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E-News

September 2006  

E-Newsletter

This edition of the Hauser Center E-News highlights activities and events from
July-August 2006.
 

Featured Research

Welcome to New Hauser Affiliates

People in Action

Hauser People in the News

Work in Progress Seminar Series, Fall 2006 Schedule

Hauser Center Research Report Announcement

 

Featured Research

Spotlight on Research on Education and Nonprofit Issues


Over the past several years, Jim Honan has worked on several Hauser Center projects, initiatives, and executive programs which focus on accountability, resource allocation, and performance measurement and management. His teaching and research has focused on these issues in several sectors, including higher education, K-12 education, the arts, community development, and civil society. Jim also serves as a trustee of several nonprofit/educational organizations, including Fitchburg State College, Dana Hall School, and the Plan for Social Excellence.


Most recently, Jim has been working on a project
with Grantmakers for Education (GFE) which explores the various issues, strategies, and challenges involved in adopting GFEs Principles for Effective Education Grantmaking. He will serve as a case study leader at GFEs 2006 annual conference in San Francisco later this fall. He will be teaching a series of case studies, developed by GFE, which are based on GFEs grantmaking principles and are designed to help funders identify practices that will lead to greater impact in education philanthropy. Jim has also been working with GFE to develop teaching notes and discussion outlines for each of the new cases so that additional discussions and conversations about effective education grantmaking can be replicated in various local and regional settings.
 

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Welcome to New Hauser Affiliates

We are pleased to welcome the following Faculty and Researchers to the Hauser Center:

Kathleen Buechel, Visiting Practitioner
Kathy Buechel is a Visiting Practitioner at the Hauser Center for Nonprofit Organizations at Harvard University.   From 1999 to January 2006, she was president of Alcoa Foundation, where she led the reorientation of Alcoas philanthropy toward active community investment, expansion of investable assets and corporate citizenship.  For eight prior years she directed the Foundations operations and programs.  Over this period, Alcoa Foundation assets grew to $500 million, and combined contributions reached $38 million from both Alcoa Foundation and Alcoa in 2005.  At the Hauser Center, she will examine methods and mechanisms that contribute to the long term financial sustainability of nonprofits. The study will highlight promising practices that range from sharing operations, support for social enterprise, pooled loan or grant funds, capacity building, and the distillation of more robust performance metrics that support long term sustainability. The work will present brief case studies and offer guiding principles for funders to help fortify the underlying financial needs of nonprofits.

Alnoor Ebrahim, Visiting Associate Professor of Public Policy
Alnoor Ebrahim conducts research on accountability and organizational learning in nonprofit and civil society organizations.  He is author of the award-winning NGOs and Organizational Change: Discourse, Reporting, and Learning and is completing an edited volume, Forging Global Accountabilities: Participation, Pluralism, and Public Ethics (with Edward Weisband), which compares accountability across the public, private, and nonprofit sectors.  Ebrahims professional work has included commissioned reports on World Bank-Civil Society relations and on NGO accountability at the Inter-American Development Bank.  He also works with nonprofit executive directors in the United States on the challenges of organizational learning in poverty contexts.  Ebrahim comes to Harvard from Virginia Tech, where he was founding codirector of the Institute for Governance and Accountabilities. He holds a PhD from Stanford University (1999), where he studied organizational behavior and environmental planning and management, and a BSc degree from MIT (1991).

James Honan, Senior Lecturer
James P. Honan is Senior Lecturer at the Graduate School of Education and a Lecturer in Public Policy at the John F. Kennedy School of Government.  Honans teaching and research interests include financial management of nonprofit organizations, organizational performance measurement and management, and higher-education administration.  At Harvard, he is Educational Cochair of the Institute for Educational Management (IEM) and is a faculty member in a number of Executive Education programs for educational leaders and nonprofit administrators.  Honan has served as a consultant on strategic planning, resource allocation, and performance measurement and management to numerous colleges, universities, schools, and nonprofit organizations, both nationally and internationally.  Previously, he served as Institutional Research Coordinator in the Office of Budgets at Harvard and as a Project Analyst in the Harvard University Financial Aid Office.  He has also been a Research Assistant at the Educational Resources Information Center (ERIC) Clearinghouse on Higher Education in Washington, DC, and has served as Executive Assistant to the president of Lesley University in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

Heather MacIndoe, Postdoctoral Research Fellow
Heather MacIndoes research examines philanthropy and nonprofit organizations in urban areas. Heather will defend her dissertation in Sociology at the University of Chicago this fall.  Her dissertation investigates foundation funding to nonprofits across neighborhoods in the city of Chicago. She analyzes the geographic distribution of grant dollars and the longitudinal patterns in nonprofit organization funding from 1990 to 2000.  For the past two years, she was a Visiting Fellow in the Harvard Sociology department completing research with Rob Sampson.  This work was recently published in the American Journal of Sociology and the journal Mobilization.  Heather received a BA from Wellesley College where she studied economics and an MA from Stanford University in sociology.

