A Question of Empowerment: Information Technology and Civic Engagement in New Haven, Connecticut

Extravagant claims have been made for the capacity of IT (information technology) to empower citizens and to enhance the capacity of civic organizations. This study of IT use by organizations and agencies in New Haven, Connecticut, 1998-2004, tests these claims, finding that the use of IT by nonprofits is selective, tending to serve agencies patronized by community elites rather than populations in need. In addition, the study finds that single interest groups are far more effective in using IT than more diverse civic and neighborhood groups.This publication is Hauser Center Working Paper No. 30. The Hauser Center Working Paper Series was launched during the summer of 2000. The Series enables the Hauser Center to share with a broad audience important works-in-progress written by Hauser Center scholars and researchers

Historical Statistics of the United States Chapter on Voluntary, Nonprofit, and Religious Entities and Activities: Underlying Concepts, Concerns, and Opportunities

This paper is a draft of the introduction to the chapter on voluntary, nonprofit, and religious entities and activities slated to appear in the Millennial Edition of Historical Statistics of the United States (forthcoming, Cambridge University Press). Conceding the various problematic definitions of the "nonprofit sector," the essay offers a rationale for the broadly inclusive approach to the selection of historical statistics of institutions and activities presented in the chapter. In addition, it reviews the challenges and opportunities for researchers working on the statistical aspects of nonprofit, voluntary, and religious organizations. The essay includes samples of the statistical series that will appear in HSUS.This publication is Hauser Center Working Paper No. 14. The Hauser Center Working Paper Series was launched during the summer of 2000. The Series enables the Hauser Center to share with a broad audience important works-in-progress written by Hauser Center scholars and researchers

Learning To Be Civic: Higher Education and Student Life, 1890-1940

All studies of American civic life identify the years between 1890 and 1940 as the high tide of civic engagement: the period in which voluntary associations and other formal organizations, for profit and nonprofit, proliferated rapidly, in which citizens participated in unprecedented numbers (Skocpol, 1999; Putnam, 2000; Putnam & Gamm, 1999; Hall, 1999). A variety of forces and collective experiences have been offered to explain this phenomenon: the unifying and paradoxically civilized impact of war; efforts to overcome the atomizing effects of immigration, urbanization, and industrialization; the enactment of laws facilitating corporate and associational activity; efforts by religious and economic conservative activists to privatize religion and culture

A History of Nonprofit Boards in the United States

Describes the history of nonprofit boards in the United States from the first board to nonprofit boards today. Explores the advantages of incorporation, the role of the board of directors, and how to set up a non-profit board. appendices contain a bibliography and a list of resources

Philanthropy, the Welfare State, and the Transformation of American Public and Private Institutions, 1945-2000

This essay treats the postwar proliferation of nonprofit organizations as part of the emergence of the American welfare state. As leader of the "free world," the United States had to develop tools of economic, social, and political management that would enable it to remain prepared for economic and military mobilization and to maintain domestic economic and political stability. Constrained by deep-seated hostility to "big government," policymakers and legislators devised governmental mechanisms that enabled them to achieve these ends without creating European-style central state bureaucracies. While centralizing revenue gathering (through universalization of income taxation) and policymaking in the federal government, the actual tasks of implementing policies was allocated to states, localities, and private sector actors. Devolution and privatization, though conventionally associated with the conservative revolution of the 1990s, actually describes the fundamental dynamic of American government over the past half-century. This fact is especially evident in the proliferation of nonprofit organizations whose growth in numbers and influence was encouraged by tax policies, grants, contracts, and purchases of service (including such voucher programs as the GI Bill). Inasmuch as privatization actually involves the transfer of government responsibilities to non-governmental entities subvented in a variety of ways by public funds, we must ultimately ask whether this trend represents a reduction in the size of government- or an enormous increase in its scale and scope.This publication is Hauser Center Working Paper No. 5. The Hauser Center Working Paper Series was launched during the summer of 2000. The Series enables the Hauser Center to share with a broad audience important works-in-progress written by Hauser Center scholars and researchers

Establishing Foundation Archives: A Reader and Guide to First Steps

This publication is an anthology of papers presented at a conference held at the Rockefeller Archive Center in January 1990, and sponsored by the Council on Foundations. This collaboration of the Archive Center and the Council provided a rare opponunity for foundations to learn both why preserving documents is imponant and how several foundations have approached finding a repository or setting up and managing an archives. Participants in the conference had the added privilege of conferring with experts and seeing an operating archive as they toured the Rockefeller Archive Center.Foundations are institutions that are shaping private initiatives for the public good, so documenting this aspect of American society falls uniquely under the stewardship of the organizations themselves. Foundation documents often provide the only surviving records of the important contributions of nonprofits and foundations to civic life. These records will help to inform future judgments and ensure that the history of the field is not lost. The publication of this volume was intended to make the information shared at the conference more widely available and to provide an entry point and a primer for foundations as they begin their records and archives journey

31st Annual Meeting and Associated Programs of the Society for Immunotherapy of Cancer (SITC 2016) : part two

Background The immunological escape of tumors represents one of the main ob- stacles to the treatment of malignancies. The blockade of PD-1 or CTLA-4 receptors represented a milestone in the history of immunotherapy. However, immune checkpoint inhibitors seem to be effective in specific cohorts of patients. It has been proposed that their efficacy relies on the presence of an immunological response. Thus, we hypothesized that disruption of the PD-L1/PD-1 axis would synergize with our oncolytic vaccine platform PeptiCRAd. Methods We used murine B16OVA in vivo tumor models and flow cytometry analysis to investigate the immunological background. Results First, we found that high-burden B16OVA tumors were refractory to combination immunotherapy. However, with a more aggressive schedule, tumors with a lower burden were more susceptible to the combination of PeptiCRAd and PD-L1 blockade. The therapy signifi- cantly increased the median survival of mice (Fig. 7). Interestingly, the reduced growth of contralaterally injected B16F10 cells sug- gested the presence of a long lasting immunological memory also against non-targeted antigens. Concerning the functional state of tumor infiltrating lymphocytes (TILs), we found that all the immune therapies would enhance the percentage of activated (PD-1pos TIM- 3neg) T lymphocytes and reduce the amount of exhausted (PD-1pos TIM-3pos) cells compared to placebo. As expected, we found that PeptiCRAd monotherapy could increase the number of antigen spe- cific CD8+ T cells compared to other treatments. However, only the combination with PD-L1 blockade could significantly increase the ra- tio between activated and exhausted pentamer positive cells (p= 0.0058), suggesting that by disrupting the PD-1/PD-L1 axis we could decrease the amount of dysfunctional antigen specific T cells. We ob- served that the anatomical location deeply influenced the state of CD4+ and CD8+ T lymphocytes. In fact, TIM-3 expression was in- creased by 2 fold on TILs compared to splenic and lymphoid T cells. In the CD8+ compartment, the expression of PD-1 on the surface seemed to be restricted to the tumor micro-environment, while CD4 + T cells had a high expression of PD-1 also in lymphoid organs. Interestingly, we found that the levels of PD-1 were significantly higher on CD8+ T cells than on CD4+ T cells into the tumor micro- environment (p < 0.0001). Conclusions In conclusion, we demonstrated that the efficacy of immune check- point inhibitors might be strongly enhanced by their combination with cancer vaccines. PeptiCRAd was able to increase the number of antigen-specific T cells and PD-L1 blockade prevented their exhaus- tion, resulting in long-lasting immunological memory and increased median survival