About N.A.C.C.

This author has not yet filled in any details.
So far N.A.C.C. has created 180 blog entries.

Professional in Residence / Director of Applied Research – INAR at LSUS

Position Title: Professional in Residence / Director of Applied Research
Organization: Institute for Nonprofit Administration and Research (INAR) at LSU Shreveport (LSUS)
Reports to: Executive Director of INAR
Employment Type: 9-month full-time position, Professional in Residence
FTE Split: 50% Teaching, 50% Director of Applied Research
Location: Shreveport, LA

Position Overview:
The Institute for Nonprofit Administration and Research (INAR) at LSUS seeks a knowledgeable, forward-thinking Professional in Residence who will also serve as the Director of Applied Research. Reporting to the Executive Director of INAR, this position combines research leadership with teaching, working to expand INAR’s research initiatives and impact across the region. This is non-tenure track position.

By |2025-01-29T11:17:39-05:00January 29th, 2025|Job Posting|

Executive Director of the Cary Center for the Advancement of Philanthropy & Nonprofit Studies and Women’s Philanthropy Board

Position Overview

The Cary Center for the Advancement of Philanthropy & Nonprofit Studies encompasses teaching, outreach, and research, thus supporting the tripartite mission of Auburn University. Its work focuses on philanthropy, wealth management, mentoring and nonprofit studies, serving a variety of students and other audiences in a real and virtual community. The Cary Center supports teaching and learning in the College of Human Sciences academic programs which focus on the art and science of philanthropy as applied to the nonprofit sector. The center provides mentoring for students, professionals, and communities in the areas of economic sustainability and philanthropy. The Cary Center includes three divisions: Community and Collegiate, Youth, and Adult, which includes the flagship program, The Women’s Philanthropy Board and the men’s auxiliary group, the Phils.

Job Summary

The Executive Director of the Cary Center for the Advancement of Philanthropy & Nonprofit Studies and Women’s Philanthropy Board will have responsibility and oversight for the fiscal, human resources, external relations, public relations, fundraising/grantsmanship, educational, research, and programmatic (outreach) functions. This role drives fundraising to support programming and create new opportunities. This role is integral to advancing the mission of the College of Human Sciences through programming and initiatives of the Cary Center. This role will also include teaching responsibilities and may carry an assistant/associate clinical professor title. This a twelve-month nontenure track position. The candidate selected must be able to meet eligibility requirements to work in the United States at the time the appointment is scheduled to begin and continue working legally during employment.

By |2025-01-08T10:34:17-05:00January 8th, 2025|Job Posting|

A Message from Your Board President: December 2024

Angela R. Logan, PhD

Angela R. Logan, PhD
St. Andre Bessette Academic Director
Master of Nonprofit Administration

Associate Teaching Professor
Mendoza College of Business
University of Notre Dame

Hope > Despair

Hello! As I write this, I am reflecting on a recent experience and wrestling with a question I’ve been pondering for the past three weeks. At the beginning of December, led by an international nonprofit, I embarked upon a ten day pilgrimage with members of my church, to study the principles and practices of peacemaking within the context of the Emerald Isles. Over the course of the trip, we traveled across Ireland and Northern Ireland, meeting with everyone from Benedictine monks to former paramilitary soldiers on both sides of The Troubles, and everyone in between. We visited with nonprofit leaders committed to reclaiming the Irish language, toured a working replica of the 19th-century vessel that carried Irish emigrants to North America fleeing the Great Irish Famine, and the largest stadium of the Gaelic Athletic Association (I even tried a wee bit of hurling).

As I sit here, thinking back over my trip, one question keeps coming. I suspect for many of you, you are also wrestling with the answer to this question. The question is simply this: What is my role in all of this?