Christopher Winship, Tishman and Diker Professor of Sociology
Christopher Winship is the Edmond Tishman and Charles M. Diker Professor of Sociology in the Faculty of Arts and Sciences and a member of the senior faculty in the Kennedy School.  He is a research associate in the Hauser Center for Nonprofit Organizations and in the Criminal Justice Program. Prior to coming to Harvard in 1992, he was Professor of Sociology, Statistics, and Economics at Northwestern University as well as a senior faculty research associate in the university's Institute for Policy Research.  He is the author of a variety of articles on various statistical issues including the analysis of qualitative dependent variables, selection bias, and counterfactual causal analysis.  His research has also focused on changes in the social and economic status of African-Americans during the 20th century.  In particular, he has examined changes in youth unemployment, marital behavior, and prison incarceration.  For the past eight years he has been working with and studying a group of black inner-city ministers known as The Ten Point Coalition.  He holds a PhD from Harvard.

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People In Action

In the interest of space, the E-News does not include titles for Hauser faculty, researchers or staff.  For titles and bios, please click here.

On July 1st Derek Bok took over as interim president of Harvard University.  Bok will maintain his involvement as faculty chair of the Hauser Center for the duration of his term as interim president.  That term will continue until the search for a new Harvard president concludes.

In July, Marty Chen was asked to give a lunch-time seminar at the World Bank.  The seminar focused on strategies to enhance the value-added of non-farm activities of the working poor in rural Bangladesh and India, drawing on the experiences of BRAC in Bangladesh and the Self Employed Women's Association (SEWA) in India. 

Dave Brown facilitated a workshop in Buenos Aires, Argentina July 3-4th with research teams from universities and foundations in Argentina, Brazil and Colombia to develop plans for studying the RedEAmerica networks of corporate foundations that are seeking to catalyze widespread grassroots development in a range of Latin American countries.  This initial planning has been funded by the InterAmerican Foundation, which has been a key supporter of the initial work of the networks.

On July 10th Dave Brown, Finn Heinrich from CIVICUS and Monica Blagescu from One World Trust presented papers for a panel on Civil Society Legitimacy and Accountability and the Challenges of Transnational Governance at the seventh International Conference of the International Society for Third-Sector Research in Bangkok July 9-12.  Dave and Finn also convened a pre-conference workshop on Strengthening Civil Society Legitimacy and Accountability that drew on the CIVICUS-Hauser Center Program on the topic.

On July 15th Gordon Bloom taught a workshop on building a vision for social change at Stanford University with his colleague Mark Nicolson from Ventana Group.

Tiziana Dearing, Chris Letts and Dave Brown worked with colleagues in mid-July at the new Center for Civil Society Studies at Beijing University to explore possibilities for a distance learning partnership to strengthen Chinese civil society organizations.  They hope to work with the Center and the Sun Culture Foundation to create joint executive education and research initiatives during the next several years.  During this visit they met with key government officials and NGO leaders as well as faculty colleagues at Beijing University and Tsinghua University.

From July 31st August 1st Gordon Bloom co-taught sessions on Social Entrepreneurship and Transformational Learning in the Global Social Benefit Incubator (GSBI) in Silicon Valley at Santa Clara University.

Marshall Ganz presented on two papers at the American Sociological Association Annual Meeting, August 11-14th.  On Saturday, August 12th, at a meeting of the social movement section, Marshall, along with Kenneth Andrews, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, presented Explaining Effectiveness in Local Civic Associations.  On Sunday, August 13th, at a combined meeting of the political sociology and social movements session, Marshall Ganz presented Social Movements, Parties, and the Politics of Reform: Left Out.

Dave Brown was the Distinguished Speaker for the Division on Organization Development and Change at the annual Academy of Management meeting in Atlanta August 11-16th.  He drew on work with civil society social change organizations over the last twenty five years in a talk titled Changing Organizations in a Globalizing World.

From August 23 -27th, Marshall Ganz, Sarah Staley, and the Leadership Development Project team met in Orlando, Florida, to launch the second series of Sierra Club workshops on leadership development.  The team ran a 2-day workshop for Sierra Club trainers to prepare them to facilitate large and small group discussions during this and future workshops in Washington, California, and New Mexico this fall.  Over 30 elected leaders of the Florida chapter and local groups of the Sierra Club then participated in a 2 1/2 day workshop in which they learned to strengthen their networks, design motivating tasks, solve conflicts constructively, find shared interests, tell their public stories, and set personal and group goals.

Tiziana Dearing moderated a Kennedy School Institute of Politics panel on August 29th on womens leadership as part of the annual Empower Peace Conference.  The conference brings together high-school aged girls from the US and Muslim countries for open dialog and exchange.

On August 30th, Marshall Ganz presented a workshop on Leadership, Community, and Action for LASPAU, Academic and Professional Programs for the Americas as a part of their Social Leadership Seminar.  The workshop was financed by the Kellogg Foundation and attended by participants from Bolivia, Brazil, El Salvador, Mexico, Peru, and the Dominican Republic.

Marty Chen has been asked to serve on the Working Group on Labor Rights and the Working Group on Business Opportunities of the High-Level Commission for the Legal Empowerment of the Poor chaired by Hernando de Soto and Madeleine Albright.

