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Books > Social sciences > Sociology, social studies > Social work > Charities & voluntary services
Across the world the Western dominated international aid system is being challenged. The rise of right-wing populism, de-globalisation, the advance of illiberal democracy and the emergence of non-Western donors onto the international stage are cutting right to the heart of the entrenched neoliberal aid paradigm. Foreign Aid in the Age of Populism explores the impact of these challenges on development aid, arguing that there is a need to bring politics back into development aid; not just the politics of economics, but power relations internally in aid organisations, in recipient nations, and between donor and recipient. In particular, the book examines how aid agencies are using Political Economy Analysis (PEA) to inform their decision making and to push aid projects through, whilst failing to engage meaningfully with wider politics. The book provides an in-depth critical analysis of the Washington Consensus model of political economy analysis, contrasting it with the emerging Beijing Consensus, and suggesting that PEA has to be recast in order to accommodate new and emerging paradigms. A range of alternative theoretical frameworks are suggested, demonstrating how PEA could be used to provide a deeper and richer understanding of development aid interventions, and their impact and effectiveness. This book is perfect for students and researchers of development, global politics and international relations, as well as also being useful for practitioners and policy makers within government, development aid organisations, and global institutions.
From 1999 to 2009, The Northern Manhattan Community Voices Collaborative put Columbia University and its Medical Center in touch with surrounding community organizations and churches to facilitate access to primary care, nutritional improvement, and smoking cessation, and to broker innovative ways to access healthcare and other social services. This unlikely partnership and the relationships it forged reaffirms the wisdom of joining "town and gown" to improve a community's well-being. Staff members of participating organizations have coauthored this volume, which shares the successes, failures, and obstacles of implementing a vast community health program. A representative of Alianza Dominicana, for example, one of the country's largest groups settling new immigrants, speaks to the value of community-based organizations in ridding a neighborhood of crime, facilitating access to health insurance, and navigating the healthcare system. The editors outline the beginnings and infrastructure of the collaboration and the relationship between leaders that fueled positive outcomes. Their portrait demonstrates how grassroots solutions can create productive dialogues that help resolve difficult issues.
Nonprofit organizations often struggle with selecting and screening volunteers and placing them in the best possible positions. This practical resource, originally published by Stevenson, Inc., provides actionable tips and techniques to improve volunteer selection, screening, and placement. The articles in this resource cover useful topics such as: recruitment procedures aimed at filling key volunteer positions, techniques for screening volunteers in advance, interviewing procedures, tips for checking references, how to conduct thorough background checks, how to decline a volunteer appointment with tact, advice on clarifying volunteer tasks before assigning them, steps for conducting volunteer evaluations. Other topics include: * Background check rejection follow-up * Defining volunteer roles * Conducting the right check for the right position * Matching tools * Conducting volunteer interviews * Effective task delegation * Staff preparation * Consultant programs * Training and supervision * Agreements and policies * Special skills volunteers * Evaluation and assessment * Placement questionnaires * Volunteer satisfaction * Advocacy volunteers * Codes of conduct * Constituent safety Please note that some content featured in the original version of this title has been removed in this published version due to permissions issues.
Although a range of program and policy responses to youth gangs exist, most are largely based on suppression, implemented by the police or other criminal justice agencies. Less attention and fewer resources have been directed to prevention and intervention strategies that draw on the participation of community organizations, schools, and social service agencies in the neighborhoods in which gangs operate. Also underemphasized is the importance of integrating such approaches at the local level. In this volume, leading researchers discuss effective intervention among youth gangs, focusing on the ideas behind, approaches to, and evidence about the effectiveness of community-based, youth gang interventions. Treating community as a crucial unit of analysis and action, these essays reorient our understanding of gangs and the measures undertaken to defeat them. They emphasize the importance of community, both as a context that shapes opportunity and as a resource that promotes positive youth engagement. Covering key themes and debates, this book explores the role of social capital and collective efficacy in informing youth gang intervention and evaluation, the importance of focusing on youth development within the context of community opportunities and pressures, and the possibilities of better linking research, policy, and practice when responding to youth gangs, among other critical issues.