As we wrap up the academic term, questioning who assigned all these projects and papers (okay, maybe that’s just me), while also making preparations for the start of the new term shortly after the Times Square ball drops, it can often feel like we are living on a perpetual hamster wheel (again, maybe that’s just me). The administrivia keeps piling up, with budget preparations, midyear performance evaluations of staff, and preparing preliminary reports of institutional leadership. And let’s not forget the political uncertainty in the US and abroad, and the implications that uncertainty will no doubt have on our sector, our students, and ourselves… We’re being asked to increasingly do so much more with so much less, while also trying to maintain a robust research agenda and preparing the next generation of nonprofit leaders. Whew…are you as tired reading that as I was typing it?!, And don’t get me started on the pressures of parenting, parenting your parents, or both, dealing with the realities of aging well, and just generally maintaining your physical, mental, and emotional wellbeing! It’s enough to send an academic director to Jamaica (again, probably just me).

And yet, as I hold the tension between all the things on my to-do list and my experience on the pilgrimage to the Emerald Isles, I can’t help but be challenged to focus on the wider context of all of this, and ask myself: What is my role in all of this? In a world that often pushes us to choose between despair and hope, my role is to choose hope. And more importantly, my role, and dare I say our role, is to challenge our students to do the same.

Because wasn’t hope the genesis of the nonprofit and philanthropic sector? Prometheus stole fire from the gods to give humanity hope (in the form of light). The America that de Tocqueville saw was one in which the citizens of a new nation banded together to provide each other hope in spite of all that surrounded them. Social service agencies and schools were born in the United States to give hope to the formerly enslaved and recent immigrants who had every right to sink into despair. Generosity with the intention of understanding how to live in hope when the world seems to constantly push you towards despair.

Friends, as you slowly but methodically wrap up 2024, I encourage you to hold onto the hope. The hope will sustain us in the days to come, and will give us what we need to give our students what they need: the hope to foolishly believe they can, and will, make a difference in this world!

All the best,

Angela R. Logan
Board President, NACC

By |2024-12-18T07:28:13-05:00December 18th, 2024|President's Message|

Artificial Intelligence and Philanthropy: The Cybernetics of Philanthropy from 1974 to 2024

Dr. William M. Plater

Dr. William M. Plater
Chancellor’s Professor Emeritus of
Philanthropic Studies, Public Policy, and English

Indiana University Indianapolis

Dr. Genevieve Shaker

Dr. Genevieve Shaker
Donald A. Campbell Chair in Fundraising Leadership
Indiana University Lilly Family School of Philanthropy

Artificial Intelligence and Philanthropy: The Cybernetics of Philanthropy from 1974 to 2024
William M. Plater and Genevieve G. Shaker
Philanthropia, 2024

OpenAI, creator of ChatGPT, was founded as a nonprofit with a mission of ensuring that artificial general intelligence benefits all of humanity. ChatGPT was therefore intended to advance the common good, sharing an underlying principle with philanthropy and the nonprofit organizations it supports. This was not the first association of machine learning with philanthropy, particularly in terms of algorithms designed for control versus those aimed at doing good. In 1974, a white paper by Heinz Von Foerster, a polymath scientist who happened to be president of an important foundation, considered the potential of computer-based feedback systems to improve “giving with a purpose.” A review of his paper served as the impetus for this essay, which explores the antecedents of contemporary predictions regarding the potential of AI to enhance the practice of philanthropy.

William M. Plater, PhD, is Chancellor’s Professor Emeritus of Philanthropic Studies, Public Policy, and English at Indiana University Indianapolis, where he also served Executive Vice Chancellor and Dean of the Faculties. He continues to be engaged with the Lilly Family School of Philanthropy.

Genevieve G. Shaker, PhD, is the Donald A. Campbell Chair in Fundraising Leadership and Professor of Philanthropic Studies at the Indiana University Lilly Family School of Philanthropy. Professor Shaker’s research focuses on fundraising and fundraisers, philanthropy education, and higher education advancement. Emerging research interests include the roles and practices of fundraisers around the world. She is the lead editor of the fifth edition of Achieving Excellence in Fundraising (2022), a key educational resource for the field.

