In Phoebe Apperson Hearst: A Life in Power and Politics Alexandra M. Nickliss offers the first biography of one of the Gilded Age's most prominent and powerful women. A financial manager, businesswoman, and reformer, Phoebe Apperson Hearst was one of the wealthiest and most influential women of the era and a philanthropist, almost without rival, in the San Francisco Bay Area. Hearst was born into a humble middle-class family in rural Missouri in 1842, yet she died a powerful member of society's urban elite in 1919. Most people know her as the mother of William Randolph Hearst, the famed newspaper mogul, and as the wife of George Hearst, a mining tycoon and U.S. senator. By age forty-eight, however, Hearst had come to control her husband's extravagant wealth after his death. She shepherded the fortune of the family estate until her own death, demonstrating her intelligence and skill as a financial manager. Hearst supported a number of significant urban reforms in the Bay Area, across the country, and around the world, giving much of her wealth to organizations supporting children, health reform, women's rights and well-being, higher education, municipal policy formation, progressive voluntary associations, and urban architecture and design, among other endeavors. She worked to exert her ideas and implement plans regarding the burgeoning Progressive movement and was the first female regent of the University of California, which later became one of the world's leading research institutions. Hearst held other prominent positions as the first president of the Century Club of San Francisco, first treasurer of the General Federation of Woman's Clubs, first vice president of the National Congress of Mothers, president of the Columbian Kindergarten Association, and head of the Woman's Board of the Panama-Pacific International Exposition. Phoebe Apperson Hearst tells the story of Hearst's world and examines the opportunities and challenges that she faced as she navigated local, national, and international corridors of influence, rendering a penetrating portrait of a powerful and often contradictory woman.

Synonymous with conflict and humanitarian aid, the mandate of the International Red Cross (ICRC) is to protect the wounded victims of war, civilians, prisoners and refugees alike. In Memoirs of a Red Cross Doctor, Frank Ryding recounts the missions he undertook with the Red Cross during a career spanning 35 years. Having worked as a doctor in many of the world s war zones and natural disasters from the 'killing field' era of Cambodia, to Afghanistan, Chechnya, Somalia, Pakistan and Sudan his is an account of observation and also personal experience, contrasting the serious, the terrifying, the heart-rending and the heart-warming. It is also the story of the victims who suffer the consequences of war and disaster. It shows both their courage and that of the aid agencies sent to help them. As Frank recalls from some Somali graffiti: "It is better to light a single candle than to curse the darkness'.

National service and volunteerism enjoy a rich history in the United States and an emergent future in other parts of the world. However, there remains relatively scant evidence of overall impact of national service programs and volunteer effectiveness. This condition continues to threaten national service and volunteer programs with the risk of defunding and/or the risk of not investing sufficiently from the start. This book brings together a selection of diverse chapters written by a combination of academicians, students, and practitioners from three countries and across multiple states in the United States. Each chapter approaches its topic uniquely but links with all others in identifying the impacts of service and volunteerism for volunteers, for beneficiaries of service, for the institution of volunteering, and/or for whole communities. The book is divided in five sections: (1) developing volunteer initiatives to achieve impact, (2) impact for and by youth volunteers, (3) impact in social or policy areas, specifically economy and financial success, education, and emergency response, (4) international perspectives with focus on Chile, Venezuela, the United Kingdom, and the post-communist states of Lithuania and Romania, and (5) conclusion with summary and suggestions for future research and practice.

