Public Policy Commons^™

Balancing The Competing Demands Of Strategic Philanthropy: The Case Of The Delaware River Watershed Initiative, Edward W. Wilson, Carol Bromer, David Laroche

The Foundation Review

Strategic philanthropy requires striking a balance between two extremes. On one side is unilateral agenda-setting by the foundation and excessive reliance on its own intellectual frameworks and methods. On the other side is too much deference to competing voices from the field, with the risk that funding will be haphazard and incoherent. This article describes how the Delaware River Watershed Initiative, supported by the William Penn Foundation, has struggled to position itself between these two extremes.

Based on an evaluation conducted during the first four years of the initiative, the article examines four interrelated tensions: upfront planning versus emergent strategy, …

Front Matter

The Foundation Review

No abstract provided.

Executive Summaries

The Foundation Review

No abstract provided.

Can Coaching Help Community Partnerships Promote Health Equity, Community Engagement, And Policy, Systems, And Environmental Changes? Results From An Evaluation, Jung Y. Kim, Lisa Schottenfeld, Michael Cavanaugh

The Foundation Review

Foundations and other entities have increasingly funded coaching and technical assistance to support multisector community partnerships to promote health and health equity. However, much remains to be learned about how coaching can best support these partnerships.

As part of its efforts to build a culture in which everyone in the United States has a fair opportunity to be healthy, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation partnered with the University of Wisconsin Population Health Institute to provide structured coaching to strengthen the capacities of community partnerships. The foundation contracted with Mathematica to evaluate the coaching program, focusing on whether it had an …

Strengthening The Ecosystem Of Capacity-Building Service Providers: A Case For Why It Matters, Caroline Altman Smith, Carla Taylor

The Foundation Review

Nonprofits frequently find it challenging to find providers best suited to meet their capacity-building needs. This can be especially true when looking for providers to strengthen racial equity capacity. Many nonprofits lack the time, networks, or expertise to identify what’s available and vet various options for cost, relevance, and quality.

When the Kresge Foundation designed a program to build leadership capacity through a racial equity lens among its grantees, it wanted to strengthen the marketplace of offerings as well. Kresge’s Fostering Urban Equitable Leadership program sought to build leadership capacity and add value for grantees by offering a curated menu …

Back Matter

The Foundation Review

No abstract provided.

The Cultivation Approach To Place-Based Philanthropy: Evaluation Findings From The Clinton Foundation’S Community Health Transformation Initiative, Douglas Easterling, Sabina Gesell, Laura Mcduffee, Whitney Davis, Tanha Patel

The Foundation Review

Cultivation is a decentralized approach to place-based philanthropy where the foundation seeks to activate local stakeholders and assist them in translating their ideas into action. Rather than convening a strategic planning process, cultivation presumes that the seeds of high-payoff solutions are already circulating somewhere in the community. The foundation’s role is to support local stakeholders in developing and implementing their own ideas in ways that produce meaningful impacts.

This article describes the cultivation approaches taken by the Clinton Foundation, Kate B. Reynolds Charitable Trust, and The Colorado Health Foundation, and presents findings from an evaluation of the Clinton Foundation’s Community …

Capacity-Building Catalysts: A Qualitative Assessment Of Nonprofit Capacity Building By Community Foundations In Illinois, Benjamin Bingle

The Foundation Review

Community foundations have the potential to promote collaborative learning in a variety of ways as conveners, funders, and, in some instances, as nonprofit capacity builders. Yet little is known about what community foundations are doing to support capacity building. This article focuses specifically on nonprofit capacity building that is funded, organized, or led by community foundations in Illinois.

First, this article identifies the capacity-building efforts of those community foundations. Next, it summarizes results from a qualitative survey to share insights from leaders of the foundations that offer capacity-building opportunities. These data shed new light on our collective understanding of how …

Full Issue

The Foundation Review

No abstract provided.

Editorial, Teresa R. Behrens

The Foundation Review

No abstract provided.

Building Nonprofit Capacity To Achieve Greater Impact: Lessons From The U.S.-Mexico Border, Meg Loomis, Shirly Thomas, Carla Taylor

The Foundation Review

Foundations often rely on strong relationships with grantees doing frontline work in marginalized communities. Yet these nonprofits typically face myriad financial and policy pressures that must be managed amid increasing need for their services. Helping them expand their impact requires funders to invest in their grantees’ organizational health and capacity.

This article discusses the capacity-building funding experiences of Methodist Healthcare Ministries of South Texas, which saw firsthand the needs of grantees when it partnered with eight community-health organizations through its Sí Texas initiative and, in response, created a $1.5 million capacity-building program for those organizations.

This article also shares the …

Improving Access To Mental Health Care With Nurse Practitioners, Jessica Whelan

Dissertations

Problem: Over 40% of those with mental illness are untreated since the supply of psychiatrists does not meet the demand. The psychiatric mental health nurse practitioner (PMHNP) may be an adjunct in providing those services. The purpose of this quality assurance study was to evaluate outcomes of care between a PMHNP and a psychiatrist (medical doctor [MD]).

Methods: An observational, descriptive design with a retrospective medical record review of adult patients over a six-month period in a suburban, Midwestern, privately owned psychiatric practice.