By |2024-12-05T15:03:43-05:00December 5th, 2024|NACC Member Research|

Race in Integrated Data Systems: Why, Wherefrom, and How

Dr. Robert L. Fischer

Dr. Robert L. Fischer
Grace Longwell Coyle Professor in Civil Society
Jack, Joseph, & Morton Mandel School of Applied Social Sciences
Director, Center on Urban Poverty and Community Development
Case Western Reserve University

Race in Integrated Data Systems: Why, Wherefrom, and How
Stephen Steh, Francisca Richter, Robert Fischer, Meagan Ray-Novak, Michael Henderson
International Journal of Population Data Science, 2024

Integrated administrative data systems (IADs) are a powerful resource to implement research and analysis for social policy. While IADs may capture racial identity data from multiple administrative sources, there is no agreed upon criteria for whether and how to synthesize this information in a way that (1) produces knowledge to advance racial equity, while (2) underscoring race as a social construct. This study leverages a county-level IAD to test and analyze an event-table design to represent racial identity that, when informed with historical and community knowledge, may meet both of the aforementioned goals.

The authors illustrate this approach applied to the development of a registry of youth experiencing homelessness, as captured by linked administrative data from vital records, homeless service agencies, schools, food support programs, and other systems. The event table design includes race identity for each person in the registry across all systems included. They develop criteria to inform the hierarchy of one source over another when there are discrepancies in race identity across systems, and when categories for this variable differ across administrative systems. They provide historical and social context behind potential discrepancies and discuss approaches to missing data. Furthermore, they highlight the value of including qualitative knowledge from agency data managers, users, and those represented in the data to inform the synthesis of information around race. Finally, they illustrate how this approach can guide research analysis and contextualize results, thus enhancing the research process and advancing racial equity with IADs.

Robert L. Fischer joined the Mandel School in 2001 as a senior research associate, became an associate professor in the tenure track in 2017, tenured in 2020, and full professor in 2024. He has authored more than 60 peer-reviewed publications and generated more than $15 million in extramural grant funding as principal or co-principal investigator. Dr. Fischer has served as director of the MNO program since 2012 and teaches two courses in the program. He is the lead full-time faculty member teaching in the MNO degree program, and led the work to it being in the inaugural cohort of accredited nonprofit masters programs in 2019.

Additionally, Dr. Fischer served as co-director of the Center on Poverty and Community Development since 2005 and as director since 2022. He has also been an active member of the school’s steering committee, curriculum committee, budget committee, library committee and has served as chair of a standing committee on the faculty senate. He currently serves on the board of trustees of both the St. Lukes Foundation and the Woodruff Foundation in Cleveland. Dr. Fischer has been a generous institution-builder at the Mandel School and CWRU and a frequent contributor to the academy.

By |2024-12-05T15:03:02-05:00December 5th, 2024|NACC Member Research|

Impacts of Zero-Fare Transit Policy on Health and Social Determinants: Protocol for a Natural Experiment Study

Brent Never

Brent Never
Associate Dean, Associate Professor of Public Affairs
Director, Midwest Center for Nonprofit Leadership
Henry W. Bloch School of Management
University of Missouri-Kansas City

Impacts of Zero-Fare Transit Policy on Health and Social Determinants: Protocol for a Natural Experiment Study
Amanda Grimes, Jannette Berkley-Patton, Jenifer E. Allsworth, Joseph S. Lightner, Keith Feldman, Brent Never, Betty M. Drees, Brian E. Saelens, Tiffany M. Powell-Wiley, Lauren Fitzpatrick, Carole Bowe Thompson, Madison Pilla, Kacee Ross, Chelsea Steel, Emily Cramer, Eric Rogers, Cindy Baker, Jordan A. Carlson
Frontiers in Public Health, 2024

Population-level efforts are needed to increase levels of physical activity and healthy eating to reduce and manage chronic diseases such as obesity, cardiovascular disease, and type 2 diabetes. Interventions to increase public transit use may be one promising strategy, particularly for low-income communities or populations of color who are disproportionately burdened by health disparities and transportation barriers. This study, supported by an NIH grant, employs a natural experiment design to evaluate the impacts of a citywide zero-fare transit policy in Kansas City, Missouri, on ridership and health indicators.