In Treating the Public, Rachael Ball presents a comparative history of commercial theater, public opinion, and charitable organizations in eight cities across the Spanish and Anglo-Atlantic worlds during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. This innovative study uncovers the rapid expansion of public drama into urban daily life in the Spanish Atlantic, revealing the means by which men and women provided and sought theatrical entertainment while practicing Catholic piety and working to aid the poor. Ball focuses her analysis on the theaters of Madrid, Seville, Mexico City, and Puebla de los Angeles, which she compares to English-speaking theaters throughout the Atlantic world in cities and towns including London, Bristol, Dublin, and Williamsburg, Virginia. Ball shows how the corrales de comedias, or inn-yard theaters, became staples of city life throughout Spain and the Spanish Atlantic. This development stemmed, she argues, from a tremendous output of dramatic works and from the theaters' charitable activities that included donating a percentage of admission fees to hospitals and orphanages. As a result, groups like theatrical companies, religious lay brotherhoods, city leaders, and hospitals forged collaborative relationships which at once allowed the corrales to flourish and protected theaters as charitable institutions. Ball highlights the uniqueness of this system by contrasting it with public drama in England, where financial dependence on courtly and noble patronage slowed the spread of regular theatrical performances to provincial cities and colonial centers. Using an array of archival and print sources, Ball links the largely disconnected national histories of Spanish, English, and colonial American theaters. Treating the Public uncovers the depth of the comedia tradition that flourished in early modern Spain as well as the geographic scope of the Spanish theater as a political, social, and cultural institution.

Philanthropy is a general term used to describe actions taken by individuals and organizations to benefit social units and universal causes. In practical terms, philanthropy is a type of social movement for the sake of human needs and generally refers to individual contributions or those of larger organizations aiming to serve the public good. This book discusses the past, present and future perspectives of philanthropy. Chapter One examines the tensions between discourses of philanthropy, social welfare, and social reform as they played out in parliamentary debates around proposed legislation and in localised public debates in the province of Auckland in New Zealand in the early 1870s. Chapter Two addresses the link between individual level theories of volunteering and organizational level approaches of philanthropic activity. Chapter Three discusses rational philanthropy in the Muslim world.

Heart of the Nation traces America's volunteer tradition-the golden thread of American democracy-and how Presidents from Washington to Obama have called on citizens to serve neighbor and nation. From the bunker below the White House on 9/11 to villages in Africa, John Bridgeland shares his own experiences inside and outside of government to spark more Americans to volunteer to meet urgent needs. He compellingly argues that such service is fundamental to our own happiness and to what the Founding Fathers envisioned when they talked about the "pursuit of Happiness" in the Declaration of Independence. Bridgeland helps the reader discover their own volunteer service mission and issues a rallying cry to the nation to heal our partisan divisions by joining together across party lines to address our toughest challenges.

Overseas volunteering has exploded in numbers and interest in the last couple of decades. Every year, hundreds of thousands of people travel from wealthier to poorer countries to participate in short-term volunteer programs focused on health services. Churches, universities, nonprofit service organizations, profit-making "voluntourism" companies, hospitals, and large corporations all sponsor brief missions. Hoping to Help is the first book to offer a comprehensive assessment of global health volunteering, based on research into how it currently operates, its benefits and drawbacks, and how it might be organized to contribute most effectively. Given the enormous human and economic investment in these activities, it is essential to know more about them and to understand the advantages and disadvantages for host communities. Most people assume that poor communities benefit from the goodwill and skills of the volunteers. Volunteer trips are widely advertised as a means to "give back" and "make a difference." In contrast, some claim that health volunteering is a new form of colonialism, designed to benefit the volunteers more than the host communities. Others focus on unethical practices and potential harm to the presumed "beneficiaries." Judith N. Lasker evaluates these opposing positions and relies on extensive research-interviews with host country staff members, sponsor organization leaders, and volunteers, a national survey of sponsors, and participant observation-to identify best and worst practices. She adds to the debate a focus on the benefits to the sponsoring organizations, benefits that can contribute to practices that are inconsistent with what host country staff identify as most likely to be useful for them and even with what may enhance the experience for volunteers. Hoping to Help illuminates the activities and goals of sponsoring organizations and compares dominant practices to the preferences of host country staff and to nine principles for most effective volunteer trips.

Rebuilding Community after Katrina chronicles the innovative and ambitious partnership between Cornell University's City and Regional Planning department and ACORN Housing, an affiliate of what was the nation's largest low-income community organization. These unlikely allies came together to begin to rebuild devastated neighborhoods in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina. The editors and contributors to this volume allow participants' voices to show how this partnership integrated careful, technical analysis with aggressive community outreach and organizing. With essays by activists, organizers, community members, and academics on the ground, Rebuilding Community after Katrina presents insights on the challenges involved in changing the way politicians and analysts imagined the future of New Orleans' Ninth Ward. What emerges from this complex drama are lessons about community planning, organizational relationships, and team building across multi-cultural lines. The accounts presented in Rebuilding Community after Katrina raise important and sensitive questions about the appropriate roles of outsiders in community-based planning processes.

