An evaluation of the Department of Health’s Health and Social Care Volunteering Fund

The Health and Social Care Volunteering Fund (HSCVF) is an innovative programme that was established in 2009 by the Department of Health (DH) to build organisational and community capacity for volunteering through a national and local grant scheme. The HSCVF has offered both funds and tailored support to health and social care projects delivered by Voluntary, Community and Social Enterprise (VCSE) organisations. The HSCVF is managed by a partnership led by Ecorys and with expertise from leading national voluntary sector organisations: Attend, Community Service Volunteers (CSV) and Primetimers. To date the HSCVF has funded a total of 157 local and national projects, of which 114 are currently live. This report presents findings from an evaluation of the HSCVF with a specific focus on the 2010/2011 national and local projects, conducted by a team from the Institute for Health & Wellbeing at Leeds Metropolitan University. It presents evidence on the extent to which, how and in what ways the HSCVF programme has built organisational and community capacity across the national and local HSCVF projects, as well as on the health and social outcomes that resulted

Harnessing Collaborative Technologies: Helping Funders Work Together Better

This report was produced through a joint research project of the Monitor Institute and the Foundation Center. The research included an extensive literature review on collaboration in philanthropy, detailed analysis of trends from a recent Foundation Center survey of the largest U.S. foundations, interviews with 37 leading philanthropy professionals and technology experts, and a review of over 170 online tools.The report is a story about how new tools are changing the way funders collaborate. It includes three primary sections: an introduction to emerging technologies and the changing context for philanthropic collaboration; an overview of collaborative needs and tools; and recommendations for improving the collaborative technology landscapeA "Key Findings" executive summary serves as a companion piece to this full report

An integrated framework to classify healthcare virtual communities

Healthcare (HC) strives to improve service quality through its cost-effective social computing strategy. However, sudden rise in the count of virtual community of practices (VCoPs) introduced many choices for physicians; As a result, it is not surprising to observe current literature reporting lack of study to investigate ideas integration within and between VCoPs. VCoPs need to be categorized for HC physicians so they will be able to pin-point effective a VC to attain assistance from. This paper is one of the first investigative studies, in HC sector, that proposed a framework to classify and pin-point appropriate VCoPs, for physicians, after it reviewed and analyzed traditional and up-to-date theoretical, empirical and case study literature in the area of social computing, knowledge management (KM) and VCoPs. The implementation of this framework pinpointed professional VCoPs as most appropriate for physicians based on strict requirements, i.e. closed physician communities holding many participants, which are older than 5 years with high boundary crossing. This framework is also a “one-size-fit-all” formula to build an organizational VCoP, utilizable by other business sectors

Social Media and the Public Sector

{Excerpt} Social media is revolutionizing the way we live, learn, work, and play. Elements of the private sector have begun to thrive on opportunities to forge, build, and deepen relationships. Some are transforming their organizational structures and opening their corporate ecosystems in consequence. The public sector is a relative newcomer. It too can drive stakeholder involvement and satisfaction. Global conversations, especially among Generation Y, were born circa 2004. Beginning 1995 until then, the internet had hosted static, one-way websites. These were places to visit passively, retrieve information from, and perhaps post comments about by electronic mail. Sixteen years later, Web 2.0 enables many-to-many connections in numerous domains of interest and practice, powered by the increasing use of blogs, image and video sharing, mashups, podcasts, ratings, Really Simple Syndication, social bookmarking, tweets, widgets, and wikis, among others. Today, people expect the internet to be user-centric

Moving Jewish Educators to the Next Stage in Their Career: An Evaluation of New York University's Dual Master's and Doctoral Programs in Education and Jewish Studies

This study used a qualitative inquiry methodology to explore the experiences of students, which is a common methodological approach in research on higher education when a study's sample size is small and individuals' narratives are diverse (Anderson & Anderson, 2012; Golde & Dore, 2001; Maki & Borkowski, 2006). The evaluation team conducted initial and follow-up phone interviews with the 24 recipients of the Jim Joseph Foundation fellowships under this grant. The interviews inquired about professional experience and academic background, career goals, academic courses and other professional development, professional networking, current employment, and leadership experiences. In addition, the evaluation team conducted interviews with academic advisors and reviewed program materials. To validate the formation of a framework and quality indicators for the review of the programs, the team conducted comprehensive literature review and interviews with employers of the fellows. The evaluation team synthesized the data collected to determine the level of programs' capacity to prepare students for leadership roles in Jewish education and the impact of the programs on students to date

Pioneers, subcultures and cooperatives: The grassroots augmentation of urban places

About the book: There have been numerous possible scenarios depicted on the impact of the internet on urban spaces. Considering ubiquitous/pervasive computing, mobile, wireless connectivity and the acceptance of the Internet as a non extraordinary part of our everyday lives mean that physical urban space is augmented, and digital in itself. This poses new problems as well as opportunities to those who have to deal with it. This book explores the intersection and articulation of physical and digital environments and the ways they can extend and reshape a spirit of place. It considers this from three main perspectives: the implications for the public sphere and urban public or semi-public spaces; the implications for community regeneration and empowerment; and the dilemmas and challenges which the augmentation of space implies for urbanists. Grounded with international real -life case studies, this is an up-to-date, interdisciplinary and holistic overview of the relationships between cities, communities and high technologies

Social media: a guide for researchers

This guide has been produced by the International Centre for Guidance Studies, and aims to provide the information needed to make an informed decision about using social media and select from the vast range of tools that are available. One of the most important things that researchers do is to find, use and disseminate information, and social media offers a range of tools which can facilitate this. The guide discusses the use of social media for research and academic purposes and will not be examining the many other uses that social media is put to across society. Social media can change the way in which you undertake research, and can also open up new forms of communication and dissemination. It has the power to enable researchers to engage in a wide range of dissemination in a highly efficient way.Research Information Networ

Innovate Magazine / Annual Review 2008-2009

https://scholarworks.sjsu.edu/innovate/1003/thumbnail.jp

Sustaining communities by learning from integrated assessments of place

Communities of place exist at many scales: from global village through nations, catchments, and local governments to millions of properties at the level of households and workplaces. Interventions from beyond their boundaries ensure institutional arrangements for their governance are complex. Political and bureaucratic actors network across all decision-making levels. The actors and their roles change frequently. Even so, connecting two activities can begin the process of engaging stakeholders in sustaining a community of place. First, stakeholders need to assess community conditions relative to a sustainability target. Second, stakeholders have to learn from, and respond to, the information contained in the assessment. In 2005, the authors joined with the Campaspe Shire Council in piloting a practice connecting the two activities. Trends of growth, steady state, or decline, in indicators of the Shire’s human, built, and natural capital stocks were estimated by pooling local and external knowledge. Results were presented as a balance sheet. Senior management then drafted some thirty response-statements by interpreting the accounts. A stakeholder forum used decision-support software to structure relationships between the response-statements. Conducting a SWOT analysis during the forum provided further insights into place-based learning for sustaining communities, and for building capacities to do so. Three key learnings: (1) Understanding their operational impacts within their community of place is the most useful context within which organisations can engage in sustainability learning; (2) the capital approach to measuring sustainable development simplifies learning; and (3) qualitative local knowledge is a significant element in sustainability assessment and accounting