In Aim 1, comparison to 9 similar cities without zero-fare transit is used to examine differential changes in ridership from 3 years before to 4 years after the adoption of zero-fare. In Aim 2, Kansas City residents are being recruited from a large safety net health system to compare health indicators between zero-fare riders and non-riders.

Longitudinal data on BMI, cardiometabolic markers, and economic barriers to health are collected from the electronic health record from 2017 to 2024. Cross-sectional data on healthy eating and device-measured physical activity are collected from a subsample of participants as part of the study procedures (N = 360). Numerous baseline characteristics are collected to account for differences between Kansas City and comparison city bus routes (Aim 1) and between zero-fare riders and non-riders within Kansas City (Aim 2). Evidence on how zero-fare transit shapes population health through mechanisms related to improved economic factors, transportation, physical activity, and healthy eating among low-income groups is expected.

Brent Never (Ph.D., Indiana University) is an Associate Professor of Public Affairs at the Henry W. Bloch School of Management. His research considers the spatial and geographic implications of a decentralized human service system. Using Geographic Information Systems (GIS) and spatial regression methods, he has worked to identify communities underserved by human services. He has also worked to highlight clusters of financially distressed nonprofit organizations, those most likely to go out of business in the near future raising the question as to who is served by financially ‘sick’ human service providers.

Never has served as Visiting Professor in the School of Community Resources & Development at Arizona State University where he conducted research on the continued devolution of human services from government provision to private-sector provision through contracts, vouchers, and grants. He has published in Nonprofit and Voluntary Sector Quarterly, Nonprofit Management & Leadership, Voluntas, Human Service Organizations: Management, Leadership & Governance, and Nonprofit Policy Forum. In addition, Never regularly writes for the practitioner audience in the Nonprofit Quarterly.

By |2024-12-05T15:02:10-05:00December 5th, 2024|NACC Member Research|

Critical Praxis and the Social Imaginary for Sustainable Food Systems

Dr. Max O. Stephenson, Jr.

Dr. Max O. Stephenson, Jr.
Professor, Public and International Affairs and
Director, Virginia Tech Institute for Policy and Governance
College of Liberal Arts and Human Sciences
Virginia Tech

Critical Praxis and the Social Imaginary for Sustainable Food Systems
Max Stephenson Jr, Kim Niewolny, Laura Zanotti, Anna Erwin
Frontiers in Sustainable Food Systems, 2024

This article serves as the introduction and overview for a 14-article special issue of the academic journal Frontiers in Sustainable Food Systems entitled “Critical Praxis and the Social Imaginary for Sustainable Food Systems.” According to the authors, Freire’s (1972) concept of critical praxis offers an illuminating frame to reconsider and reframe the epistemological and ontological assumptions and thinking that shape the current food system. His conceptual framework offers analysts a way to approach processes and practices dynamically; that is, in a fashion in which they are not only enacted, but also continuously theorized, evaluated, and reimagined as they evolve. The iterative character of that process highlights the importance of understanding the active operation of power and its implications for individual and collective agency. More importantly, it moves scholars beyond efforts to capture “what is happening” and toward identifying generative ways that interested stakeholders may participate actively in the creation of more just and sustainable food systems.

In the author’s view, this special issue of Frontiers in Sustainable Food Systems resulted in a fruitful set of responses to this overarching challenge. As a group, these articles critically engage with various relevant onto-epistemic questions and frameworks. These include, among others, agroecology, regenerative agriculture, Black agrarianism, radical pragmatism, decolonizing strategies, and urban ecology. Collectively, these analyses question the dominant thinking in which today’s food systems are entrenched and highlight perspectives that can help to disrupt the dominant meta-narrative that is today driven foremost by efficiency and technology claims, and to explore policy interventions, justice centered strategies, community-engaged collaborative efforts, and the deep reflexivity that can reveal alternate ways of thinking. The analyses collected here call on food system scholars, practitioners, and policymakers to work actively toward realizing a future in which such structures and processes are ecologically and socially sustainable and equitable for all.