In this richly revealing biography of a major, but little-known, American businessman and philanthropist, Peter M. Ascoli brings to life a portrait of Julius Rosenwald, the man and his work. The son of first-generation German Jewish immigrants, Julius Rosenwald, known to his friends as "JR," apprenticed for his uncles, who were major clothing manufacturers in New York City. It would be as a men's clothing salesperson that JR would make his fateful encounter with Sears, Roebuck and Company, which he eventually fashioned into the greatest mail order firm in the world. He also founded Chicago's Museum of Science and Industry. And in the American South Rosenwald helped support the building of the more than 5,300 schools that bore his name. Yet the charitable fund he created during World War I went out of existence in 1948 at his expressed wish. Ascoli provides a fascinating account of Rosenwald's meteoric rise in American business, but he also portrays a man devoted to family and with a desire to help his community that led to a lifelong devotion to philanthropy. He tells about Rosenwald's important philanthropic activities, especially those connected with the Rosenwald schools and Booker T. Washington, and later through the Rosenwald Fund. Ascoli's account of Rosenwald is an inspiring story of hard work and success, and of giving back to the nation in which he prospered.

In villages around India, many people have no facilities that provide adequate health care and education, despite the Indian government allocating an enormous amount of funding. In order to offset this lack of health care and educational facilities in Indian villages, many private individuals and organizations provide medical services and educational opportunities to the poor. This book details two major SEVA projects founded by Mr. and Mrs. P.C. Mangalick in Agra, India. SEVA is selfless service that an individual or group provides to underprivileged people. These acts of selfless service are prompted by an awareness of the presence of God in all beings. This book describes how SEVA leads to a purified mind and, therefore, an understanding of the self, the part of "one source" (God) within an individual's personality.

The top one percent own about one-third of the assets in America and 40 percent of assets around the world. This concentration of financial resources in many countries gives the ultra-rich extraordinary influence over elections, public policy, and governance. In his new book, Darrell M. West analyzes the growing political activism of billionaires and how they have created more activist forms of politics and philanthropy based on their net worth. With this "wealthification" of politics and society, it is important to understand how this concentration of wealth affects system performance as well as social and economic opportunity. Through personal interactions and rich anecdotes, West takes us inside the world of the super-wealthy through a balanced and insightful analysis of U.S. billionaires such as Sheldon Adelson, David and Charles Koch, George Soros, Michael Bloomberg, Bill Gates, Peter Thiel, Donald Trump and Tom Steyer. And looking abroad, West analyzes the billionaires who have run for office in nations such as Austria, Australia, France, Georgia, India, Italy, Russia, Thailand, and the Ukraine. From oligarchs in Russia and Eastern Europe to princelings in China, tycoons raise important questions about political influence, transparency, accountability, and government performance. This book argues that countries need policies that promote better transparency, governance, and opportunity.

It seems paradoxical that in the West the predominant mode of expressing concern about suffering in the Third World comes through participation in various forms of popular culture--such as buying tickets to a rock concert like Live Aid in 1985--rather than through political action based on expert knowledge. Keith Tester's aim in this book is to explore the phenomenon of what he calls "commonsense humanitarianism," the reasons for its hegemony as the principal way for people in the West to relate to distant suffering, and its ramifications for our moral and social lives. As a remnant of the West's past imperial legacy, this phenomenon is most clearly manifested in humanitarian activities directed at Africa, and that continent is the geographical focus of this critical sociology of humanitarianism, which places the role of the media at the center of its analysis.

