Arts Funding Snapshot: GIA's Annual Research on Support for Arts and Culture, 2011

Includes: Foundation Grants to Arts and Culture, 2009: A One-year Snapshot, Public Funding for the Arts: 2011 Update, State Arts Agencies in the FY2012 Legislative Session: Challenges, Headlines, What's Working, and How Are Private Funders Responding to Cuts in Public Funding

What's New? Reaching Working Adults with English for Speakers of Other Languages (ESOL) Instruction, A Best Practices Report

In July 2001 the Center for Impact Research (CIR) completed a needs assessment, Barriers to English Language Learners in the Chicago Metropolitan Area, which detailed the needs of immigrant working adults for English instruction and determined the barriers they faced in learning English. CIR's 2001 report documented the fact that many of these employed immigrants take advantage of overtime, hold down two jobs, and are often subject to changing or rotating work schedules that make attendance at regularly scheduled classes difficult. Evening English for Speakers of Other Languages (ESOL) classes that occur twice a week lasting between one-and-a-half to three hours also present difficulties, because they interfere with parenting and family duties; fatigue of the attendees after a long day's work also makes learning problematic. Some Friday evening and Saturday morning classes are available, but seldom are there any classes on Sundays. ESOL providers report that they are unable to schedule weekend classes because of the lack of trained and qualified teachers who are willing to work on Saturdays and Sundays. Volunteer tutors could assist ESOL learners, but they too are reluctant to make commitments for weekend hours. The metropolitan Chicago ESOL system faces an additional problem in that it cannot meet the needs of those immigrants who are interested in, and able to attend ESOL classes. CIR's analysis of demographic data finds an estimated total population of potential English Language Learners 18 years of age or older in the Chicago metropolitan area in 2000 at 277,700. According to the Illinois Community College Board, in Fiscal Year 2001 68,815 adults in the Chicago metropolitan area received some ESOL instruction through programs funded by the Board, meaning that only about one-quarter of the need was able to be met. Sixty-two percent of these learners were in beginning ESOL classes. Many area ESOL providers report long waiting lists for ESOL classes, and some say they are implementing lotteries for classroom places. How then, can ESOL learning be reorganized to enable adult learners who are employed to upgrade their English language skills? Can ESOL services be offered along a continuum, with systems providing various services, geared to immigrants with differing levels of commitment to learning English, as well as changing or rotating schedules and time limitations? How can effective learning opportunities be offered in the home, at the workplace, and in accessible community locations, such as shopping centers and churches

How are we doing? “Best of ISPI” Appreciative Inquiry member survey

The International Society for Performance Improvement (ISPI) Board of Directors undertook a study to uncover the “best of ISPI” to enhance their strategic planning. The approach used Appreciative Inquiry methods, which emphasize discovering “what's working.” This article describes the study and concludes with some thoughts on how to use this information to enrich member experiences and provide new benefits.Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/60910/1/20011_ftp.pd

Threads: Insights from the Charitable Community

Our world is changing rapidly and the charitable community is not immune to economic globalization, technological change, and other epic developments sweeping across the horizon. Change of this magnitude offers unparalleled promise for the charitable sector and the people we serve -- if we take deliberate, proactive steps to build the future we desire.In the spring of 2015, Independent Sector partnered with more than 80 organizations to launch Threads, an intensive series of community conversations held across the country. Threads brought together a diverse cross-section of leaders from organizations of every size and mission. In total, the conversations generated thousands of comments, reflecting an incredible range of experiences and perspectives.This report puts a finger on the pulse of our sector. It reveals what's working and what's not. It captures the frank thinking of leaders from nonprofits and foundations. And, most importantly, it gives us insight into what our shared path forward might look like

What's Behind the Increase in Inequality?

The focus of this paper is the increase in earnings inequality over the last 30-plus years. Economists have well-developed theories that explain differences in wage levels among different categories of workers. Differences in educational attainment and skills are a major source of these differences; large organizations typically employ workers with a wide range of skills and responsibilities and pay them accordingly. As a result, the level of wage inequality within organizations is quite large. This paper does not challenge these results. It argues, however, that these theories are not adequate to explain a relatively recent phenomenon: the increase in recent decades in wage inequality among workers with similar levels of education and similar demographic characteristics who are employed in similar occupations but in different firms or establishments. These differences in wages are how most people experience inequality. Yet much of the analysis by economists has focused on developments that have enabled leading firms in the U.S. to increase their ability to extract monopoly rents.This paper reviews a wide-ranging literature that examines the increased ability of leading firms to extract monopoly rents. It also reviews the more recent and still thin literature on the increase in inequality among workers with similar characteristics but different employers. The contribution of this paper is the identification of a mechanism that reconciles these two strains of economic research and explains how the increase in rent extraction is linked to the increasingly unequal pay of U.S. workers with similar characteristics. I draw on joint work with Rosemary Batt (2014) to identify new opportunities for rent seeking behavior, and on joint work with Annette Bernhardt, Rosemary Batt and Susan Houseman (2016, 2017) on domestic outsourcing, inter-firm contracting and the growing importance of production networks to establish a mechanism that connects the increase in rents with this new type of increase in wage inequality

Interview with The University of Manchester Faculty e-learning Managers conducted by Graham McElearney for ALT News Online, Issue 18, November 2009.

