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The Foundation Review

No abstract provided.

From Framework To Practice: Insights About Aligning Foundation Impact And Strategic Positioning In A Trust-Based Philanthropy Era, Nancy Pole, Marie-Andrée Mbengue-Reiver, Anne Loranger-King

The Foundation Review

This article examines how a framework revealing foundations’ distinct orientations towards social impact has been used in practice, illustrating the tool’s utility and areas for refinement through one foundation’s experience.

Originally developed for Quebec’s philanthropic ecosystem, the heuristic positions foundations along two continua: strategic posture (problem-solving versus communitysupporting) and impact focus (grantee outcomes versus foundation outcomes), creating four impact orientation quadrants.

The case reveals productive tensions when different parts of a foundation occupy different quadrants. They are particularly acute for public foundations accountable simultaneously to donors, grantees, government funders, and communities.

These insights inform future framework iterations with a view …

Editorial, Julia Coffman

The Foundation Review

No abstract provided.

Reimagining Power And Practice: Grantee Reporting For Greater Impact, Steven Lafrance, Jamae Morris, Lauri Valerio

The Foundation Review

The evaluation of Robert Wood Johnson Foundation’s (RWJF) Written Reports Alternative Project (WRAP) pilot revealed that Oral and Alternative Reporting (OAR) options offer a practical, values-aligned pathway to equitable, trust-based reporting that reduces burden while improving usefulness with a pathway to scale.

WRAP participants reported strengthened relationships and two-way learning, especially when conversations complemented or replaced written materials.

Recommendations for others considering OAR include: offer and codify choice, center questions that matter, design technology to support multiple formats, compensate grantee time for evaluation or additional learning-related asks, and train staff for relational learning.

RWJF’s experience demonstrates how reporting can be …

How, For Whom, And Under What Conditions: Using A Causal Pathways Approach To Support The Goals Of Philanthropic Evaluation, Drew Koleros, Sophie Bright, Dana Harrison, Megan Shoji, Tina Fletcher

The Foundation Review

Causal pathways approaches are gaining traction as evaluators seek methods that move beyond descriptive analysis to rigorously explain how, for whom, and under what conditions change occurs in complex systems. Yet there remains limited practical guidance on how to operationalize these approaches in real-world philanthropic contexts or assess their quality.

This article addresses these gaps through a case study of an evaluation taking a causal pathways approach that examines students’ experiences in four virtual and hybrid K–12 learning models. Using a realist evaluation design within a broader causal pathways orientation, the authors collaboratively developed theories of change, iteratively tested and …

New York State Excelsior Scholarship Program: A Post-Implementation Analysis Of Student Success, Eligibility, And Indebtedness – An Intersectional Study Of Black And White Female Students, Marcus I. Richardson

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

The New York State (NYS) Excelsior Scholarship Program, introduced in 2017, was designed as a “first-in-the-nation” tuition-free initiative intended to expand college affordability for undergraduate students attending public institutions in New York State. While the program aims to increase access to higher education, its eligibility requirements, particularly the expectation that students complete 30 credits annually through continuous full-time enrollment, may disadvantage students whose academic pathways diverge from traditional enrollment patterns. This study examined the relationship between structural, financial, and academic factors and students’ ability to retain Excelsior Scholarship eligibility at the City University of New York (CUNY). Using institutional data …

Public Acceptance Of Meat-Reduction Policies Across Cultures: Comparing Singapore And Switzerland, Bianca Wassmann, Shu Tian Ng, Mark Chong, Angela K. Y. Leung, Michael Siegrist

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

Purpose – As meat-reduction policies are discussed across the globe, many are met with public resistance. Cultural values may help explain this pushback, yet their role in shaping support for food policy remains poorly understood. This study is the first to apply cultural cognition theory to food policy by examining how cultural worldviews shape the acceptance of meat-reduction interventions in Singapore and Switzerland—two economically developed countries with contrasting cultural profiles. Design/methodology/approach – In an online survey, participants (Singapore: n = 357; Switzerland: n = 495) rated their acceptance of 11 meat-reduction interventions (e.g. taxes, subsidies, labelling). We then analysed to …

Nh Ece Research Consortium Member List, Evan England, Jess Carson

New Hampshire Early Care and Education Research Consortium

NH ECE Research Consortium membership is open to individuals and organizations with relevant expertise that aligns with the purpose of the Consortium, including the advancement of knowledge to support early care and education in NH. Check out the current Consortium members in this graphic!

