadership from the grassroots. Each …

Foundation Transparency: Opacity — It’S Complicated, Robert J. Reid

The Foundation Review

The perception that private foundations lack accountability has led to calls for greater transparency. The literature, however, suggests that transparency is neither a panacea nor achieved without cost, and that its positive influence on the conduct of philanthropy may be less than straightforward.

This article seeks to examine transparent and opaque practice in private philanthropy, studying the literature as well as findings from interviews with foundation staff, trustees, and grantees that sought answers to two relevant questions: Does opacity exist in private philanthropy? Have foundations and grantees developed strategies for overcoming challenges related to opacity?

U.S. tax law affords private …

Front Matter

The Foundation Review

No abstract provided.

Editorial, Teri Behrens

The Foundation Review

No abstract provided.

Executive Summaries

The Foundation Review

No abstract provided.

Pci: A Reflective Evaluation Framework For Systems Change, Beverly A. Parsons, Huilan Krenn

The Foundation Review

Systemic change involves deep shifts in social norms, beliefs, power, and privilege — and seldom, if ever, follows a straightforward, predictable path. Such change also requires incremental, long-term action and evaluation. To better support systemic change, how might a foundation reframe its approach to evaluation?

This article explores the interconnected dimensions of the PCI Reflective Evaluation Framework, an approach now in prototype form which is grounded in practical thinking about working within complex social systems. This article focuses on its use in advancing racial equity, describing possible applications to integrate a racial equity lens in unpacking and addressing the complexity …

Review -- Design Thinking For The Greater Good: Innovation In The Social Sector, Brenda Sipe

The Foundation Review

No abstract provided.

Family Foundation Development In China: Two Case Studies, Shuang Lu, Chien-Chung Huang

The Foundation Review

Amid the accumulation of private wealth in China, family foundations have begun to emerge in recent decades. Little research, however, has explored this nascent phenomenon. This article examines the development of two Chinese family foundations — the Lao Niu Foundation and the Lu Jiaxiang Foundation — using document analyses and semi-structured interviews with foundation leaders.

While detailed data on program effectiveness and efficiency is lacking because of underdeveloped methods of evaluation, it is evident that both foundations have generated positive impacts on social development despite an overall lack of support for the foundation sector from Chinese government policy.

The case …

In A Good Way: Advancing Funder Collaborations To Promote Health In Indian Country, Linda M. Bosma, Jaime Martínez, Nicole Toves Villaluz, Christine A. Tholkes, Laraye Anderson, Sarah Brokenleg, Christine M. Matter

The Foundation Review

Funders continue to be challenged by how to best promote work in American Indian communities that builds health equity, addresses community context, and reduces the disproportionate impact of commercial tobacco.

In particular, public health programs that address substance abuse and tobacco control promote the use of evidence-based practices that tend to emphasize a one-size-fits-all approach and that are rarely researched among American Indian populations. These practices, therefore, lack cultural validity in those communities.

This article examines how three organizations collaborated on work to control commercial tobacco use in Minnesota’s Indian Country, and shares lessons learned on how they came to …

Back Matter

The Foundation Review

No abstract provided.

Becoming Strategic: Finding Leverage Over The Social And Economic Determinants Of Health, Douglas Easterling, Laura Mcduffee

The Foundation Review

While a number of observers have offered advice to foundations on how to be more effective with the implementation, evaluation, and adaptation of their strategies, there is little guidance on how foundations should go about designing their strategies.

This study fills that gap by analyzing the strategic thinking of health conversion foundations when they determined how they would address various social determinants of health. Based on interviews conducted with the leaders of 33 foundations across the U.S., we identified four strategic pathways: expanding and improving relevant services, creating more effective systems, changing policy, and encouraging more equitable power structures.