Liz Keating has been appointed a Lecturer on Law at the Harvard Law School and will teach Financial Statement Analysis for Lawyers in the Spring term 2007.  She will remain affiliated with the Hauser Center as a Senior Research Fellow.

Alnoor Ebrahim and co-PI Steven Heydemann (Georgetown University) received funding from the Ford Foundation for a research project entitled Accountability and Representation in Negotiated Contexts: International Financial Institution (IFI) Relations with Civil Society Organizations (CSOs).  This project aims to provide a systematic account of how CSOs and IFIs negotiate frameworks of accountability in their internal practices, in their interactions with one another, and through their relationships with government agencies.

The book What a Mighty Power We Can Be: African American Fraternal Groups and the Struggle for Racial Equality, co-authored by Theda Skocpol, Ariane Liazos, and Marshall Ganz has recently been published by Princeton University Press.

Hauser Center Faculty is teaching an array of interesting courses in the 2006-2007 Academic Year.  To view a list of courses, please click here.

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Hauser People in the News

Tiziana Dearings op-ed Katrina, One Year Later: What Have We Learned, appeared in the Philanthropy News Digest on August 29th.  Link to full text here.

An Op-Ed by Dutch Leonard entitled Advancing Democracy in Hong Kong: Lessons in How to Lead, was featured in the August 14th South China Morning Post.  Link to full text here.

In the August 13th Seattle Times article Longer retirement count on it, plan on it Paul Hodge discussed the financial implications of longer retirement.

Dutch Leonard was mentioned in two articles in the August 7th South China Morning Post.  Two papers he co-authored are referenced in both the articles Democratic Blueprint for Hong Kong, and Make lawmakers ministers: experts Harvard academics urge Donald Tsang to appoint legislators to build responsibility.

Marshall Ganz was quoted in The Washington Post July 24th article Union Tries to Unite Blacks, Latinos about a meat-packing industry union struggling to unite African Americans and Latinos.  Link to full text here.

The July 23rd article Boomer women facing a retirement shortfall in Knight Ridder/Tribune Business News featured quotes by Paul Hodge discussing baby boomer women experiencing a drop in income during their retirement years.  Link to full text here.

Paul Hodge offered commentary on retirement options for baby-boomer generation women in the July 2nd Boston Globe article Retirement Future Bleak for Many Older Women.  Link to full text here.

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Work in Progress Seminar Series, Fall 2006 Schedule

The Hauser Center invites you to its bi-weekly seminar series featuring discussions of work-in-progress by scholars from Harvard and near-by institutions on various nonprofit and civil society related topics.  Papers will be circulated in advance of each seminar. Meetings will begin with comments by the presenter, followed by general discussion by seminar participants.

The seminar will meet from 11:30am-1:00pm on alternate Mondays in the Hauser Center Conference Room at 5 Bennett Street on the Charles Square, adjacent to the Charles Hotel.  Attendance is limited to 25.  Participants must RSVP to each meeting in advance. A light lunch will be served.

Seminar Schedule Fall 2006

October 2
Elizabeth Keating,
Senior Research Fellow, Hauser Center & Lecturer, Harvard Law School
Misreporting Fundraising: How Do Nonprofit Organizations Account for Telemarketing Campaigns?     

October 16
Rajesh Tandon
, President, Society for Participatory Research in Asia (PRIA)
Participatory Research in Asia

October 30
Brent Coffin
, Senior Research Fellow, Hauser Center
Public Religious Leadership Curriculum

November 13
Peter Dobkin Hall
, Lecturer, KSG and FAS 
Setting, Landscape, Architecture, and the Creation of Civic Space in the United States, 1790-1990

November 27 TBA

December 11 TBA

For further information contact Klara Kabadian by phone at 617-496-0831 or by e-mail

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Hauser Center Research Report Announcement

Beginning this year, the Hauser Center will replace its Annual summer Newsletter with a winter research report.  We consider this an exciting new development in the series of Hauser publications.  The Research Report will offer a comprehensive examination of topics related to nonprofits and civil society.  Through it, we hope to increase knowledge in the field around selected subjects.  The Research Report will be published in an electronic format and distributed to your e-mail address for downloading and viewing.  The Report will also be made available on the Hauser Center website.

The document being replaced, our Annual Newsletter, generally contains updates and information on programs, research, activities and events, faculty and researchers, publications, and affiliates of the Center.  We have found that a more appropriate and timely way to give you this information is through our bi-monthly electronic newsletter (Hauser Center E-news).

We look forward to sending you the first Report, set for Fall/Winter, and look forward to your feedback on this developing series.

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This edition of the Hauser Center E-News highlights activities and events from July-August 2006.

The Hauser Center E-News provides bi-monthly updates of Hauser Center events, activities, people and publications.  Past issues of the E-News can be found here.  The Hauser Center for Nonprofit Organizations is a University-wide research center based at Harvard's John F. Kennedy School of Government (KSG). The Center is not a degree granting institution.  Please email Laura Ax with E-News questions and feedback.

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