Why, despite decades of high levels of foreign aid, has development
been so disappointing in most of Sub-Saharan Africa, leading to
rising numbers of poor and fueling political instabilities? While
not ignoring the culpability of Africans in these problems, Carol
Lancaster finds that much of the responsibility is in the hands of
the governments and international aid agencies that provide
assistance to the region. The first examination of its kind, "Aid
to Africa" investigates the impact of bureaucratic politics,
special interest groups, and public opinion in aid-giving countries
and agencies. She finds that aid agencies in Africa often
misdiagnosed problems, had difficulty designing appropriate
programs that addressed the local political environment, and failed
to coordinate their efforts effectively.
The question of why countries give aid and assistance to other countries has long been a topic of debate- is it altruism, or selfishness? The assumption is sometimes made that donors from developing countries might be more motivated by altruism than 'traditional' western donors. This book demonstrates that on the contrary, the provision of development assistance can be used to serve national interests, allowing so-called 'emerging' donors to gain soft power in the international sphere by improving their image and global influence. Technical cooperation, or the transfer of knowledge, is an area of particular interest, as it can enable donors to position themselves as a global leader in a given field, with a unique set of skills and expertise in a knowledge area. This book uses the Brazilian case to demonstrate how a country such as Brazil can seek power and influence by providing no-strings-attached technical assistance. The empirical analysis unpicks the motivations behind development assistance, and how it can be used as a foreign policy tool. In doing so, the book sheds light upon the similarities and variations in the provision of technical cooperation as a foreign policy tool by China, India, and Brazil. This book will be of interest to researchers of International Development, South-South Cooperation, International Relations, and those working on Brazil specifically.
John Wood discovered his passion, his greatest success, and his life's work not at business school or helping lead Microsoft's charge into Asia in the 1990s but on a soul-searching trip to the Himalayas. He made the difficult decision to walk away from his lucrative career to create Room to Read, a nonprofit organization that promotes education across the developing world. By the end of 2007, the organization will have established over 5,000 libraries and 400 schools, and awarded long-term scholarships to more than 3,000 girls, giving more than one million children the lifelong gift of education. If you have ever pondered abandoning your desk job for an adventure and an opportunity to give back, Wood's story will inspire you. He offers a vivid, emotional, and absorbing tale of how to take the lessons learned at a hard-charging company like Microsoft and apply them to the world's most pressing social problems.
In the world's most affluent and food secure societies, why is it now publicly acceptable to feed donated surplus food, dependent on corporate food waste, to millions of hungry people? While recognizing the moral imperative to feed hungry people, this book challenges the effectiveness, sustainability and moral legitimacy of globally entrenched corporate food banking as the primary response to rich world food poverty. It investigates the prevalence and causes of domestic hunger and food waste in OECD member states, the origins and thirty-year rise of US style charitable food banking, and its institutionalization and corporatization. It unmasks the hidden functions of transnational corporate food banking which construct domestic hunger as a matter for charity thereby allowing indifferent and austerity-minded governments to ignore increasing poverty and food insecurity and their moral, legal and political obligations, under international law, to realize the right to food. The book's unifying theme is understanding the food bank nation as a powerful metaphor for the deep hole at the centre of neoliberalism, illustrating: the de-politicization of hunger; the abandonment of social rights; the stigma of begging and loss of human dignity; broken social safety nets; the dysfunctional food system; the shift from income security to charitable food relief; and public policy neglect. It exposes the hazards of corporate food philanthropy and the moral vacuum within negligent governments and their lack of public accountability. The advocacy of civil society with a right to food bite is urgently needed to gather political will and advance 'joined-up' policies and courses of action to ensure food security for all.
In the world's most affluent and food secure societies, why is it now publicly acceptable to feed donated surplus food, dependent on corporate food waste, to millions of hungry people? While recognizing the moral imperative to feed hungry people, this book challenges the effectiveness, sustainability and moral legitimacy of globally entrenched corporate food banking as the primary response to rich world food poverty. It investigates the prevalence and causes of domestic hunger and food waste in OECD member states, the origins and thirty-year rise of US style charitable food banking, and its institutionalization and corporatization. It unmasks the hidden functions of transnational corporate food banking which construct domestic hunger as a matter for charity thereby allowing indifferent and austerity-minded governments to ignore increasing poverty and food insecurity and their moral, legal and political obligations, under international law, to realize the right to food. The book's unifying theme is understanding the food bank nation as a powerful metaphor for the deep hole at the centre of neoliberalism, illustrating: the de-politicization of hunger; the abandonment of social rights; the stigma of begging and loss of human dignity; broken social safety nets; the dysfunctional food system; the shift from income security to charitable food relief; and public policy neglect. It exposes the hazards of corporate food philanthropy and the moral vacuum within negligent governments and their lack of public accountability. The advocacy of civil society with a right to food bite is urgently needed to gather political will and advance 'joined-up' policies and courses of action to ensure food security for all.