Dr. Max O. Stephenson, Jr. serves as a professor in the Virginia Tech School of Public and International Affairs (SPIA). With a distinguished career in public policy, civil society studies and public administration, he also serves as the Director of the Institute for Policy and Governance in Virginia Tech’s College of Liberal Arts and Human Sciences. He holds a Ph.D. in Government and Foreign Affairs from the University of Virginia. Dr. Stephenson’s research interests include civil society, democratic governance and political agency, and social equity and social change, reflected in his extensive publication record and numerous academic contributions. He is recognized for his interdisciplinary approach, integrating constructs from political science, public administration, and community development to address complex social challenges.

By |2024-12-05T15:01:48-05:00December 5th, 2024|NACC Member Research|

Community Representation, COVID-19, and the Challenges of Shifting Grantmaking Power: How a Public LGBTQ+ Foundation Weighed the Options

Elizabeth Dale

Elizabeth J. Dale, Ph.D.
Frey Foundation Chair for Family Philanthropy
Dorothy A. Johnson Center for Philanthropy
Grand Valley State University

Community Representation, COVID-19, and the Challenges of Shifting Grantmaking Power: How a Public LGBTQ+ Foundation Weighed the Options
Elizabeth J. Dale and Katie Carter
Georgetown University Press, 2024

This chapter, featured in Participatory Grantmaking in Philanthropy: How Democratizing Decision-Making Shifts Power to Communities, discusses how Pride Foundation, a public foundation serving the LGBTQ+ community, rethought its Community Grants Program as part of a broader institutional commitment to racial equity. It details what the transition away from a traditional, application-based grantmaking model looked like in real time during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic and raises important questions for other foundations to answer when aligning their grantmaking with an equity lens. One of those questions is: Under what circumstances should established foundations explore and adopt alternative approaches to grantmaking such as participatory grantmaking and trust-based philanthropy? This chapter discusses how Pride Foundation ultimately adopted a trust-based philanthropy approach, which centers mutually accountable relationships between funders and grantees and shifts power away from funders to consider grantees’ needs.

Elizabeth J. Dale, Ph.D., joined the Johnson Center in September 2024 as the second holder of the Frey Foundation Chair for Family Philanthropy, the world’s first endowed chair for family philanthropy. She previously held a faculty position and directed the Nonprofit Leadership Program at Seattle University and was the Visiting Eileen Lamb O’Gara Fellow in Women’s Philanthropy at Indiana University.

Dr. Dale has authored or co-authored more than 20 publications and reports for both scholarly and practitioner audiences, which have been published in Nonprofit and Voluntary Sector Quarterly, Journal of Philanthropy and Marketing, Voluntary Sector Review, The Foundation Review, Philanthropy and Education, and several prominent edited volumes. Her scholarship has focused on social justice philanthropy, women’s giving and giving to women’s and girls’ causes, LGBTQ+ philanthropy, and couples’ charitable giving, as well as gender and the fundraising profession. Ultimately, Dr. Dale seeks to understand the power and potential of philanthropy, the role of identity in giving, and the role of philanthropy in contributing to a more just, equitable, and inclusive society.

By |2024-12-05T14:57:56-05:00December 5th, 2024|NACC Member Research|

Who Will Spare a Dime? Impulse Giving Decisions at the Checkout

Dr. Ruth K. Hansen

Dr. Ruth K. Hansen
Assistant Professor, Nonprofit Management
Director, Institute for Nonprofit Management Studies
College of Business and Economics
University of Wisconsin-Whitewater

Who Will Spare a Dime? Impulse Giving Decisions at the Checkout
Lauren Dula (Binghamton University, SUNY) and Ruth K. Hansen
Journal of Public and Nonprofit Affairs, 2024

Campaigns asking for donations at the checkout of retail stores through rounding-up, donating an amount, or purchasing a token are becoming ubiquitous. The concept of “checkout charity” is really one of impulse giving, i.e., a prosocial activity done under time constraints. Industry reports inform us how much money the corporate campaigns are generating, but we have yet to develop a philanthropic profile of an “impulse giver” or compare them with traditional donors. Using the social heuristics hypothesis, this research helps us to better understand impulse giving and the individuals who engage in it. Women, the middle class, and those who are married or divorced were all more likely to give at the register. In contrast with formal giving, education levels had little relation to giving, and those approaching and over 50 years old were less likely to give. Familiarity with the charity and being Black or African-American correlate with greater amounts donated.