Faith-based organizations play a major role in providing a host of health, educational, and social services to the public. Nearly all these efforts, however, have been accompanied by intense debate and numerous legal challenges. The right of faith-based organizations to hire based on religion, the presence of religious symbols and icons in rooms where government-subsidized services are provided, and the enforcement of gay civil rights to which some faith-based organizations object all continue to be subjects of intense debate and numerous court cases. In Pluralism and Freedom, Stephen Monsma explores the question of how much autonomy should faith-based organizations retain when they enter the public realm? He contends that pluralism and freedom demand their religious freedom be respected, but that freedom of all religious traditions and of the general public and secular groups be equally respected, ideals that neither the left nor the right live up to. In response, Monsma argues that democratic pluralism requires a genuine, authentic-but also a limited-autonomy for faith-based organizations providing public services, and offers practical, concrete public policy applications of this framework in practice.

Civic Work, Civic Lessons explains how and why people of all ages, and particularly young people, should engage in public service as a vocation or avocation. Its authors are 57 years apart in age, but united in their passion for public service, which they term "civic work." The book provides unique intergenerational perspectives. Thomas Ehrlich spent much of his career in the federal government. Ernestine Fu started a non-profit organization at an early age and then funded projects led by youth. Both have engaged in many other civic activities. An introductory chapter is followed by seven key lessons for success in civic work. Each lesson includes a section by each author. The sections by Ehrlich draw mainly from his experiences. Those by Fu draw on her civic work and that of many young volunteers whom the co-authors interviewed. The concluding chapter focuses on leveraging technologies for civic work. All profits received by the authors from the sale of this book will be donated to philanthropic organizations.

America's grantmaking foundations have grown rapidly over the course of recent decades, even in the face of financial and economic crises. Foundations have a great deal of freedom, enjoy widespread legitimacy, and wield considerable influence. In this book, David Hammack and Helmut Anheier follow up their edited volume, American Foundations, with a comprehensive historical account of what American foundations have done with that independence and power. While philanthropic foundations play important roles in other parts of the world, the U.S. sector stands out as exceptional. Nowhere else are they so numerous, prominent, or autonomous. What have been the main contributions of philanthropic foundations to American society? And what might the future hold for them? A Versatile American Institution considers foundations in a new way. Previous accounts typically focused narrowly on their organization, donors, and leaders, and their intentions - but not on the outcome of philanthropy. Rather than looking at foundations in a vacuum, Hammack and Anheier consider their roles and contributions in the context of their times and their economic and political circumstances.

In a challenging environment, many charities have found that grant funding is an increasingly important source of income. But knowing where to look for grants, and how to navigate the process, can be very daunting for the uninitiated. But open this book and you will. - Find funding sources - Navidate the application process - Make a compelling case - Get money for your organization

African Son is a record of the author's many trips to Africa-as a Peace Corps volunteer, Fulbright scholar, teacher, and traveler-over the course of thirty years. These personal essays range from sympathetic descriptions of village life in Senegal and Cameroon to detailed accounts of the rich physical and natural worlds in Zimbabwe, Malawi, and Madagascar to a mock-curriculum vitae for a Cameroonian man whose skill-set is surprisingly extensive. A work of creative non-fiction, African Son describes individual and, later, family experiences in a number of African locations, from villages to major urban centers and from desert to thick, tropical forest.

This edited collection provides an in-depth ethnographic study of faith-based development organizations in the United States, shining a much needed critical light onto these organizations and their role in the United States by exploring the varied ways that faith-based organizations attempt to mend the fissures and mitigate the effects of neoliberal capitalism, poverty, and the social service sector on the poor and powerless. In doing so, Not by Faith Alone generates provocative and sophisticated analyses-grounded in empirical case studies-of such topics as the meaning of "faith-based" development, evaluations of faith-based versus secular approaches, the influence of faith-orientation on program formulation and delivery, and examinations of faith-based organizations' impacts on structural inequality and poverty alleviation. Taken together, the chapters in this volume demonstrate the vital importance of ethnography for understanding the particular role of faith-based agencies in development. The contributors argue for an understanding of faith-based development that moves beyond either dismissing or uncritically supporting faith-based initiatives. Instead, contributors demonstrate the importance of grounded analysis of the specific discourses, practices, and beliefs that imbue faith-based development with such power and reveal both the promise and the limitations of this particular vehicle of service delivery.