Graham McElearney conducted an interview with the four Faculty e-learning Managers at The University of Manchester. This document is the full transcript of the interview. The discussion includes e-learning strategy, organisational structure, current choices of tools and the future of the institutional VLE

Staged Action: Six Plays From the American Workers\u27 Theatre

[Excerpt] This collection is an attempt to restore and revitalize interest in a largely forgotten American theatrical genre, the workers\u27 theatre movement. Workers\u27 theatre is a term that is used broadly to define theatre from the working class or theatre about working-class people. Here it refers to a unique and specific movement in the American theatre of the 1920s and 1930s to employ the stage to address issues concerning the worker and the workers\u27 movement. A simple definition was given by Hollace Ransdell of the Affiliated Schools for Workers in 1936: a workers\u27 theatre play deals truthfully with the lives and problems of the masses of the people, directly or suggestively, in a way that workers can understand and appreciate . These plays need not be written by workers themselves, and, in fact, many were written by figures sympathetic to the labor movement. The plays themselves are a series of fascinating, moving, occasionally frustrating dramas that often passionately explore the possibilities of the workers\u27 movement. Even during the Great Depression, these plays never displayed the pessimistic images of the future as reflected in the contemporary fiction of Steinbeck and Dos Passos. Instead, the plays of the American workers\u27 theatre clung tightly to stirring, Utopian visions, as was hoped for in the early writings that formed a basis for the movement

Strengthening Baltimore's Workforce: Reflections and Lessons Learned

The report, Strengthening Baltimore's Workforce: Reflections and Lessons Learned, presents data on program completion, job placement, starting wage and employment retention rates for 1,187 participants. While the outcomes varied by program, most jobseekers benefited on every measure. For example, approximately 80% of participants in the construction program completed training and received at least one credential. Of those placed in jobs, 70% were still employed after six months. Graduates across all programs were able to secure average starting wages of $12 to$18 an hour, much higher than the $8.75 state minimum wage, the report finds.The collaborative is a public/private partnership between Casey, other local and national foundations, corporate donors and representatives of city and state workforce agencies. Collectively, its members have pooled more than$14 million to support sector-specific strategies that provide greater training and job opportunities for residents who face barriers to employment. These efforts are primarily focused on six growing industries: biotechnology, construction, food service, transportation and logistics, environmental sustainability and manufacturing.Baltimore's unemployment rate was 41 times the national average in August 2016, with many residents facing obstacles such as prior criminal convictions, limited math and literacy skills and unstable housing. The report outlines several strategies that have helped the local workforce development effort succeed despite these barriers:collaboration with employers and stakeholders to understand and address labor force needs;programming that includes relevant skill development and industry-recognized certifications;wraparound services, peer groups and supportive instructional approaches to address the barriers jobseekers face;rigorous job placement and post-program follow-up; anda commitment to monitoring and tracking the performance of training programs and allocating resources accordingly.The report calls for additional policy and system reforms to address the inequities that have left many communities disconnected from quality employment and educational opportunities. They include changes to wages, benefits and safety practices, as well as criminal justice reform and an expansion of mental health, addiction and adult education services. Many of the programs have already made notable shifts, including the BioTechnical Institute of Maryland, JumpStart and the Baltimore Center for Green Careers, which expanded job opportunities to individuals without a college degree and those with prior criminal records."These results show what's possible when we focus on the needs of local employers and create opportunities for residents to develop the knowledge and skills necessary to build family-supporting careers," says Allison Gerber, a senior associate at the Foundation. "The next step is to ensure more youth and young adults can benefit from these programs. This report gives us a good outline of what's working, and where we need to build."Considering the breadth of community employment needs, existing sectoral programs operate at a much smaller scale than what Baltimore requires. To expand the scope and ensure more residents can secure family-supporting jobs, the report recommends partners across the city work to increase investment in industry-specific workforce programs, increase the number of quality jobs that are available and educate and prepare more individuals to enter these programs

The Global Employer: A Global Flexible Workforce - Temporary and Other Contingent Workers

[Excerpt] Baker & McKenzie\u27s Global Employment Practice Group is pleased to present its 53rd issue of the Global Employer entitled A Global Flexible Workforce: Temporary and Other Contingent Workers. In times of fast-moving market conditions, straitened economics, changing workforce demographics and an increasingly global and mobile labour market, many multinationals are relying heavily on global contingent labour to provide greater flexibility, bridge gaps and manage costs. However, the challenge of using temporary and other contingent workers-temporary agency workers, independent contractors, freelancers, project workers, fixed-term employees, outsourced workers etc. - cannot be underestimated. As the trend towards more flexible labour increases, so do concerns about the social effects of a disenfranchised workforce. It is no surprise then, that global scrutiny and regulation of contingent worker arrangements is on the rise. China recently introduced new labour dispatch rules significantly limiting the ability of companies to hire staff through staffing agencies. The new law, due to take effect on July 1, 2013, could affect up to 60 million workers in China. Europe has seen the Temporary Agency Workers Directive increase the cost of using a temporary workforce, and in the US, new federal and state laws, agency enforcement initiatives and class action lawsuits are increasing the risks associated with many contingent worker arrangements. To address some of the key legal compliance issues faced by multinationals, leading Baker & McKenzie attorneys from 12 jurisdictions across Asia Pacific, Europe, Latin America and North America have contributed to this country-by-country guide. What emerges is that a collaborative global approach to managing the legal compliance and other risks associated with temporary and other contingent workers is essential if multinationals wish to take full and proper advantage of the opportunities that a flexible workforce can bring