Executive Summaries

The Foundation Review

No abstract provided.

Disrupting The Time Space Continuum: Time Travel As Methodological Practice For Building Evaluation Capacity, Linetta Alexander

The Foundation Review

Dominant Western ideology limits our understanding of and engagement with time, representing it as a linear two-dimensional arrow that moves forward in one direction from the past to the future. Viewing the past, present, and future as distinct and disconnected phases can hinder the growth and improvement of organizations working on building their evaluation capacity.

In contrast to Western notions of time, Indigenous cultures of the Americas and Africa understand the interconnectedness of all aspects of being, that our experiences are more cyclical, where birth leads to death and death to rebirth. The Sankofa principle, rooted in Akan philosophy, states …

Trace: Temporal Rhetorical Analysis And Consistency Evaluation For Legislative Speech, David Hernandez

Master's Theses

Legislators frequently discuss the same policy issues across multiple hearings and legislative sessions, sometimes maintaining consistent positions and other times modifying or reframing their stance over time. Understanding how these positions evolve is important for analyzing political discourse and democratic accountability, yet identifying such shifts at scale remains difficult.

We introduce TRACE (Temporal Rhetorical Analysis and Consistency Evaluation), a system built on the Digital Democracy Database (DDDB) for detecting rhetorical inconsistency in California legislative hearing testimony. TRACE organizes utterances into speaker-anchored timelines indexed by bill and session, then applies hybrid semantic retrieval — combining dense BGE embeddings with BM25 lexical …

What To Expect When You’Re Expecting Passenger Rail: How Central Valley Communities Are Preparing For High-Speed Rail, Josephine K. Hazelton-Bpyle, Naomi Bick

Mineta Transportation Institute

Approved by California voters in 2008, the California High-Speed Rail (CAHSR) project is a planned 800-mile rail corridor across California aimed at delivering intercity passenger rail service to the state’s largest metropolitan areas. This was the first voter-approved high-speed rail project in the United States and remains one of its most contentious. The first phase of the project’s construction is currently underway in California’s Central Valley, including many communities that initially opposed CAHSR. While supporters champion increased connectivity and the provision of environmentally sustainable transportation alternatives, critics contend the project’s benefits will not outweigh its environmental costs and economic disruptions. …

Power-Sharing Under Pressure: What A Decade Of Community Partnership Reveals For Philanthropy Today, Clare Nolan, Pilar Mendoza

The Foundation Review

Between 2017 and 2024, U.S. philanthropy experienced a period of significant innovation as many foundations reconsidered long-standing assumptions about control and began taking steps to share power more directly with the communities they fund. This article draws on community leaders’ reflections, alongside the authors’ perspective as long-term evaluators, to examine how these commitments were experienced in practice.

The article focuses on the David and Lucile Packard Foundation’s Starting Smart and Strong Initiative (S3I), a 10-year effort to strengthen early learning systems across East San Jose, Fresno, and Oakland, California. Drawing on interviews with grantees and technical assistance partners, along with …

Adaptive Learning Partnerships In Action: Insights And Reflections From The Macarthur Foundation’S Big Bet On Nigeria, Julian Williams, Michael Moses

The Foundation Review

This article explores the evolution of the authors’ strategic learning partnership during their work together with the MacArthur Foundation’s Big Bet On Nigeria. The authors share practical insights into how foundations can cultivate learning relationships grounded in trust, aligned with priorities of program staff and grantees, and calibrated to generate timely, actionable insights.