In …

Improving Impact: Collaborative Multi-Party, Multi-Sector Engagement (2011), Marcy Murninghan

New England Journal of Public Policy

Most people do not realize the full implications of the fact that we live now in an era marked more by networks than hierarchies. Nowadays, power is distributed across boundaries and borders, rather than concentrated in one place—be it a physical setting, demographic group, industrial sector, or professional discipline. Thanks to systems thinking and the ubiquity of digital tools and platforms, there are many more opportunities for lawmakers, policymakers, and economic institutions to collaborate with concerned citizens on critical public issues, thereby breaking the grip of lobbyists, third-party intermediaries, and the power elite. On top of that are recent breakthroughs …

A Framework For Good Ownership And Good Governance (1999), Marcy Murninghan

New England Journal of Public Policy

This article encapsulates a more extensive analysis that was commissioned by The Boston Foundation’s board of trustees in December 1998 to investigate its investment practices and identify ways in which its asset management decisions might be brought into fuller alignment with its charitable purpose—without conceding earnings or undermining its philanthropic fiduciary responsibility. The undertaking was spurred by the leadership of Robert A. Glassman, co-founder and co-chair of Wainwright Bank and a trustee of The Boston Foundation (TBF) since 1985, who took the reins from David Rockefeller Jr. in 1995 as chair of TBF’s investment committee. The research project built on …

Introduction, Marcy Murninghan

New England Journal of Public Policy

America faces a reckoning, a crucible of what Reinhold Niebuhr observed more than eighty years ago. Our democratic principles and traditions are imperiled by the power of financial oligarchs and unfettered money flows, which have contributed to massive inequality that, in turn, has given rise to political unrest and a sense of cultural unmooring.

The articles presented here are both descriptive and normative, setting forth a complex social problem with seemingly bottomless proportions and then offering a design or set of remedial actions to alleviate them. Drawing on my professional experience going back to the mid-1970s, I wrote these pieces …

Newfoundland And Labrador’S Vital Signs: Portrait Of A Foundation-University Partnership, Ainsley Hawthorn, Sandra Brennan, Robert Greenwood

The Foundation Review

Vital Signs, a national program of Community Foundations of Canada, produces annual reports of the same name that examine the quality of life using statistics on fundamental social issues. With these reports, community foundations are able to present a comprehensive and balanced picture of well-being in their communities.

The Vital Signs report for Newfoundland and Labrador is produced in partnership between the Community Foundation of Newfoundland and Labrador and the Leslie Harris Centre of Regional Policy and Development, a university research unit with expertise in both promoting community-based research and making academic information accessible to the general public.

This article …

The Arts And Culture Strategic Review Report: Harnessing The Arts For Community-Building, Su Fern Hoe

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

The Arts and Culture Strategic Review (ACSR) was initiated in 2010 to chart the next phase of cultural development in Singapore. The final report, which was released in 2012, appears to propose a paradigm shift in focus for arts and cultural policy making in Singapore: from the desire to manage the arts and cultural sectors into profitable creative industries to the utilisation of the arts and culture as expedient tools for social cohesion and community building in Singapore. This shift has resulted in government programmes placing (renewed) importance and emphasis on “community arts” as a cultural activity. This chapter critically …

Nurturing The Cultural Desert: The Role Of Museums In Singapore, Su Fern Hoe, Terence Chong

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

The absence of official platforms and institutions such as museums and visual arts spaces; while the artistic amateur scene was flourishing, there were no museums or national galleries where collections of the best local and regional artworks could be found, appreciated and studied by artists and citizens. This cultural desert was the result of the government’s attention to bread and butter issues. How, then, did Singapore transform from “cultural desert” of yesteryear to a city with 51 museums and 118 art galleries in 2013, as well as an arts scene that saw more than 3.2 million visitors to the national …

Global Ambitions: Positioning Singapore As A Contemporary Arts Hub, Su Fern Hoe

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

This chapter has two objectives. The first is to critically interrogate the state’s efforts in utilising the visual arts as a means to position Singapore as an international arts hub and marketplace. As Kwok Kian Woon and Low Kee-Hong have noted, “Singapore’s cultural policy has everything to do with staying on top as a focal node in the late-capitalist world system of the new millennium” (Kwok and Low, 2002, p. 154). This chapter offers an overview of the programmes and initiatives introduced by the state from the 1990s to the present in order to encourage the entry of international art …