A number of policy issues have direct or indirect consequences for the non-profit and charitable sector, including the establishment of a social innovation initiative, changes in the tax treatment of charitable donations, responses to the economic downturn, and health care reform. The non-profit and charitable sector represents a significant portion of the U.S. economy. This book provides a formal definition of the non-profit and charitable sector, its size and scope. Also explored are how charities are funded and an overview of the charitable sector's relationship with government and policy considerations.

Make the business of society "your" business

No one knows the business of social entrepreneurship better than Rupert Scofield. Cofounder and president of FINCA International--a nonprofit microfinancing institution with 7,000 employees serving 750,000 customers in 21 countries--Scofield has been a social entrepreneur for 40 years.

In "The Social Entrepreneur's Handbook," Scofield leads you through the entire process of starting up and running a nonprofit, sharing personal success stories and advice on what not to do--valuable lessons he learned the hard way. The process, while risky, isn't as difficult as you might think. Practically speaking, you need only two things: an idea and a plan. The former comes from you and you alone. This book supplies the latter.

"The Social Entrepreneur's Handbook" illuminates the path to building a successful nonprofit from the ground up. You'll learn how to: Create a realistic plan for getting started in your chosen cause Assemble the perfect team for putting your plan into action--and keeping it rolling in the right direction Develop a business model specifically designed to run a nonprofit organization Keep yourself, your staff, and your cause in solid financial shape

One of the many beauties of social entrepreneurship is that it's never too late to start. You can be right out of school or working in the highest ranks of corporate America. It doesn't matter. Social entrepreneurship begins with a noble cause, which turns into a passion, and soon becomes a mission worth dedicating your life to.

"The Social Entrepreneur's Handbook" is the one and only resource you will need to attain your dream of working full-time in service to others--and making a real, measurable difference in the world.

Provides readers with an array of lenses for looking at a social agency from the outside in, and from the inside out

This highly accessible text takes into account the organizational dynamics that readers are likely to have experienced and provides them with the conceptual tools for reassessing their understanding and considering how to act on their new insights. Renowned scholar Armand Lauffer shows readers how to apply organizational theories to challenges they confront at work, and to uncover other challenges they may not yet be aware of.

At a time when problems of crime and antisocial behaviour stimulate debate on big society solutions, this book provides an exceptional means of tracing a line of response which began at the end of the 18th century. Nipping Crime in the Bud explores the origins and development of the Philanthropic Society (and its influence on contemporary institutions) amid growing alarm about crime levels, Draconian sentences under England's Bloody Code and a paucity of effective crime prevention measures. Driven by Enlightenment zeal and ideals, this was the first voluntary sector charity devoted to 'nipping crime in the bud'. It did so through education, training, accommodation, mentoring and support for young people. Uniquely, the book traces the first hard won policy networks and partnerships between government and the voluntary sector. It reveals how-sometimes against the odds, with funding on a knife edge but constantly striving for effective answers-influential philanthropists rose to the challenge and changed approaches to young people involved in crime and delinquency, traces of which endure today within the great crime prevention charities which still rally to this cause. Muriel Whitten's book draws on previously neglected archival sources and other first-hand research to create a formidable and illuminating account about what, for many people, will be a missing chapter in English social and legal history. Review 'Describes in colourful detail the background to the founding of the Society and how its founders and their successors worked. It explains how their plans were put into practice, how they governed and how they acquired support. It skilfully deals with questions that are still asked today such as to what extent are children to be held responsible for wrongdoing? ... Dr Whitten is admirably suited to write such a book ... and] her knowledge and experience are distilled in this comprehensive and well-written book': John Hostettler, legal historian. Read the full review Author Dr. Muriel Whitten has been a youth and family court magistrate and a member of West Sussex Probation Committee. She has lectured widely on criminal justice matters at Goldsmith's and Birkbeck (University of London), the University of Ulster and has presented for CENTREX (now the National Policing Improvement Agency). She has also contributed a weekly column to the Belfast News Letter.