Ruth K. Hansen, PhD, is an assistant professor at the University of Wisconsin-Whitewater’s College of Business and Economics, and director of the Institute for Nonprofit Management Studies. She teaches classes in nonprofit organizations, fundraising, organizational behavior, and research methods. Her research focuses on the theory and practice of fundraising, and equity and inclusion in resource mobilization. Dr. Hansen has more than 20 years’ professional experience as a fundraiser, and is a former board member of AFP-Chicago. Recent publications include “Sector theorists should consider how social values determine unmet needs,” with Gregory Witkowski, published in the volume Reimagining Nonprofits: Sector Theory in the Twenty-First Century (2024), edited by Eva Witesman and Curtis Child, and “Who will spare a dime? Impulse giving decisions at the checkout” with Lauren Dula, in the Journal of Public and Nonprofit Affairs. Her article with Lesley Alborough, “Reframing fundraising research: The challenges and opportunities of interpretivist research practices and practitioner researchers in fundraising studies” was a 2023 Journal of Philanthropy and Marketing Editors’ Choice. She is honored to be recognized with her colleague Dr. Lauren Dula as a 2024 AFP Early Career Emerging Scholar for their research on philanthropy and fundraising.

By |2024-12-09T09:09:52-05:00December 5th, 2024|NACC Member Research|

Watts Endowed Director of the School of Community Resources and Development and Full Professor

The Watts College of Public Service and Community Solutions at Arizona State University (ASU), Phoenix, Arizona (USA), is pleased to invite applications for the position of Watts Endowed Director of the School of Community Resources and Development (SCRD) and Full Professor, with a term commencing no later than July 1, 2025. We are seeking an innovative, engaging leader to advance the strategic vision of this important academic unit. ASU is repeatedly ranked #1 in innovation and for our engagement with international students. This growing, highly regarded institution is known for being ahead of the curve in anticipating and responding to the evolving nature of higher education.

This is a full-time, fiscal-year (12-months), benefits-eligible, tenured administrative appointment. The endowed Directorship comes with $100,000 of annual funding that may be used to advance scholarship or any school related initiatives the director envisions as appropriate. The inaugural Watts Endowed Director will join a talented senior leadership team that works across a variety of disciplines including public policy and administration, social work, criminology, nonprofit leadership and management, sustainable and cultural tourism, parks and recreation, community sports, and emergency management to advance our mission to build more vibrant, health, equitable and sustainable communities.

The School of Community Resources and Development is one of four degree-granting units in the Watts College of Public Service and Community Solutions at the Downtown Phoenix campus and one of ASU’s transdisciplinary schools encompassing faculty in several areas of study. The SCRD has more than 600 students studying in a number of our Phoenix (AZ)-based programs with learners being reached globally through online modalities. SCRD’s unifying theme is community development, evinced through several distinctive, yet complementary areas of education and scholarship. The activities of the school’s faculty, staff, and students exemplify the design imperatives of the New American University through our unifying theme, with each program contributing to SCRD’s vision to advance healthy, resilient, and sustainable communities that amplify its core mission to promote community wellbeing. Nonprofit leadership and management programs at undergraduate, graduate and continuing and professional education levels are a distinction of SCRD. Additionally, the ASU Lodestar Center for Philanthropy & Nonprofit Innovation is a key asset within Watts College and SCRD.

The initial application deadline is December 10, 2024, at 5:00 p.m. Arizona Time. Applications will continue to be accepted on a rolling basis for a reserve pool. Applications in the reserve pool may then be reviewed in the order in which they are received until the position is filled. Please direct all questions about the position to the search committee chair, Beth Huebner, at Beth.Huebner@asu.edu

For a more detailed position description and full application details, see: https://apply.interfolio.com/158909

By |2024-12-03T16:23:11-05:00December 3rd, 2024|Job Posting|
Go to Top