The authors highlight the key principles that enabled them to help the program and grantees identify and adapt to emerging challenges, lessons, and needs, both within the programming context and in the foundation. In doing so, they offer a roadmap for funders and evaluators seeking to embed …

2026 Research, Policy, And Practice Summit: “Protecting Access To Rural Community Living For People With Disabilities”, Will Hoard, Lillie Greiman, Rtc: Rural

Independent Living and Community Participation

This summit summary examines the critical personal assistance workforce shortage in rural communities, where demand for care increasingly outpaces supply. Drawing on national data and expert panel insights, the event highlighted how structural barriers including low wages, administrative complexity, and limited data undermine the safety, independence, and dignity of disabled people in rural areas. The summit concluded that protecting rural community living requires coordinated policy investments in workforce wages, working conditions, and data systems, recognizing direct care workers as essential to the health and independence of the people and communities they serve.

How Far Does Social Security Go? Comparing Benefits To Elder Index 2025: Infographic, Center For Social And Demographic Research On Aging, University Of Massachusetts Boston

Center for Social and Demographic Research on Aging Publications

Social Security remains the foundation of retirement income, but for millions of older adults it does not fully cover the cost of basic necessities such as housing, health care, food, and transportation.

From Institutions To Families: Assessing The Progress Of Egypt’S National Strategy For Alternative Child Care Reform, Yasmine M. El Hagry

Theses and Dissertations

This study serves as a critical mid-term review of the Egyptian National Strategy for Alternative Care for Children and Youth without Parental Care (NACS) (2021-2030). The 10-year strategy overall goal is to shift from institutional care, such as orphanages, to family-based care, such as kafala, the Islamic alternative to legal adoption, for children deprived of parental care. While the global literature strongly advocates deinstitutionalization, empirical research on the operational risks and unintended harms that can arise during such complex transformations remains scarce.

Adapting the International Civil Service Effectiveness (InCiSE) Framework, this research uses a qualitative approach to diagnose the …

The Impact Of Corruption On Private Investment In The Mena Region: An Empirical Study On The Period Of 1996-2023, Mohamed A. El Regdawy

Theses and Dissertations

This study aims to examine and understand empirically the impact of corruption on private investment in the MENA region during the period of 1996-2023, as private investment is a key enabler for sustainable economic growth. To better understand such a relationship, a Pooled Mean Group estimator was implemented to figure out this relationship in both the short run and long run. The findings confirm that in the long run, within the context of MENA, corruption was used as a tool to overcome the lack of quality in the regulations that were supposed to enable the role of the private sector. …

Turning Boycott Into A Sustainable Opportunity: Leveraging Boycott To Boost Local Production And Enhance Local Market Competitiveness In Egypt, Alaa Maher

Theses and Dissertations

While existing literature largely concentrates on the consumer behavior dimensions of boycotts, limited attention has been paid to their structural economic implications for FDI and local production. This paper frames the 2023 boycott campaign as a demand shock in Egypt’s food and beverages sector. Dependency theory is applied to assess the pre-boycott stage, where MNCs’ market power created structural dependencies within the sector. Dynamic capabilities theory is employed to explain the heterogeneity in firm responses during the boycott and their attempts to acquire sustainable market share. Using a multi-case study design, qualitative in-depth interviews were conducted across 16 firms in …

Unpacking Assumptions: What Evaluation Capacity Building Looks Like When It’S Optional, Flexible, And Funded, Jennifer Marsack, Martena Reed, Robiel Abraha, Abby Triño, Sara Jones, Brita Blesi

The Foundation Review

Evaluation capacity building (ECB) in the philanthropic sector is often designed around a common set of assumptions: organizations need to be directed toward “correct” evaluation practices, compliance is the primary motivator for engagement, and funder-defined metrics are the most appropriate measure of success. This article challenges these assumptions by sharing insights from a multi-year ECB initiative funded by Houston Endowment called Harnessing the Power of Data.

Drawing on surveys, interviews, and program participation data, the authors explore how co-creating learning goals in a strengths-based structure shifts the evaluation culture of an organization. Key lessons include: (1) how flexibility and alignment …