Peace Corps volunteers seem to exemplify the desire to make the world a better place. Yet despite being one of history's clearest cases of organized idealism, the Peace Corps has, in practice, ended up cultivating very different outcomes among its volunteers. By the time they return from the Peace Corps, volunteers exhibit surprising shifts in their political and professional consciousness. Rather than developing a systemic perspective on development and poverty, they tend instead to focus on individual behavior; they see professions as the only legitimate source of political and social power. They have lost their idealism, and their convictions and beliefs have been reshaped along the way. The Death of Idealism uses the case of the Peace Corps to explain why and how participation in a bureaucratic organization changes people's ideals and politics. Meghan Elizabeth Kallman offers an innovative institutional analysis of the role of idealism in development organizations. She details the combination of social forces and organizational pressures that depoliticizes Peace Corps volunteers, channels their idealism toward professionalization, and leads to cynicism or disengagement. Kallman sheds light on the structural reasons for the persistent failure of development organizations and the consequences for the people involved. Based on interviews with over 140 current and returned Peace Corps volunteers, field observations, and a large-scale survey, this deeply researched, theoretically rigorous book offers a novel perspective on how people lose their idealism, and why that matters.
This book offers all the advice you need to help your charity create successful and long-lasting partnerships with corporates. With charity-corporate partnerships now more high profile than ever, the number of charity and corporate players working fruitfully together is on the increase. For a successful partnership to help improve your charity's finances and reputation, you will need to understand how to develop a robust strategy, follow best practice and get your voice heard by the right people. This guide shows you how to achieve this using the best methods and techniques in the field, all with the ultimate aim of helping your beneficiaries. In association with the Hartsook Centre for Sustainable Philanthropy at Plymouth University and the Institute of Fundraising. Who should buy this book? The diverse range of topics covered in this book provides a solid background for anyone involved in corporate fundraising, whether you are new to the field or a practised professional. What does it cover? This fifth edition combines chapter contributions and case studies from leading experts in both charity and corporate sectors, including how to: *Develop a strategic approach to corporate fundraising and take *advantage of research and data *Find new partners, carry out due diligence and choose a corporate *partnership portfolio *Pitch for partnerships and negotiate the best value for your charity *Manage the corporate account and recruit and structure a team *Forewarn and forearm yourself with crucial legal and regulatory issues
What motivates someone to become a social entrepreneur? What are the competencies needed to be effective social advocates and agents for change? This book answers these questions in an accessible and practical way, providing comprehensive guidelines, numerous examples, and sources of information and training for anyone who wants to start a community-based social advocacy and change initiative or for employees who want to start a corporate social responsibility initiative. Features include the following:
Increasingly, it is not just the state that determines the content, delivery, and governance of education. The influence of external actors has been growing, but the boundaries between internal and external have become blurred and their partnerships have become more complex. This book considers how schooling systems are being influenced by the rise of external actors, including private companies, non-governmental organisations, parent organisations, philanthropies, and international assessment frameworks. It explores how the public, private, and third sectors are becoming increasingly intertwined. Introducing new theoretical frameworks, it examines diverse sites - including Cambodia, Israel, Poland, Chile, Australia, Brazil, and the United States - to study the role of policies, institutions, and contextual factors shaping the changing relationships between those seeking to influence schooling.
The first book of its kind, this volume brings together a range of experts to review key methodological issues in the study of voluntary action, charitable behaviour and participation in voluntary organisations. Using case studies from around the world - from ethnography to media analysis and surveys to peer research - chapters illustrate the challenges of researching altruistic actions and our conceptualisations of them. Across different fields and methods, authors unpick the methodological innovations and challenges in their own research to help guide future study. Demystifying research and deepening our ability to understand the role of the third sector, this accessible book is suitable for social researchers at all levels.
