Leading Ways: Preliminary Research on LEF Leadership for the Public Education Network

In the early 1980s, public schools, particularly in urban areas, were struggling with changing demographics and a need for greater community commitment to public education. Small independent community-based organizations, called local education funds (LEFs), were first established at this time by community leaders to bridge the gap between communities and their schools. Twenty years later, the Public Education Network (PEN), the national organization of more than 70 of the country's LEFs, is championing LEFs' unique contributions to educational reform and planning new methods to continue to support their work. One important aspect of PEN's efforts is the development of a research agenda around LEF leadership and effectiveness.The Urban Institute has supported the emerging research on LEF leadership in several ways. First, in 2001, researchers administered and analyzed results of a survey of all current LEF executive directors. The results provided a snapshot of leadership characteristics and attitudes. Second, in 2002, researchers reviewed existing literature on LEFs and nonprofit leadership and interviewed several individuals about the founding of LEFs. Third, also in 2002, researchers conducted 60-to 90-minute telephone interviews with 10 founding directors of early LEFs.This report describes efforts by the Urban Institute and PEN to better understand and describe leadership in LEFs. The research conducted to date reveals the following common features of LEF leadership:LEF leaders create a space for sustained collaboration in communities. Founders, in particular, see their work as establishing unique and lasting forums in their communities.LEF leadership fits well in an adaptive leadership framework, in which the director educates him or herself about community values and exposes issues that must be resolved through collaborative action. Adaptive leaders mobilize others around a community consensus rather than dictate a solution. In the case of LEFs, developing key relationships contributes to successful leadership.These relationships involve community members, principals, government officials, local businesses, and other stakeholders. Because LEFs are meant to provide a permanent venue for collaboration, these relationships are not only instrumental but also ends in themselves.Although LEF leaders are extremely invested in their communities in terms of socioeconomic status and race, they are not typically representative of the communities their LEFs serve. This gap in constituency and representation leads to uncertainty about whether LEFs effectively engage all segments of the community in their work. More inclusive leadership, then, is an issue worth exploring.LEF leadership appears to involve making strategic choices in an environment of constraints. With limited human and financial resources, LEFs must attempt to achieve their goals through a complex interaction with their communities and schools. Key stages in LEF development include the shift to greater community engagement and systemic reform. However, not all LEFs follow the same developmental pattern

Yawkey Foundations 2010 Grants Report

Contains mission statement, board chair and president's message; grantee profiles in the areas of health, education, and human services; 2010 grants list and highlights; grant guidelines; and list of board members

Civil Society in the 'Visegrad Four': Data and Literature in the Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland and Slovakia

The first of three publications on the '25 Years After -- Mapping Civil Society in the Visegrád Four' project contains an overview of existing data and literature in the Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland and Slovakia. It looks at where and what kind of research on civil society has been and is being done, who is doing it and where the gaps are.To be consistent and comparable, the four country reports include the same core sections: relevant publications on civil society in the respective country; existing databases and other data sources; active centres of research, training, and policy studies. More than providing just a list, this report looks at how they can be evaluated in terms of scope, accurateness and depth. Finally, it considers the question of what the most crucial gaps in research and funding in the countries are.An academic volume is slated for the end of 2014. For other publications in English and German, see www.maecenata.eu

Creating New Ventures: A review and research agenda

Creating new ventures is one of the most central topics to entrepreneurship and is a critical step from which many theories of management, organizational behavior, and strategic management build. Therefore, this review and proposed research agenda is not only relevant to entrepreneurship scholars but also other management scholars who wish to challenge some of the implicit assumptions of their current streams of research and extend the boundaries of their current theories to earlier in the organization’s life. Given that the last systematic review of the topic was published 16 years ago, and that the topic has evolved rapidly over this time, an overview and research outlook are long overdue. From our review, we inductively generated ten sub-topics: (1) Lead founder, (2) Founding team, (3) Social relationships, (4) Cognitions, (5) Emergent organizing, (6) New venture strategy, (7) Organizational emergence, (8) New venture legitimacy, (9) Founder exit, and (10) Entrepreneurial environment. These sub-topics are then organized into three major stages of the entrepreneurial process—co-creating, organizing, and performing. Together, the framework provides a cohesive story of the past and a road map for future research on creating new ventures, focusing on the links connecting these sub-topics