Results: A total of 787 individual patients encountered at least one visit (N=787) although 3,679 …

Editor’S Note, Padraig O’Malley

New England Journal of Public Policy

The articles in this issue of the New England Journal of Public Policy have their origins in presentations at a Chatham House conference titled “Rethinking Self-Determination,” February 2019, hosted by the International Communities Organization and the journal.

Among the many aspects of self-determination they address: the elasticity of the concept as a human right in the context of “peoples” (Freeman); individual rights versus collective self-determination (Summers); Biafra as an early case of internal self-determination—the territorial integrity of the state and the right of secession when “the right of a people to participate in the decision-making processes of a country is …

Finding Foreign Friends: National Self-Determination And Related Norms As Strategic Resources During The Biafran War For Independence, 1967–1970, Christopher Brucker

New England Journal of Public Policy

The study analyzes how the government of the Republic of Biafra used international norms to win foreign support during its 1967–1970 campaign to secede from Nigeria. Secession conflicts occur at the intersection of international and domestic politics. For independence movements, support from outside is crucial. But, as Bridget Coggins has asked, how can secession movements find “friends in high places”? International support for unilateral secession attempts is strictly prohibited. Domestic and international asymmetry are limiting secessionist foreign policy instruments to intangible means. Legitimacy is a central concept to illuminate the phenomenon. In international politics, legitimacy depends on the external perception …

European Union Integration And National Self-Determination, Mare Ushkovska

New England Journal of Public Policy

Recent demands for secession in several EU member states bring the issue of self-determination to the forefront of the debate about the future of the European Union. This article explores the European Union’s attitudes toward the international right to self-determination in the context of the rising salience of the greater political union between member states. The focus of the European project, in direct contrast to the glorification of nationhood, is on consensual decision-making rather than sovereignty, making self-determination obsolete in a reality of EU integration. This research finds that recognition of, or references to, the right to self-determination of peoples …

Prevention And Protection Interventions For Stateless Non-Refugee And Force Displaced Children, Tanya Herring

New England Journal of Public Policy

This article advances a general theory of law and justice that would expand the Palermo Trafficking and Smuggling Protocols to a wider application in human rights jurisprudence. The aim of the research reported here is to close the gaps in member-state policy and scholarship that addresses prevention measures and protection mechanisms for forcibly displaced children seeking self-determination in states that have not ratified the UN Convention on Refugees and the UN Conventions on Statelessness. The research is based on the premise that a stateless nonrefugee status constructs an extremely vulnerable state for children during forced migration and when they are …

Self-Determination And Psychological Adaptation In Forcibly Displaced People, Numan Turan, Bediha İpekçi, Mehmet Yalçın Yılmaz

New England Journal of Public Policy

According to the UN Refugee Agency, as of 2018 approximately 70 million people were forcibly displaced because of intrastate and interstate conflicts. A majority of those people endured significant hardships, and a consensus is growing among researchers that forcibly displaced people have gone through potentially traumatic experiences that challenge their well-being and health. Consequently, a large amount of research focuses on their mental health concerns, whereas research focusing on their will to normalize their lives and grow after a traumatic migration is scarce. In this article, we highlight the efforts by forcibly displaced people to normalize their lives, pointing out …

Communicative Justice And Reconciliation In Canada, Alice Neeson

New England Journal of Public Policy

Communicative justice co-exists with other dimensions of justice and emphasizes the importance of fair communicative practices, particularly after periods of direct or structural violence. While intercultural dialogue is often assumed to be a positive, or even necessary, part of reconciliation processes, there are questions to be asked about the ethicality of dialogue when one voice has been silenced, misrepresented, and ignored for decades. This article draws on twelve months of ethnographic research with reconciliation activists and organizations in Canada and considers the potential for communicative flows to help compensate for structural inequalities during processes of reconciliation.

Raising Indigenous Women’S Voices For Equal Rights And Self-Determination, Grazia Redolfi, Nikoletta Pikramenou, Rosario Grimà Algora

New England Journal of Public Policy

The United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples states that the right to self-determination for Indigenous peoples involves their having the right to freely determine their political status and freely pursue their economic, social, and cultural development. The implementation of this right is linked to the ability and freedom to participate in any decision making that relates to their development. Current laws and practices are considered “unfair to women,” because they sustain traditional and customary patriarchal attitudes that marginalize Indigenous women and exclude them from decision-making tables and leadership roles. Despite the many challenges Indigenous women face in …

Climate Change And Human Rights: Shaping The Narrative For Reflexive Responses From Civilization’S Leadership To Counter And Abate Climate Change And Enhance The Role Of Human Rights In The Rule Of Law, Michael Donlan

New England Journal of Public Policy

This article offers a bold new legal process for enhancing and upgrading the rule of law to enable civilization to cope with and counter the mounting damage and injustice caused by climate change. Climate change, once an unimaginable threat, is now a brutal, ubiquitous game changer that is leading inexorably to the demise of all humanity. Only by enhancing the rule of law and melding international law with domestic law can civilization fashion a coherent, global action plan for survival.

For almost three centuries greenhouse gases have been emitted around the world by the burning of fossil fuel, and—most alarming—these …