Although volunteer recruitment can be difficult for nonprofit organizations, volunteer retention is often even more difficult. Originally published by Stevenson, Inc., this practical resource provides nonprofit organizations and professionals with strategies for nurturing long-term relationships with volunteers and examples of what various organizations have done to retain new volunteers. Important topics covered include: * Welcome kits * Volunteer assignments * Goal setting * Volunteer motivation * Risk management measures * Volunteer handbooks * Volunteer incentives * Volunteer communication * Retention approaches * Volunteer training * Engaging volunteers * Volunteer recognition Please note that some content featured in the original version of this title has been removed in this published version due to permissions issues.
The social, political, and economic environment is ripe with opportunity to engage women and their philanthropy. Professionals working in the field of philanthropy want ideas, practical information, research, and guidance about how to work with women donors, how to build women's philanthropy initiatives, and how to integrate this subset of donors into their current fund development departments. This book offers insight into the three historical waves of women's philanthropy and provides a summary of current research and inspiring stories collected from interviews with more than 70 women philanthropists and leaders. Each chapter begins with current research, followed by interviews and examples, and ends with suggestions for fundraisers on how to implement the information into a women's philanthropy initiative using a six-step process: Awareness, Assessment, Alignment, Action, Acknowledgement and Achievement. The last several chapters focus on lessons learned from successful programs in traditional organizational settings-healthcare, higher education, and environment-and what we have yet to learn from the new and emerging philanthropic models led by Laurene Powell Jobs, Priscilla Chan, Melinda Gates, Nancy Roob, and MacKenzie Scott. Throughout the book, themes of equity, diversity, and inclusion are evident and featured in stories and programs led by women of color and younger donors. Additionally, COVID has impacted how fundraisers work, requiring the philanthropy community to adapt and create new ways to reach women donors. The final chapter is a call to action to all women, to give bigger and bolder as the fourth wave of women's philanthropy rises.
In the late 1990s, there was a distinct rise in interest in the non-profit sector, and in retailing and consumption. Drawing together these two concerns this book provides a comprehensive and international account of the retail charity sector. Charity shops are now significant occupiers of the UK high street, and are becoming familiar sites of consumption in the USA, Australia, Canada and Ireland. This volume provides the first overview of the history and development of the charity shop, incorporating material from a variety of disciplines, including marketing, retailing, cultural studies and social geography. Presenting recent research from the UK, Europe, Australia and North America, this book fills gap in the literature of the field, and will be of great interest to all practitioners, researchers and students wishing to study the charity shop phenomenon.
Drawing on more than two years of participant observation in the American Midwest and in Madagascar among Lutheran clinicians, volunteer laborers, healers, evangelists, and former missionaries, Conversionary Sites investigates the role of religion in the globalization of medicine. Based on immersive research of a transnational Christian medical aid program, Britt Halvorson tells the story of a thirty-year-old initiative that aimed to professionalize and modernize colonial-era evangelism. Creatively blending perspectives on humanitarianism, global medicine, and the anthropology of Christianity, she argues that the cultural spaces created by these programs operate as multistranded "conversionary sites," where questions of global inequality, transnational religious fellowship, and postcolonial cultural and economic forces are negotiated. A nuanced critique of the ambivalent relationships among religion, capitalism, and humanitarian aid, Conversionary Sites draws important connections between religion and science, capitalism and charity, and the US and the Global South.
Exhorting people to volunteer is part of the everyday vocabulary of
American politics. Routinely, members of both major parties call
for partnerships between government and nonprofit organizations.
These entreaties increase dramatically during times of crisis, and
the voluntary efforts of ordinary citizens are now seen as a
necessary supplement to government intervention.
Celebrated historian David Nasaw, whom The New York Times Book Review has called "a meticulous researcher and a cool analyst," brings new life to the story of one of America's most famous and successful businessmen and philanthropists-in what will prove to be the biography of the season. Born of modest origins in Scotland in 1835, Andrew Carnegie is best known as the founder of Carnegie Steel. His rags to riches story has never been told as dramatically and vividly as in Nasaw's new biography. Carnegie, the son of an impoverished linen weaver, moved to Pittsburgh at the age of thirteen. The embodiment of the American dream, he pulled himself up from bobbin boy in a cotton factory to become the richest man in the world. He spent the rest of his life giving away the fortune he had accumulated and crusading for international peace. For all that he accomplished and came to represent to the American public-a wildly successful businessman and capitalist, a self-educated writer, peace activist, philanthropist, man of letters, lover of culture, and unabashed enthusiast for American democracy and capitalism-Carnegie has remained, to this day, an enigma. Nasaw explains how Carnegie made his early fortune and what prompted him to give it all away, how he was drawn into the campaign first against American involvement in the Spanish-American War and then for international peace, and how he used his friendships with presidents and prime ministers to try to pull the world back from the brink of disaster. With a trove of new material-unpublished chapters of Carnegie's Autobiography; personal letters between Carnegie and his future wife, Louise, and other family members; his prenuptial agreement; diaries of family and close friends; his applications for citizenship; his extensive correspondence with Henry Clay Frick; and dozens of private letters to and from presidents Grant, Cleveland, McKinley, Roosevelt, and British prime ministers Gladstone and Balfour, as well as friends Herbert Spencer, Matthew Arnold, and Mark Twain-Nasaw brilliantly plumbs the core of this facinating and complex man, deftly placing his life in cultural and political context as only a master storyteller can.