Community Foundation Global Status Report, Canada

This fact sheet provides information on Canadian community foundations and their linkages to other parts of the world, including Southern Africa

Beyond Five Percent: The New Foundation Payout Menu

Looks at thirteen foundations and examines the ways in which their non-standard structures -- whether in the areas of lifespan, payout, or methods -- arise from their missions. Foundations can have an impact when they choose to increase their payout rate or limit their lifespan. While some of these profiled efforts are still in their early stages, the fact that these donors have looked at philanthropy through a new lens opens intriguing vistas

Foundation Funding for the Humanities: An Overview of Current and Historical Trends

Foundation Funding for the Humanities: An Overview of Current and Historical Trends, finds that funding for fields such as art history, history and archeology, languages and linguistics, area studies, and the humanistic social sciences increased two and one-half times (149.8 percent) from $134.1 million in 1992 to$335 million in 2002. At the same time the report notes that, despite the overall increase, some scholarly disciplines actually lost ground over the ten year period. Support for the humanities grew more slowly than overall foundation giving during this period (up 199.8 percent), and the share of giving for the humanities slipped from 2.5 percent in the early 1990s to 2.1 percent in 2002

Embracing the political in technology and transition studies: a response to Philip Vergragt and Bram Bos

This article is a short reaction to the comments of Vergragt (Found Sci, 2012) and Bos (Found Sci, 2012) on my article “Sustainability transition and the nature of technology” (Paredis in Found Sci 16(2–3):195–225, Paredis 2011). I start by situating current transition research in the sustainability debate. The relation between the two is simultaneously specific and vague: specific about processes at work during transitions, vague about the content and direction of the change. I then move on to a discussion of how a better conceptualisation of technology could strengthen the transition framework. I want to thank the two reviewers for their critical remarks, that stimulated me to better explain my position

2014 Annual Report: A More Giving Australia

Philanthropy Australia defines philanthropy as the planned and structured giving of money, time, information, goods and services, voice and influence to improve the wellbeing of humanity and the community. We define the philanthropic sector as trusts, foundations, organisations, families and individuals who engage in philanthropy. Our role is to support the philanthropic endeavour of our Members

The Exit Interview: Perceptions on Why Black Professionals Leave Grantmaking Institutions

Most would agree that in recent years, the field of philanthropy has begun to take seriously the need to increase diversity within its sector -- and particularly among its leadership. Indeed, we are a long way from the days when the founding members of the Association of Black Foundation Executives (ABFE) stood up at a Council on Foundations meeting to advocate for more equitable representation among Council leadership and in grantmaking institutions more generally.In most major foundations today, it is now commonplace not just to track but to require diversity of staff and leadership both within their own organizations and externally among their grantees.Earlier this year, even the Chronicle of Philanthropy marveled at the progress that American philanthropy has made toward these goals, highlighting the diversity reflected by several major foundations' recent senior hires. "The new executives are very different from the people who held these elite jobs even a decade ago," the Chronicle reported. "They are much more likely to be black, gay, or female and to come from modest backgrounds."Yet, emerging data suggest that the experiences of many Black professionals in grantmaking institutions may challenge the current thinking on the field's increasing commitment to diversity. Currently, only 3 percent of philanthropic institutions are led by Black chief executives,3 and the percentage of Black individuals holding trustee positions at philanthropic foundations remains stagnant at 7 percent.Meanwhile, there have been slight declines in the percentage of Black professional staff (from 10 percent in 2010 to 9 percent in 2012) and Black program officers (from 17 percent in 2010 to 16 percent in 2012) working within grantmaking institutions.This decline in overall representation by Black philanthropic professionals in the sector is disturbing not just because it is happening -- but because until now, there has been little data on why it is happening. Why are Black philanthropic professionals leaving the field, and where are they going? Is this trend at its beginning or nearing its end? Most importantly, is there anything that ABFE and its allies can do proactively to address this issue