A Nonprofit Survival Kit for Hard Times "This is a must-read for all of us in fundraising. Mal Warwick
includes practical approaches for difficult economic times, from
zero-based thinking about our programs to strategies for relating
to our donors and making certain our fundraising programs are
prepared to succeed not only now but when the economy
recovers." "Brilliant No nonprofit organization can afford to ignore the
insightful advice Mal Warwick offers in this concise and eminently
readable book. It's practical, down-to-earth, and addresses the
complex, real-world challenges of raising money in tough
times." "Fundraising When Money Is Tight is an important book in a
difficult time for all. This is the right book for anyone who is
committed to advancing the public good." "This is a must-read book by any fundraising manager. It's
timely, it's a good read, and the moment I put it down I made sure
my managers got focused, got real, and got with the project
today." "Mal Warwick will leave you with a focusing framework and dozens
of practical, immediately actionable how-tos. It is hard to imagine
anyone in the citizen sector who will not breathe easier after
reading this book."
The last three decades have witnessed a proliferation of nongovernmental organizations engaging in new campaigns to end the practice of female genital cutting across Africa. These campaigns have in turn spurred new institutions, discourses, and political projects, bringing about unexpected social transformations, both intended and unintended. Consequently, cutting is waning across the continent. At the same time, these endings are misrecognized and disavowed by public and scholarly discourses across the political spectrum. What does it mean to say that while cutting is ending, the Western discourse surrounding it is on the rise? And what kind of a feminist anthropology is needed in such a moment? The Twilight of Cutting examines these and other questions from the vantage point of Ghanaian feminist and reproductive health NGOs that have organized campaigns against cutting for over thirty years. The book looks at these NGOs not as solutions but as sites of "problematization." The purpose of understanding these Ghanaian campaigns, their transnational and regional encounters, and the forms of governmentality they produce is not to charge them with providing answers to the question, how do we end cutting? Instead, it is to account for their work, their historicity, the life worlds and subjectivities they engender, and the modes of reflection, imminent critique, and opposition they set in motion.
Collaboration for voluntary organisations should be an obvious and good idea. However, often collaboration is perceived to be a threat - a way of cutting costs, or a feeling of being taken over, losing identity and relevance. It needn't be that way. This book is an unique and complete guide to how voluntary organisations can find effective and creative ways of collaborating and working together, from partnerships to joint agreements to mergers, to increase the gains for users and communities. For CEOs, managers and charity professionals who want to consider new working methods and take advantage of creative opportunities.
Recent years have seen an explosion in research on tourism volunteering. Volunteers are an essential part of tourism, whether they are volunteering in their local museum, at a sporting mega-event, as an airport ambassador, or travelling the global as a volunteer tourist. Managing Volunteers in Tourism reviews the latest research to highlight the key management issues and relate them to the tourism volunteering context. It includes previously under-researched forms of tourism volunteering such as meet-and-greeters, surf life-savers, conservation, festival, and information centre volunteers and volunTourists. The book develops through three distinct sections, the first of which begins by introducing the concept of volunteering and considering the variety of volunteer forms and settings within tourism. The next part picks up the organisational approach and examines volunteer program design and planning, volunteer motivation, recruitment and selection, training and development, reward and retention, and diversity management. The final part consists of ten case studies from leading international researchers and practitioners identifying best practice and key management challenges. Real-life examples and case studies throughout this book provide an in-depth examination of the challenges facing those managing tourism volunteers, making this book indispensible for current and future managers in the tourism industry. |
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